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Internet television (or Internet TV) is television distributed via the Internet. Internet television allows viewers to choose the show they want to watch from a library of shows. The primary models for Internet television are streaming Internet TV or selectable video on an Internet location, typically a website. It differs from IPTV in that IPTV offerings are typically offered on discrete service provider networks. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Mergefrom. ... Broadband TV involves accessing multimedia content via a broadband connection and viewing it on a normal TV. Broadband TV equals IPTV. But broadband TV is not the same as Internet TV which is usually referred to as accessing TV via a PC. The current commercial focus is around developing video... This article is about internet protocol television. ...

Internet TV is a quick-to-market and relatively low investment service. Internet TV rides on existing infrastructure including broadband, ADSL, Wi-Fi, cable and satellite which makes it a valuable tool for a wide variety of service providers and content owners looking for new revenue streams.

Implementation

Many programmers are streaming their content live on the internet today to increase viewership (which in turn increases ad revenue) and protect market share. This model is efficient due to the relatively inexpensive multicasting protocol. Viewers may simply request access to the live feed and join into the live stream. This free model has been used in over-the-air broadcasting for years and still works because of the low cost of reaching viewers via multicast. Any viewer with a broadband connection and the correct free media player can watch live television from around the world.

Many internet television "portals" are available which include links to live feeds as well as built-in viewers. Although the live television streams are free, most portals are supported by advertising revenue as well.

Those that create valued and interesting video products now have 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.

ABC Broadcasting free Internet TV for prime time television shows

According to the Washington Post, in a June 2006 article by Frank Ahrens talks about the two month experiment ABC did with streaming prime time shows on the internet. 'Over 11 million viewers watched free ABC TV shows via the internet when they tested this in may 2006 with the TV hit show LOST.' Ahrens says ABC results found 'viewers are willing to watch advertisements for free TV'. Obviously certain limitations applied to advertisers during this experiment, but "ABC put online numbers in prospective of the hit series show LOST that on average 15 million viewers tuned in via internet each week to watch the season" This is only one example of broadcasting prime time television, NBC, CBS and other cable networks are partaking in the trend as well.

Business Considerations for Internet TV

The recent rapid growth of fast broadband access, accelerated computer power and larger storage capacity has turned Internet TV into a real opportunity for service providers who want to open new revenue streams and increase ARPU.

A major advantage of Internet TV is that it allows content delivery to a huge population with virtually no geographical limitations. But while Internet TV is a much easier and cheaper way of publishing content, operators who are pondering whether to launch an Internet TV service nevertheless have to carefully assess the factors affecting their business cases.

Quality Internet TV services require subscribers to have continuous access to high bandwidth, so pricing, bandwidth, and network neutrality (at least in the US) are all interdependent factors affecting the business case for Internet TV. For example, while subscribers are generally required to pay more for higher internet bandwidth, it doesn't automatically guarantee good enough bandwidth quality for receiving Internet TV services. So to receive Internet TV, a subscriber will be required to subscribe to an even higher premium service which may present a barrier to scaling up subscribers quickly. This will be particularly the case if net neutrality becomes an issue.^[1]

Terminology

There are many ways to deliver video over an IP network and many buzzwords have been applied to these various ways and are sometimes used interchangeably.

IPTV is commonly referred to those services operated and controlled by the same company that operates and controls the "Last Mile" to the consumers' premises. An IPTV service is usually delivered over a complex and investment heavy walled garden network, which is carefully engineered to ensure bandwidth efficient delivery of vast amounts of multicast video traffic. The higher network quality also enables easy delivery of high quality SD or HD TV content to subscribers’ homes. This makes IPTV by default the preferred delivery platform for premium content. ^[2] This article is about internet protocol television. ...

Internet TV, by definition, is created, managed and distributed via the open Internet. It rides on existing infrastructure and 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.

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. This article is about internet protocol television. ... UGC is the largest European cinema operator with, as of October 2004, 92 sites and 929 screens across six countries: UK: 41 cinemas, 391 screens France: 40 cinemas, 365 screens Spain: 5 cinemas, 88 screens Belgium: 4 cinemas, 56 screens Ireland: 1 cinema, 17 screens Italy: 1 cinema, 12 screens...

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.

Videoblog, a portmanteau combining video, web, and log, (usually shortened to vlog) is a blog that includes video clips. ... Vodcast (a portmanteau of video podcast or video on demand-cast), VODcast or video podcast is an emerging term used for the online delivery of video on demand video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures. ...

Methods used for Internet television

• Broadcatching For a P2PTV paradigm in use today.
• Streaming

Broadcatching is the downloading of content that has been made available over the Internet using RSS syndication for listening/watching on mobile devices and personal computers. ... P2PTV overlay network serving three video streams. ... Streaming media is multimedia that is continuously received by, and normally displayed to, the end-user while it is being delivered by the provider. ...

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

Dirac is a prototype algorithm for the encoding and decoding (see codec) of raw video. ... HTTP (for HyperText Transfer Protocol) is the primary method used to convey information on the World Wide Web. ... SHOUTcast TV streaming in Winamp 5. ... For other uses, see AOL (disambiguation). ... For RSS feeds from Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Syndication. ... RSS enclosures are a way of attaching multimedia content to RSS feeds by providing the URL of a file associated with an entry, such as an MP3 file to a music recommendation or a photo to a diary entry. ... RTSP is the Real Time Streaming Protocol developed by the IETF and published in 1998 as RFC 2326. ... SMIL (pronounced or smile), the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, is a W3C Recommended XML markup language for describing multimedia presentations. ... Theora is a video codec being developed by the Xiph. ... WapTV is an interactive TV technology platform comprising a microbrowser, a markup language, and a significant collection of associated software tools and services. ...

See also

Internet Portal

Television Portal

• Interactive television
• Category:Internet television channels
• Babelgum
• Digital television
• Webcast
• Web TV
• P2PTV
• Joost
• Miro
• Reeltime.com
• torrent episode downloader (ted)
• Zattoo

Image File history File links Portal. ... Image File history File links Portal. ... Digital TV set-top box Interactive television describes a number of techniques which allow viewers to interact with television content as they view it. ... Babelgum is software developed by Babel Networks, a venture of Silvio Scaglia (one of the founders of Fastweb) started in 2005 with the aim to develop interactive software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web using peer-to-peer tv technology. ... Digital television (DTV) is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound by means of digital signals, in contrast to analog signals used by analog (traditional) TV. DTV uses digital modulation data, which is digitally compressed and requires decoding by a specially designed television set, or a... A webcast is a live media file distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... P2PTV overlay network serving three video streams. ... For other uses, see Joost (disambiguation). ... Miro (known as Democracy Player during development and before launching in July 2007 [1]) is an Internet television application developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF). ... ReelTime. ... Please wikify (format) this article as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... Zattoo is a proprietary peer-to-peer Internet Protocol Television system (P2PTV) with current focus on European channels, licensed content, and Digital Rights Management. ...

References

• Ahrens Frank, ABC encouraged by Internet TV Trial. June 2006. Washington. pgd2
• McLuhan,Marshall, Understanding Media; The Extensions of Man. New York;Mcgraw Hill, 1964

External links

• IPTV future The Register 2006-05-05
• As Internet TV Aims at Niche Audiences, the Slivercast Is Born New York Times 2006-03-12
• IPTV vs Internet Video