Internet television |
= Origins =
Because of the increase in Internet connection speeds and the total number of people online, and the decrease in connection costs; it is increasingly common to find traditional television content, accessible freely and legally over the Internet. This comes in four basic forms:
*TV channels which exist only on the internet. *Traditional stations that simulcast live on the net. *Traditional stations making select content available on demand at their website (this is especially popular with news channels). *Traditional TV stations making extra content exclusively for their website.
One of the main barriers to wider adoption is streaming technology, both the quality and the cost (to the providers), but the Dirac project at the BBC looks set to create a scalable, high-quality and more importantly free-for-all codec for streaming video content over the net. But with or without this as a catalyst, the trend is clear until people lose their appetite for faster internet connections.
Parallel to this trend are attempts to more easily transmit existing pay-tv channels over the net, to a regular tv set, while retaining control over how the media is used. This is in order to protect the subscription and pay-per-view business models.
= A shift in the economics of broadcasting =
Initiatives to use peer-to-peer technology to distribute live TV are just starting to emerge. The main advantage of this approach over traditional distribution models is that it provides a way of sharing data delivery workloads across connected client systems as well as the distributor s own server infrastructure, which drastically decreases the operational costs for a stream provider. Costs don t rise with rising user numbers. Popular TV streams don t need to suffer from server overloads anymore, because not every user needs to access the source server.
Several regular Television broadcasters are distributing parts of their programming over the Internet such as the Chinese CCTV and the BBC. Some like pseudo.com or web62.com have created significant amounts of original streaming videos and were considered as the pioneers of Internet Televison.
The developments in P2P TV are likely to give Internet television a boost, but the industry is already fearing for a new Napster scenario, i.e. real-time TV-sharing. With the arrival of P2P TV and the ever growing number of people with a broadband connection, this year we might see Internet television break through to a mainstream audience. Some initiatives for P2P TV are already working, others are being tested.
= See also =
*Webcast For more about general issues in transmitting video data over networks. *Web TV For more about moving regular pay-tv channels to internet-based delivery. *NSV Nullsoft Streaming Video, a technology used by AOL to deliver Internet based video content. *CoolStreaming P2P TV software (currently down due to copyright issues) *IPTV Internet Protocol Television
= External links =
*[http://dirac.sourceforge.net/ Dirac video codec] *[http://www.maniatv.com/ ManiaTV - an internet only TV Station (calls itself the first one)] *[http://www.tvover.net/TVStation.aspx TVover.net - Detailed listing of Internet TV Stations] *[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/17/bbc_ponders_p2p_distribution/ BBC ponders P2P distribution] *[http://tv.np2k.com/np2k_tv.phpPHPSESSID=8187eaebe4bd177edc6ca94e3ad90ad8 NP2k TV - Television station from New Providence Pictures] *[http://www.norwaylive.no Norwaylive - Norwegian WebTV] *[http://www.filefarmer.com/techshows Tech Shows - A list of free downloadable tech shows] *[http://www.web62.com web62.com Internet Televison from various countries]|
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