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Streaming television

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Internet television (or Internet TV) is television distributed via the Internet.

Overview

In the past, television was only distributed via cable, satellite, or terrestrial systems. Today - with the increase in Internet connection speeds, advances in technology, the increase of total number of people online, and the decrease in connection costs - it has become increasingly common to find traditional television content accessible freely and legally over the Internet. In addition to this, new Internet-only television content has appeared which is not distributed via cable, satellite, or terrestrial systems.

Internet TV can come in many forms. For instance, it can

  • be watched on a regular TV (via a Set-top box), or on a computer, or on a portable device (such as a mobile phone)
  • show a channel 'live' (like regular TV), or allow the viewer to select a show to watch on demand ("Video-on-Demand")
  • involve any budget - from home camcorder productions to expensive professional productions
  • be protected from copying, or easily duplicated as a perfect copy
  • be free or paid for - and may be supported by advertisements
  • be an interactive or passive medium

One of the barriers to wider adoption of Internet television is streaming technology, which can be of poor quality and high cost to the providers. The BBC's Dirac project seeks to address this by creating a scalable, high-quality, free codec for streaming video content over the net.

As Internet television becomes more pervasive, efforts are being made by companies such as JumpTV to develop the transmission of existing pay-TV channels to regular TV sets over the net, while retaining control over how the media is used. Such control is required in order to protect existing subscription and pay-per-view business models.

Barriers to Internet TV

There are several barriers to wider adoption of internet television

  1. Lack of set top boxes - these need the latest compression technologies (MPEG-4's H.264/AVC codec; and VC-1). Decoding chips are still new and expensive.
  2. Incompatible standards (different software and/or hardware are required to watch different providers)
  3. Low bandwidth to the home - a standard definition digital signal requires a 2 Mbit/s connection. High definition requires 8 Mbit/s.
  4. Restricted bandwidth in the internet backbone (this will be a problem if many people decide to adopt internet TV)
  5. Streaming technology - which can be of poor quality and high cost to the providers.
  6. Old media meeting new media - licensing regulations, existing deals, and uncertainty over payment, security, and advertising has led to only slow steps being taken by the companies which own the TV content.

Either VC-1 or MPEG-4's H.264/AVC codecs are being used for downloadable video (as also used in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVDs). For streaming video content, the BBC's Dirac project seeks to address quality and incompatibility by creating a scalable, high-quality, free codec.

Channels already launched

Bluewin TV - launched by Swisscom on the 1st November 2006. It offers 100-plus Tv channels, 70 radio channels, 500-plus video-on-demand films.

Terminology

Internet television is a fledgling industry and some of the general terms are buzzwords. An Internet television show is transmitted over the Internet using an "Internet Protocol" (IP), and "Internet TV" is sometimes called "IPTV". However, IPTV is more general than Internet TV.[citation needed]

Internet television is often defined as content being transmitted over an internet (either on the public Internet or on other networks such as closed corporate or private broadband networks).

On the other hand, there is also disagreement about using "IPTV" as a short-form for "Internet television", since an alternative definition and trademark already exists for the initialization. [citation needed] And in that case, IPTV in just a part of Internet television.

Other names for Internet television

  • IPTV - Internet Protocol Television
  • Television on the desktop (TOD)
  • TV over IP - Television over Internet Protocol
  • Vlog For video web logging.
  • Vodcast For video on demand.

Methods used for Internet television

Technologies used for Internet television

Software used for Internet television

Professionally produced Internet TV channels

See also

Providers

  • JumpTV Worldwide delivers its subscribers full-screen news, sports and entertainment content on a real-time basis with over 190 channels from 65+ countries, on a computer anywhere as it is accessible through the WWW.
  • Apple's iTunes Music Store in the US & UK sells episodes of popular TV series for download over the internet, as well as music videos. These can be played on computers or Apple's iPod (on the iPod's screen or to a TV).
  • The Now TV service in Hong Kong is delivered to a television through a set top box. It comes over the "now Broadband" network (the same connection is used for Internet access).
  • Homechoice in the UK provides Video-on-Demand as well as the Freeview TV service (live TV) to televisions via a set-top box. It is only available to homes on a specific broadband network.
  • Google Video offers free and paid streamed content worldwide to computers.
  • YouTube offers free streamed content worldwide to computers.
  • 3G mobile phone providers often offer TV content for download or watching live
  • The Venice project peer-to-peer video distribution service (the new venture of Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, founders of Skype)

References

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