IPTV and Internet Television

Here is an excellent subject where Picture Perfect specialists can help understand. Although this is fresh technology, is important to stay up to date with latest services as they may become commonly used in the near future.

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What is IPTV?

Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.

IPTV services may be classified into three main groups:

• live television, with or without interactivity related to the current TV show;
• time-shifted television: catch-up TV (replays a TV show that was broadcast hours or days ago), start-over TV (replays the current TV show from its beginning);
• Video on demand (VOD): browse a catalog of videos, not related to TV programming.

 Internet television (otherwise known as Internet TV, or Online TV) is the digital distribution of television content via the Internet. It should not be confused with Web television – short programs or videos created by a wide variety of companies and individuals.

(Source Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV)

While Internet Television is understood as TV channel delivered over the public Internet, IPTV is a TV Service (like any cable provider) that delivers content over a closed network ( generally a telecom operator’s network).

Both Internet Television and IPTV is TV content delivered through IP technology ( which internet is based upon) but this is the only common characteristic.

Here are some important differences :

• Quality of service is guaranteed for IPTV (you are covered by the contract you have with TV service provider) while Internet Television will usually have the quality permitted by the speed of your internet connection and is also limited by the number of simultaneous connections on  a specific moment of time.

• Codecs: MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 for IPTV versus Microsoft VC-1 for Internet TV

• Decoders: SetTopBoxes for IPTV versus Microsoft Media Player for Internet TV

• Digital rights management: proprietary for IPTV versus Microsoft DRM for Internet TV

• Contractual relationship: consumer to telecom for IPTV versus consumer to content owner/ content retailer for Internet TV

We hope we made this as easy to understand as possible. Let us know in the comments below what form of video content you watch from an online source ?