Internet television

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Internet television (otherwise known as Internet TV, Catch-up TV or Online TV) is television service distributed via the Internet. It has become very popular at the end of the first decade of the 21st century due to services such as the BBC iPlayer (in and limited to the United Kingdom) and Hulu (limited to the United States); see List of Internet television providers.

Concept

Internet television allows viewers to choose the show or the TV channel they want to watch from a library of shows or from a channel directory^{[citation needed]}. The 2 forms of viewing Internet television are streaming and downloading onto a computer. The video may 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.

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 N.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

The Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) consortium of industry companies (such as SES Astra, Humax, Philips, and ANT Software)is currently promoting and establishing an open European standard (called HbbTV) for hybrid set-top boxes for the reception of broadcast and broadband digital TV and multimedia applications with a single user interface.^[1]

List of Internet television providers

See also

Internet portal

Television portal

• Category:Internet television channels
• Content delivery network
• Digital television
• Interactive television
• Internet radio
• Television network
• Web television
• Webcast
• Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations Treaty

References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (November 2007)

1. ^ HbbTV Consortium (August 27, 2009). "NEW EUROPEAN INITIATIVE MERGES TELEVISION WITH THE POWER OF THE INTERNET". Press release. http://www.hbbtv.org/news/HBBTV_PR_Final.pdf. 

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