IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) is television content that, instead of being delivered through traditional broadcast and cable formats, is received by the viewer through the same technologies used to deliver information through computer networks, including the Internet iptv. The procedure involves sending and receiving data through “packets” of information. This is the same process in which IPTV is made available to customers.
Although IPTV uses the same “packet” conveyance method as the Internet, there is one main difference; IPTV is delivered through separate, closed networks which are independent of the Internet itself. This provides enhanced speed, quality, and usability when compared to Internet TV, analog cable, or satellite TV. Unlike satellite or cable, the only IPTV channel being delivered to your television is the individual channel you select from the program guide – resulting in a much faster and more efficient viewing experience.
It is because of the high quality of sound and picture, interactive features, and greater reliability that IPTV is becoming ever more popular. In fact, all U.S. television broadcasts will be exclusively digital as of February 17, 2009 by order of the Federal Communications Commission. This is to help keep a level of uniformity of broadcasts among providers as technologies continue to advance.
In traditional digital broadcasting, all contents are broadcasted to TV channels, regardless of whether or not the viewer is watching the TV. This basically wastes all the bandwidth that could otherwise be used for other services, such as high speed Internet and voice over IP. The new emerging technology uses complicated software to recognizes a viewer’ s request to watch a particular TV program and then sends that program to the viewer. This action takes place transparently without viewer’s knowledge.
In a cable network, groups of homes are connected on a common branch of coax cable. That is, groups of subscribers share access to the same downstream frequencies, and race for access to shared upstream frequencies. Where as, the traditional wireline networks are considered point to point, from a central office directly to a subscriber. Therefore, with sufficient switching capacity placed at the central office, infinite amount of content can be delivered to a single household. Switched Digital Video (SDV) is a new cable technology that attempts to answer this challenge. It was designed as a cost-effective method to expand program availability.
With SDV, as with IPTV, and unlike traditional digital broadcasting, programming terminates at the hub and does not go through the network unless requested. Instead, a receiver, such as set-top-box, signals upstream to request programming, and a hub-based controller receives the request and enables the stream into the network by means of a pool of allocated frequencies. In another word SDV allows operators to switch, rather than broadcast, some channels to individual service groups. A service group is typically made up of 250 or more subscribers (viewers) that use set-top-boxes to watch a TV program. Channels selected for a “switched tier” are delivered via a multicast stream only when a customer in a service group selects them for viewing.