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

Concept

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. The video can also be broadcast with a peer-to-peer network(P2PTV), which doesn't rely on a single website's streaming.

It differs from IPTV in that IPTV offerings, while also based on the IP protocol stacks, are typically offered on discrete service provider networks, highly managed to provide guaranteed quality of service and good bandwidth, and usually requiring a special IPTV set-top-box. However, some definitions of IPTV such as that defined by the ITU and the DVB, use the term IPTV as a superset of both 'managed' IPTV and Internet TV.

Note: In some countries, the term Internet TV should only be applied to a TV-like experience, that is a big screen with a 'ten foot interface', rather than an Internet Video service such as YouTube. This is because the term "television" has a regulatory significance in some territories, and claiming a service is "television" may bring regulatory obligations to deliver emergency alert, closed captioning, subtitles, must-carry, and/or other locally required elements of a traditional broadcast television services.

Internet TV can be 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.

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 average revenue per user.

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.

High-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.

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.

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.

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.
Web TV (not to be confused with the Microsoft/MSN WebTV service), which refers to original episodic Web television programming
Over-the-top TV
NET TV (by Philips B.V.)

Methods used for Internet television

Broadcatching For a P2PTV paradigm in use today.This model can save the cost of Internet TV service provider.
Streaming from a single website.

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

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

TFCnow, ABS-CBN's Internet TV, Manila the Philippines

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

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