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Television on the Desktop Home
In the past, television was only distributed by cable, satellite, or terrestrial
systems. The primary models for Internet television are streaming Internet TV or
selectable video on an Internet location, typically a website.
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 television utilizes the connections of the Internet to deliver video
from a source to a target device. Some of the ways in which Internet delivered
television is used include:
* watching on a regular TV (via a direct connection from a computer or a Set-top
box), or on a computer, or on a portable device (such as a mobile phone)
* showing a channel 'live' (like regular TV), or allow the viewer to select a
show to watch on demand ("Video-on-Demand" or VOD).
* viewing anything from low budget, home camcorder productions to expensive
professional productions
* Interactive advertising
The medium supports very broad variation, allowing for copy protected streams or
streams that can be recorded. Sources of Internet TV can be free, subscription-
or fee-based, or supported by advertisements.
The barriers to wider adoption of Internet television in the past have been
streaming technology and bandwidth limitations. The bandwidth issue primarily
meant that streams were using low bandwidth and that resulted in poor quality.
The BBC's Dirac project seeks to address the technological barriers by creating
a scalable, high-quality, free codec for streaming video content over the net.
As Internet television becomes more pervasive, some companies have made efforts
to develop the transmission of existing pay-TV channels to regular TV sets over
the net, while retaining control over how the medium is used. Such control is
required in order to protect existing subscription and pay-per-view business
models. Additionally, there are the copyright issues associated with the
distribution of all media. The challenges lie in seeking to maintain the
protections of a copyright and the revenues associated with it, while moving to
another delivery model for video.
Internet Video on Demand (VOD) offers a different approach, and it is
interactive, requiring the viewer to select specific videos to watch. The usage
of internet protocols to provide two-way communication will also open the way
for interactivity with the video content, for example making it possible to
choose between multiple camera angles, vote on an interactive TV show while
watching it, or order a product sample.
Implementation
Internet Television services have at least two different models:
Free
Free Internet Television is available from the Web, and is accessible without
the need for either a set-top-box, a specific carrier or an operator. It is
easily viewed by connecting the television set to the video output of the
computer and accessing the streaming video.
The greatest core theme of the free Internet Television model is that it is
based on the same publishing model that exists on the Web: it allows access to
an open platform, that anyone can access, use and build for, together with the
development of open source software, open standards and formats.The first
country in the world to have its own Internet TV model was Cyprus, which
launched Cyprusitv.com in March 2006. This project was created by Dean Di Libero
using the Narrowstep telvOS operating system
Those that create valued and interesting video products have now the opportunity
to distribute them directly to a large audience - something impossible with the
previous television distributing models (closed software, closed hardware,
closed network). The free model has been used around the globe by local and
independent television channels aiming for niche target audiences, or to build a
collaborative environment for media production, a platform for citizens' media.
It isn't strictly a citizen's format either as the broadcast model used in
television for decades will begin to find competition in Internet television
supported by advertising.
iPlayer
On July 27, 2007 the BBC released their iPlayer (as public beta test software)
to UK licence fee payers offering free BBC television content via the internet.
Subscription based
This type of service has been generally funded and supported by large telecom
providers and is seeing a wide range of competition from even cable providers
and broadcast networks. It follows the cable, satellite or terrestrial
pay-per-view systems, based on a subscription fee, adding new features like
high-definition TV, video on demand and digital video recording.
Europe and Asia have been the leaders in implementing these Internet Television
services for paying customers, which are expected to become mainstream in just a
few years replacing traditional cable subscriptions. In the US the providers
have not shown so much interest about this technology yet. Internet Television
is a more interesting alternative to cable TV also in countries where there is a
poor cable infrastructure, like India and China.
The software platform chosen by network operators to provide the most recent
Internet television services has been Microsoft TV IPTV Edition, which works
together with a set-top box.
These services are limited to the offer supplied by the provider meaning that
you can only get on your TV set the channels and services you are paying for.
Some of the technological arguments to broad internet television acceptance are:
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 via unicast.)
5. Streaming technology - which can be of poor quality and high cost to the
providers. Multicast and P2PTV are some of the suggested solutions.
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.
4oD
In 2007 Channel 4 released their 4oD service to download paid Channel 4
televsion content via the internet.
Terminology
There are many ways to deliver video over an IP network and many buzzwords have
been applied to these various ways, many of which are still used completely
interchangeably even by professionals in the field.
The current trend is to restrict the term IPTV to those services operated and
controlled by the same company that operates and controls the "Final Mile" to
the consumers' premises. This allows a certain level of service to be
guaranteed. Further, an IPTV service requires the video and audio to be carried
in a single MPEG2 transport stream over the IP network. Many services can be
carried in a single transport stream.
Internet TV now normally refers to those services sourced over the Internet by
service providers that cannot control the final delivery. Again, transport
streams in IP packets are used with one or more services per transport stream.
Other TV-like services are available on the Internet but these send the video
and the audio in separate streams over the IP network and do not use transport
streams. A recent trend from companies such as Joost and Babelgum is to use
proprietary Peer to Peer P2P networking technology to deliver - in real time
rather than as file downloads - TV services over the internet.
Whilst the differences may seem irrelevant to the consumer, the underlying
technology employed is quite different and directly affect the range and quality
of service that can be achieved. IPTV users are limited to a relatively small
range of programs but at high quality, whereas an Internet TV user may have
access to many thousands of channels from literally all over the world but
without any guarantee of being able to watch them. Streaming services such as
YouTube generally offer User Generated Content UGC as individual short clips
rather than professionally produced programs or films grouped as a channel.
Other names for Internet 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
* Broadcatching For a P2PTV paradigm in use today.
* Streaming
Technologies used for Internet television
* BitTorrent
* Dirac
* HTTP
* Nullsoft Streaming Video, a technology used by AOL to deliver Internet based
video content.
* RSS
* RSS enclosure
* RTSP
* SMIL
* Theora
* WTVML
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