LG U+'s IPTV service
     1. Live TV 
         1.1 Basic channel 
         1.2 Multiview: operator-selected channels
         1.3 Personalized Multiview: user-selected channels
 ► 2. VoD   
         2.1 UHD VoD: Encoding rate and streaming of 4K UHD VoD content

LG U+ began UHD (3840x2160) VoD service in October 2014 (no UHD channel available yet, though). When it comes to UHD service, success or failure of the service depends on how much UHD content the operator can offer. For this reason, LG U+ purchased UHD content (40 hours long in total) back in January. Since then, the company has worked diligently to get more UHD contents, for example, by upscaling/remastering existing Full HD contents to UHD (e.g. 'The Admiral: Roaring Currents', 'The good, the bad, and the weird', 'Masquerade', etc.), and also through partnership with Sony Pictures for UHD contents (e.g. 'House of Cards 2' originally filmed in UHD).
 
Table 1 below lists UHD VoD contents available as of May 21, 2015.
 
A total of 176 UHD VoD contents (184 hours long in total) are currently available for service - 81 free contents (33 hours) and 95 paid contents (151 hours).
 
Of all the 176 contents, we captured the traffic of 81 free contents and 4 paid contents (using Samsung’s UHD TV and LG’s UHD STB), and found that a HEVC (H.265) codec was used and the frame rate was 30fps. The test also discovered the RTSP streaming protocol was used.
The encoding rates were 17.6 Mbps for most of the contents, and 23.8 Mbps for some of them. The contents with the encoding rate of 17.6 Mbps were played smoothly while those with 23.6 Mbps seemed to give a very hard time to STB (playing was unnatural like slow motion and sounds were muted often).

• Codec: HEVC(H.265)
• Encoding Rate: 17.643Mbps (23.8 Mbps for some contents)
• Frame Rate: 30fps
• Streaming Protocol: RTSP
• Transport Protocol: TCP

Following is the captured streaming traffic of 'House of Cards' (Episode 1 of Season 2), an American TV series:

• Codec: HEVC(H.265)
• Encoding Rate: 17.643Mbps (see RTSP/SDP in the figure below)
• Frame Rate: 30fps
• Streaming Protocol: RTSP
• Transport Protocol: TCP
• Network BW required: 18.3Mbps (Encoding Rate x network overhead)
• Max network BW consumed: 21.9Mbps (Speed 1.20 duration)
• QoS Marking: DiffServ AF 41

What's interesting here was that the video data was delivered to STB by 1.2x speed for approximately the first 25 seconds, and then the speed pattern went from by 0.8x back to by 1.2 x from then on (of course, the playback speed remains at 1.0x). That is, for about 25 seconds in the beginning, the data was delivered pretty fast, by 1.2x, to fill the STB buffer up to a certain level. After that, while the user was watching the video, the data transmission speed went back and forth from slow to fast.  As the encoding rate was 17.643 Mbps, the network bandwidth required for VoD delivery was 18.3 Mbps. But as seen in the below figure, the amount of bandwidth consumed for the first 25 seconds (when the speed was 1.2x) was 21.9 Mbps.

Table.1 LG U+'s UHD VoD Contents (Total 176 pieces, 184 hours, as of May 21, 2015)