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Revision as of 05:57, 25 December 2007
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Internet television (or Internet TV) is television distributed via the Internet.
Overview
In 1900, Nikola Tesla predicted that radio would carry moving pictures around the world and make information democratic. In 1939, television was only distributed by radio on 82 UHF and 12 VHF channels. In 1965, cable began, making more channels available to subscribers connected by cables with less noise. Around 1970, satellite, or Terrestrial television systems began. Internet television began around 1980, and does not rely on channels and time slots with the content chosen by the broadcaster. 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.
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
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
Internet television as a mass medium
This is the latest mass medium since television has come into society; television is evolving into a broader range of media to reach the needs of the public. According to Marshall McLuhan, known for his idea that "the medium is the message," 'noticing change in our societal or cultural conditions indicates the presence of a new message, that is, the effects of a new medium.'(McLuhan) This is the process of setting out to characterize and identify the new medium before it becomes obvious to everyone, which often takes years to catch on. Creating two major mediums/media together to create an overpowering single mass medium considered innovative and new form of streaming media is internet TV.
Television could come a long way by evolving in this direction, according to Donna Hoffman, a professor as Owen School of Business at Vanderbuilt. "The viewers have the power now to choose instead of work with other equipment that takes up time." Viewers can now easily skip over the commercials, or tune into less, skip over channel surfing and watch TV programs and access the Internet. It is essentially killing two birds with one stone.
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 in March 2006. This project was created by Dean Di Libero using the Narrowstep telvOS operating system. In the United State the first tourism organization to launch Internet TV model was Tourism Massachusetts. The site featured over 30 episodes and helped to increase Massachusetts' international tourism by 27% in one year. The site was the brainchild of the organization's CEO William H. MacDougall. Ultimately, the site fell victim to a suspension of funding by the new Governor and the internecine warfare of the tourism industry.
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.
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.
Zipityzap.com is currently under development in the United States. It plans to offer "cafeteria style" internet television. Acting as an internet television portal, users will be able to subscribe to "channels" on an individual basis thus eliminating the need to purchase an expensive entertainment package. Content will be streamed directly from the content provider to the end user with real-time subscription authorization provided by Zipityzap.
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:
- 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.
- Incompatible standards (different software and/or hardware are required to watch different providers)
- Low bandwidth to the home - a standard definition digital signal requires a 2 Mbit/s connection. High definition requires 8 Mbit/s.
- Restricted bandwidth in the internet backbone (this will be a problem if many people decide to adopt internet TV via unicast.)
- Streaming technology - which can be of poor quality and high cost to the providers. Multicast and P2PTV are some of the suggested solutions.
- 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 television content via the internet.
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.
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.
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
See also
- Interactive television
- Category:Internet television channels
- Babelgum
- Digital television
- Webcast
- Web TV
- P2PTV
- Joost
- Miro
- Reeltime.com
- torrent episode downloader (ted)
- Zattoo
References
- Ahrens Frank, ABC encouraged by Internet TV Trial. June 2006. Washinton. pgd2
- McLuhan,Marshall, Understanding Media; The Extensions of Man. New York;Mcgraw Hill, 1964
External links
- IPTV future The Register 2006-05-05
- Internet TV
- As Internet TV Aims at Niche Audiences, the Slivercast Is Born New York Times 2006-03-12
- IPTV vs Internet Video