A smart home is an apartment or a house in which smart devices communicate with each other to improve key areas of daily life, such as comfort, security or energy consumption. Therefore, the smart home domain is user-centric and exhibits characteristics that distinguish it from other application domains of the Internet of Things. Specifically, this concerns the existence of different 'regular' and 'smart' devices, but also the basic arrangement of each household, which is highly individual. As a result, the realization of analytics scenarios in the smart home domain is influenced by household-specific requirements regarding the configuration, composition and execution of analytics tasks. Existing approaches in scientific literature cover the resulting architectural challenges only insufficiently. With the emergence of new computing paradigms, architectural concepts and technologies, new opportunities for analytics approaches, which enable individual household insights, become evident. For this reason, the objective of this work is the design of an Internet of Things analytics architecture for smart home applications, which supports the flexible deployment of analytics pipelines, therefore enabling the generation of individual household insights. In order to achieve this goal, challenges for Internet of Things analytics architectures are identified and analyzed by conducting a literature review. Based on the resulting challenges catalog, an architectural model is designed that facilitates the processing and analysis of streaming data from smart devices of different kinds. The developed architecture utilizes the fog computing paradigm, therefore allowing the deployment and execution of analytics pipelines in the cloud as well as at edge of the network. The architectural model is the foundation for a prototype, which is implemented to evaluate the proposed solution. The evaluation is performed by conducting several experiments, which are designed in order to validate the prototypes feasibility to address the found challenges. The main contributions of this work are a challenges catalog for Internet of Things analytics architectures, an architectural model for analytics in smart home applications as well as a prototype, which is based on it.

The various capabilities provided by the Internet have attracted a large amount of Internet-based applications over the last decades. Many services that previously only used other means of communication are now also deployed on the Internet. As the content in the communication becomes richer, the bandwidth required to communicate it increases. In the case of delivering audiovisual content over the Internet, a significant amount of bandwidth is required to send the content to a single recipient, and increases rapidly for each additional recipient. To be able to provide scalable, Internet-based systems for video content delivery, researchers and companies have begun to focus on peer-to-peer-based approaches, meaning participants collaborating and contributing their bandwidth to assure content delivery to all others. This thesis proposes a design for a peer-to-peer system for delivery of live video, and provides simulation results for an implementation of the design. The design targets some of the current issues of peer-to-peer systems – mainly that of providing friendliness towards Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Peer-to-peer systems generate considerable amounts of traffic, which is often sent between peers located in different ISPs, even when data is available at a peer in the same ISP as the recipient. This creates problems for ISPs as they often have to pay other ISPs for data sent over cross-ISP connections, and because congestion can occur in the ISPs gateways to the rest of the Internet – the problems increasing with the number of ISPs that the traffic has to go through. This has forced some ISPs to limit or block peer-to-peer traffic completely. The system designed in this thesis uses a gossip-based peer-to-peer protocol for content dissemination, and to minimize cross-ISP traffic, the thesis proposes that peers should choose peers closer in the network topology to connect to. This can be achieved by creating a database composed of ISPs and the distance between them, which is consulted every time a new connection is to be created. The database is small enough to be stored locally at each peer. As long as a peer is able to deliver a clear stream it will only connect to close peers, however should the close peers not be able to provide data at a sufficient rate, the peer will request random peers in the system to also provide it with data. Evaluation of the system in various simulation scenarios shows that it operates well in a constrained environment as well as during peer failures. The evaluation also shows that it is possible to have high clustering of peers and still deliver a clear stream to all of them, as long as a few random connections are allowed to be created when close neighbors can’t provide a suffi cient download rate. Comparing the use of biased neighbor selection to random selection, traffic between ISPs is efficiently reduced in the overall system, the portion of traffic exchanged between peers in the same ISP experience a ten times increase or more in most scenarios, and in larger ISPs that contain many peers, 75% of all traffic is exchanged between peers within the ISP. Thus the design presented in this thesis can be recommended to developers and content providers that are looking to increase ISP friendliness in their existing or future peer-to-peer applications. / De många möjligheter som Internet medför har gett upphov till ett stort antal Internet-baserade tjänster de senaste decennierna. Flertalet tjänster som tidigare endast fanns tillgängliga via andra kommunikationskanaler är numera också möjliga att nå via Internet. I och med att informationen som skall skickas via olika tjänster ökar så ökar också kraven på bandbredd, och för att kunna leverera video krävs en ansenlig bandbredd. Bandbredden som krävs av den som levererar videon ökar dessutom snabbt i takt med antalet mottagare av den. För att kunna skapa Internet-baserade tjänster för video som tillåter ett större antal användare har forskare och företag börjat använda peer- to-peer-baserade lösningar, där användarna av tjänsten samarbetar och bidrar med deras egen bandbredd för att göra det möjligt för samtliga användare att ta emot videon. Detta arbete beskriver hur ett peer-to-peer-system för live-video kan utformas, och tillhandahåller resultat från simulationer med en implementation av systemet. Det huvudsakliga målet med systemets design är att minska bördan som peer-to-peer-system vanligen utgör för internetleverantörer. Denna typ av system genererar ofta stora mängder data, som i de flesta fall skickas mellan användare som befinner sig i nätverk tillhörande olika internetleverantörer, trots att samma data ofta finns tillgänglig på närmare håll – det vill säga hos användare som tillhör samma internetleverantör som mottagaren. Detta är ett problem för internetleverantörerna eftersom de ofta behöver betala för trafik som lämnar eller går till deras nätverk. Utöver detta så kan de anslutningar som existerar mellan dessa nätverk inte alltid klara sådana mängder trafik, vilket gör att alla användare av de anslutningarna blir lidande. Detta har lett till att vissa internetleverantörer begränsar eller inte tillåter peer-to-peer-trafik överhuvudtaget. Systemet som utformats i detta arbete bygger på gossiping (ryktesspridning) för att förse användare med videoströmmen. För att minimera mängden trafik som skickas mellan användare hos olika internetleverantörer så jämför användarna avståndet i nätverkstopologin till andra användare och skapar bara anslutningar till de som befinner sig närmast. Avståndet mellan två internetleverantörer utgörs av antalet anslutningar mellan två internetleverantörers nätverk som måste passeras på vägen. Dessa avstånd är lagrade i en databas som finns lokalt hos varje användare. Så länge en användare kan se en videoström utan störningar så laddas den endast ner från närbelägna användare, men skulle dessa inte kunna tillgodose användaren med tillräcklig datahastighet så kommer andra, slumpmässigt utvalda, också att kontaktas för att bidra med delar av videoströmmen till denna användare. I den utvärdering av systemet som gjorts så har det visat sig fungera väl när tillgängliga resurser som bandbredd och tillförlitligheten i det fysiska nätverket är begränsade, samt under svåra förhållanden som när en stor del av användarna lämnar systemet samtidigt. Utvärderingen visar också att användarupplevelsen inte påverkas av förändringen som det innebär att föredra kommunikation med närbelägna användare, så länge några få slumpmässiga anslutningar är tillåtna i de fall då användare i närheten inte kan tillhandahålla tillräcklig datahastighet. Jämfört med att välja alla kommunikationspartners slumpmässigt så minskar tillvägagångssättet i detta arbete effektivt trafiken mellan olika internetleverantörer både sett till hela systemet och i enskilda nätverk—andelen trafik som utbyts mellan användare tillhörande samma internetleverantör blir i de flesta fall tio gånger större—och i stora nätverk som innehåller många användare så utgör trafik mellan dess användare 75 % av all systemets trafik i detta nätverk. Den design som utformats i detta arbete kan därför rekommenderas till utvecklare och tillhandahållare av både existerande och framtida tjänster som använder peer-to-peer-teknik, och som är intresserade av att minska belastningen som deras system utgör för internetleverantörer.

During the last decade, the data rates provided by mobile networks have improved to the point that it is now feasible to provide richer services, such as streaming multimedia, to mobile users. However, due to factors such as radio interference and cell load, the throughput available to a client varies over time. If the throughput available to a client decreases below the media’s bit rate, the client’s buffer will eventually become empty. This causes the client to enter a period of rebuffering, which degrades user experience. In order to avoid this, a streaming server may provide the media at different bit rates, thereby allowing the media’s bit rate (and quality) to be modified to fit the client’s bandwidth. This is referred to as adaptive streaming. The aim of this thesis is to devise an algorithm to find the media quality most suitable for a specific client, focusing on how to detect that the user is able to receive content at a higher rate. The goal for such an algorithm is to avoid depleting the client buffer, while utilizing as much of the bandwidth available as possible without overflowing the buffers in the network. In particular, this thesis looks into the difficult problem of how to do adaptation for live content and how to switch to a content version with higher bitrate and quality in an optimal way. This thesis examines if existing adaptation mechanisms can be improved by considering the characteristics of different mobile networks. In order to achieve this, a study of mobile networks currently in use has been conducted, as well as experiments with streaming over live networks. The experiments and study indicate that the increased available throughput can not be detected by passive monitoring of client feedback. Furthermore, a higher data rate carrier will not be allocated to a client in 3G networks, unless the client is sufficiently utilizing the current carrier. This means that a streaming server must modify its sending rate in order to find its maximum throughput and to force allocation of a higher data rate carrier. Different methods for achieving this are examined and discussed and an algorithm based upon these ideas was implemented and evaluated. It is shown that increasing the transmission rate by introducing stuffed packets in the media stream allows the server to find the optimal bit rate for live video streams without switching up to a bit rate which the network can not support. This thesis was carried out during the summer and autumn of 2008 at Ericsson Research, Multimedia Technologies in Kista, Sweden. / Under det senaste decenniet har överföringshastigheterna i mobilnätet ökat så pass mycket att detnu är möjligt att erbjuda användarna mer avancerade tjänster, som till exempel strömmandemultimedia. I mobilnäten varierar dock klientens bandbredd med avseende på tiden på grund avfaktorer som störningar på radiolänken och lasten i cellen. Om en klients överföringshastighetsjunker till mindre än mediets bithastighet, kommer klientens buffert till slut att bli tom. Dettaleder till att klienten inleder en period av ombuffring, vilket försämrar användarupplevelsen. Föratt undvika detta kan en strömmande server erbjuda mediet i flera olika bithastigheter, vilket gördet möjligt för servern att anpassa bithastigheten (och därmed kvalitén) till klientens bandbredd.Denna metod kallas för adaptive strömning. Syftet för detta examensarbete är att utveckla en algoritm, som hittar den bithastighet som är bästlämpad för en specifik användare med fokus på att upptäcka att en klient kan ta emot media avhögre kvalité. Målet för en sådan algoritm är att undvika att klientens buffert blir tom ochsamtidigt utnyttja så mycket av bandbredden som möjligt utan att fylla nätverksbuffertarna. Merspecifikt undersöker denna rapport det svåra problemet med hur adaptering för direktsänd mediakan utföras. Examensarbetet undersöker om existerande adapteringsmekanismer kan förbättras genom attbeakta de olika radioteknologiers egenskaper. I detta arbete ingår både en studie avradioteknologier, som för tillfället används kommersiellt, samt experiment med strömmandemedia över dessa. Resultaten från studien och experimenten tyder på att ökad bandbredd inte kanupptäckas genom att passivt övervaka ”feedback” från klienten. Vidare kommer inte användarenatt allokeras en radiobärare med högre överföringshastighet i 3G-nätverk, om inte den nuvarandebäraren utnyttjas maximalt. Detta innebär att en strömmande server måste variera sinsändningshastighet både för att upptäcka om mer bandbredd är tillgänglig och för att framtvingaallokering av en bärare med högre hastighet. Olika metoder för att utföra detta undersöks ochdiskuteras och en algoritm baserad på dessa idéer utvecklas. Detta examensarbete utfördes under sommaren och hösten 2008 vid Ericsson Research,Multimedia Technologies i Kista, Sverige.

While digital displays have continuously increased in resolution, video content produced before these improvements is however stuck at its original resolution, and the use of some form of scaling is needed for a satisfactory viewing experience on high-resolution displays. In recent years, the field of video scaling has taken a leap forward in output quality, due to the adoption of deep learning methods in research. In this paper, we describe a study wherein we train a convolutional neural network for super-resolution, and conduct a large-scale A/B video quality test in order to investigate if SVT video-ondemand viewers prefer video upscaled using a convolutional neural network to video upscaled using the standard bicubic method. Our results show that viewers generally prefer CNNscaled video, but not necessarily for the types of content this technology would primarily be used to scale. We conclude that the technology of deep upscaling shows promise, but also believe that more optimization and flexibility is need for deep scaling to be viable for mainstream use. / Allteftersom bildskärmstekniken förbättras så får mediekonsumenter tillgång till skärmar med allt högre upplösningar; dock är videomaterial som producerats för en viss bildupplösning, fast på denna nivå, och någon form av skalning måste användas för en bra tittarupplevelse på högupplösta skärmar. På senare tid så har videoskalning förändrats, tack vare användandet av djupinlärningsmetoder inom forskningen. I den här rapporten beskriver vi en studie där vi tränade en djup modell för videouppskalning, och sedan utförde ett storskaligt A/B-test, med syftet att undersöka huruvida SVTs onlinetittare föredrar video skalad med djupinlärning över video skalad med konventionella metoder. Våra resultat visar att tittarna föredrog video skalad med djupinlärning, dock inte nödvändigtvis för det material tekniken främst skulle användas med. Vi drar slutsatsen att videoskalning med hjälp av djupinlärning är lovande, men anser också att mer optimering och flexibilitet behövs innan tekniken kan anses mogen för bred adoption.

Die Zukunft des Kinos steht – wieder einmal – zur Diskussion, da die Besucherzahlen stark zurückgegangen sind. Ein Blick in die Vergangenheit zeigt, dass die Geschichte des Kinos schon immer von Disruptionen geprägt war. Der Essay zeichnet diese Entwicklungen nach und stellt die Frage, ob tatsächlich die Konkurrenz der Streaming-Angebote zur neuen Kinokrise geführt hat.

With the rapid pace of technological development, the way we consume media has changed drastically. Not too long ago, the very idea of never watching TV in the sense of broadcasted TV channels was absurd. Nowadays more and more people spend most if not all their media consumption time on streaming services like Netflix and Viaplay. We conducted a study on the reasons behind this change in media consumption, to find out why more and more people choose to spend their days watching Netflix instead of TV6 like they used to. We chose to perform our study through the lens of two different consumer behavior models: The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Uses and Gratification Model (UGT). With the concepts of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use from TAM, and information seeking, affinity and accessibility from UGT. A quantitative study was conducted with 72 respondents. Our choice of method was a questionnaire which we designed to gather data on the respondents’ thoughts towards streaming services and towards the different behavior models. The survey, which was web-based, was distributed on different Facebook groups to reach potential respondents. The data gathered was then analyzed using Cronbach’s alpha and linear regression. From the results, we could gather that perceived usefulness was the most important factor of TAM, and the largest explanation behind a consumer’s usage of streaming services. Information seeking, affinity and accessibility were the largest contributing factors in the UGT model, although our results showed that UGT was not as significant as TAM in usage of streaming services. We were able to conclude that streaming services are an innovation that offers usefulness to the respondents that broadcast TV cannot compete with. We also found that TV broadcasts have a potential niche audience which they can reach with the right priorities. There were some aspects of information seeking which our respondents felt streaming services lacked, meaning if broadcast TV capitalizes on this type of informative content that streaming services lack, they can hopefully maintain a significant enough audience.

Music- and video consumption has rapidly changed during the last years and a growing number of consumers use different streaming services which allow for greater interaction with other users than was previously possible. Meanwhile a growing focus within the scientific world has been placed on consumers’ ability to co-create value with other users. A mixed method study was consequently conducted to investigate how streaming companies help consumers co-create value by facilitating customer-to-customer relationships. The qualitative approach showed that there was a clear ambition by streaming companies to utilize C2C relationships to market their products and help co-create value. The quantitative approach showed, however, that their efforts were not always effective and that focusing on other aspects of streaming services may provide more value for the consumer. / Video- och musikkonsumtion har snabbt förändrats de senaste åren och en växande andel konsumenter använder sig idag av streamingtjänster som erbjuder möjligheten att interagera med andra användare. Under samma period har ett växande fokus placerats på användares möjlighet att samskapa värde med andra konsumenter. En blandad metod användes för att undersöka hur olika streamingbolag främjar konsumentinteraktioner för att hjälpa samskapande-processen. Det kvalitativa tillvägagångssättet gjorde det tydligt att streamingbolag har en ambition att använda sig av C2C-interaktioner för att marknadsföra sina produkter och göra dem mer värdefulla för konsumenten. Det kvantitativa tillvägagångssättet visade däremot att deras strävan att skapa värde inte alltid var framgångsrik och att de sannolikt skulle kunna skapa mer värde på andra sätt.

Research questions:          RQ 1: What factors affect consumer behavior regarding streaming   services or TV-services? RQ 2: How do the factors affect consumers behavior when it comes to buying, continuing, substituting or ending a streaming service or TV-service?   Purpose:             We aim to discuss the underlying reasons, or factors as to  why consumers buy, substitute, continue or end subscriptions to   traditional TV, streaming services, or both mediums. We aim to use   focus groups to see if factors earlier quantifically studied can be   identified and supported qualitatively. This study will add to the   variability of the issue of streaming services versus traditional TV with   an in-depth view using a qualitative study on a Swedish sample.  Method:               A qualitative research method as well as a data driven content analysis   was chosen for this study. The data was collected by interviewing three   focus groups. Conclusion:       Cost was an important factor and was applicable in all factors and  behaviors. Cost was not a top priority for the informants unless the   increase was drastic. Range of content and specific content was a top  deciding factor for most behaviors, convenience was strongly   connected to continuing a service. Habit was a strong factor in   relation to continuing, technology was an important aspect   when it comes to usage. Other factors, such as bundling, leeching,   social components, free trial period or triggers are also significant,   however not deciding factors.

Streaming services such as Netflix have changed how television is produced and consumed. In 2019, the online video on demand market was topical, with big launches such as Disney+ and Apple TV+. This period in the streaming market was popularized in the press as the “streaming war(s).” Previous research on the streaming market has aimed at understanding the industry, often with a focus on innovative features. Some studies have articulated a need to look beyond the current narrative used to describe the market. This study examines this very discourse, as no studies have concentrated on the discourse surrounding the streaming market or the relationship between the streaming industry and television trade press. Such a study object may illustrate how market discourse is currently formed and understood under neoliberalism, as well as create an understanding of how the streaming industry is understood and functions. This study aims to examine the reporting on the streaming market in television trade press in 2019, with special interest to ideological biases and the portrayed power geometry between actors within the industry. It approaches the subject with a political economy perspective and conducts a critical discourse analysis on articles from The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline Hollywood, Indiewire, and Financial Times. The sample contains only articles using the phrase “streaming war(s)”. The data is approached by asking questions about how the phrase is used, how the power relations of the streaming market are portrayed, and what ideological implications can be found in the texts. The results find that the phrase “streaming war(s)” is widely used, although no agreed meaning exists. The phrase works as a conceptual metaphor, shaping a discourse where the streaming market is viewed as a war. This portrayal of the market as harsh conflict and competition is motivated by economic interests, which the television trade press helps reproduce. The “streaming war(s)” fetishizes the streaming market and conceals the responsibility held by large media conglomerates. The actors on the streaming market are found to be positioned against each other, further portraying the market as a war. Netflix and Disney are represented as the most powerful participants because of their relations to flows of capital, content, and users. The streaming service audiences are given no agency, while the market is portrayed as having an agency of its own.

As mobile devices still have limited battery life, processing power, memory, and display size, they cannot yet execute gaming applications with the same fidelity and quality as their PC counterparts. In response, researchers have recently performed research with the goal of the real-time delivery of game content specifically to fit within mobile devices’ limitations. In this thesis, we present a novel approach to tackling the streaming of objects to mobile devices. Our goal is to reduce the number of objects subject to streaming from the server to the target devices, while not violating the user-defined limitations through an efficient, context-aware 3D object selection and prioritization scheme. We take advantage of the game context to stream only the most relevant objects. Our evaluations have shown that this technique not only leads to better performance in general, but also increases the gameplay experience by helping the player to achieve a higher score.