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Internet television

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

Contents

Overview

In the past, television was only distributed via cable, satellite, or terrestrial systems. Today - with the increase in Internet connection speeds, advancements 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

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 made 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 exisiting 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
  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.

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 the "Internet Protocol" (IP), and "Internet TV" is sometimes called "IPTV". However, IPTV is more general than Internet TV.

Internet television is often defined as

  1. Being transmitted over the Internet (while IPTV may be on other networks such as closed corporate or private broadband networks)
  2. Being shown on a television (in contrast to on a computer or other device).
The 2nd definition is often not considered important - with the focus on television content being transmitted over the internet, rather than it being shown on a television. Some groups state that Internet Television must be on a TV without using a set-top box [[Citing sources citation needed]]

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. [[Citing sources citation needed]] And in that case, IPTV in just a part of Internet television.

Other names for Internet television

Methods used for Internet television

Technologies used for Internet television

Software used for Internet television

See also

Providers

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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