Subjective evaluation of critical success factors for a QoE aware adaptive system

For many years video content delivery has established itself as the killer application. Improving QoE on adaptive streaming is focusing many efforts in the quest for optimized methods and metrics to allow a QoE driven adaptation. Questions such as whether adaptive systems based on Scalable Video Coding improve subjective quality and in which situations or to what degree are still open issues. Tolerance and indifference thresholds for each type of content, conditions or viewer category, with regard to adaptive systems are critical success factors that are yet unresolved. We compare the performance of a complete adaptive system with the traditional, i.e. non-adaptive, approach in subjective terms. Results of surveying 75 participants show that the adaptation improves QoE under most of the evaluated conditions. Tolerance thresholds for triggering adaptation events have been identified. Users accustomed to Internet video are more critical than users that only watch TV. The under 35 year old subset among the available population is generally more satisfied with the adaptive system than the older subset.