IP Video quality is the ability of a video media system to recreate the components and characteristics of an original digital video signal. IP video and transmission system impairments include tiling, error blocks, jerkiness, artifacts (edge busyness) and object retention.

Tiling is the moving of digital video image blocks (small image squares) into locations that are different than their original positions on the screen.

Error blocks are blocks of pixels that do not represent or are different than the original image bits that were supposed to be in that image block (distorted bits).

Jerkiness is the temporary and random holding of video image frames or fields in a digital video. Jerkiness may occur when a high proportion of bits are received in error which results in the inability of a receiver to create and display a new image frame.

Artifacts are creations of undesired components (e.g. shapes) or distortion (e.g. fuzzy edges) that result from the processing, conversion, or compression of media.

Object retention is the keeping an undesired image component from a frame within a video sequence when new images are presented. Object retention occurs when the data stream that represents the object becomes unusable the digital video receiver. This may result in the digital video receiver displaying the existing object in successive frames until an error free frame can be received.

This figure shows how blocks of data are divided into small packet sizes that can be sent through the Internet. After the data is divided into packets (envelopes shown in this example), a destination address along with some description about the contents is added to each packet (called the packet header). As the packet enters into the Internet (routing boxes shown in this diagram), each router reviews the destination address in its routing table and determines which paths it can send the packet to so it will move further towards its destination. If a current path is busy or unavailable (such as shown for packet #3), the router can forward the packets to other routers that can forward the packet towards its destination. This example shows that because some packets will travel through different paths, packets may arrive out of sequence at their destination. When the packets arrive at their destination, they can be reassembled into proper order using the packet sequence number.