Internet Protocol Television

(I-P-T-V)

Just like VoIP is Voice over IP, IPTV is a television signal transmitted using the Internet Protocol via a broadband connection. Because this form of television can easily be sent on demand instead of just being broadcast all over at will, this service combines with Video on Demand for the sending of pay-per-view movies or any other content on demand. If IPTV, VoIP, and Internet services are all provided at the same time this is sometimes given the name Triple Play.

IPTV (and even VoIP for that matter) has only become reasonable with the advent of widespread broadband service. Sending the amount of data necessary to transmit a digital moving picture is largely impossible over slow dial-up services. Pictures would be small, low resolution, and probably jumpy as the data connection slowed and sped up; something dial-up is known for.

Telecommunications providers are typically the companies behind IPTV ventures. As Cable Television expands into the more traditional telecommunications markets, those providers are fighting back with IPTV. In particular AT&T and Verizon have been adding fiber optic cables to their systems at record paces in order to better provide higher bandwidths to consumers.

Generally, for IPTV either a computer or a computer-like set-top box is used to decode the video stream. MPEG2 delivered via IP Multicast is the present protocol of choice with H.264, a newer format, coming along to replace MPEG2. The IP Multicast protocol allows a single piece of information to be sent to multiple computers at the same time.

IPTV brings a TiVo-like capability of video on demand with point-to-point distribution to individual users to the market and this flexibility is one of the main advantages of IPTV. Pause, rewind, and other TiVo-like features come with IPTV.

More Information

• Wikipedia IPTV Entry