What you need to know about IPTV/VoD, a workshop briefing sheet by Digital TX

Digital TX is a London-based consultancy specialising in interactive digital television and broadband media, and providing commercial and technical expertise to ISPs, content owners and technology companies.

Digital TX offer a range of day-long workshops on specialist subjects related to many areas of IPTV and video on-demand. The rapid growth of the IPTV industry often means that information, technical terms, and concepts are either freshly-minted or otherwise unfamiliar.

To help their workshop attendees keep track of it all, Digital TX have prepared briefing sheet that covers all the main points essential for executives and technicians to understand. Following is an extract…

• IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television and is an umbrella term describing TV and video delivered using internet technology instead of normal linear RF broadcast.
• Video On-Demand is a service where video (a movie or TV programme) is sent over a computer network when a viewer requests it. It has all the normal VCR functions that would be found on a DVD disc or VHS tape (pause, rewind, fast forward etc) but is sent down a wire instead.
• IPTV can be supplied on any device that has internet technology built it into it, for example, desktop PCs, IP set-top boxes, games consoles, mobile phones, handheld devices, car stereos and home media players.
• “Triple Play” is an industry term for when a cable or telecoms company offers customers phone, internet and TV in one package on the same monthly bill.
• For IPTV to reach its potential, video bandwidth must be a commodity. Capacity usage charging (e.g. BT IPStream), contention ratios and premium connectivity actively prevent deployment of IPTV services.
• The eventual goal of IPTV is to distribute live, stutter-free high definition television (HD) over the backbone of the internet rather than satellite, cable and terrestrial networks.
• IPTV networks generally are based on one of two models – the so-called “closed” model using a private IP network (LAN or DSL like cable TV) and the “open” model, using the public internet.
• IPTV content can be real-time (live) or offline (downloaded). It can also be pushed to a client device (e.g. overnight delivery) or pulled across the network.
• IPTV video is usually supplied in MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and/or Windows Media (VC-1). The favourite choice is H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) that can produce DVD-quality video at very low bandwidths (1-3Mbit/s for SD, 6-10Mbit/s for HD). Most need the video to be encapsulated in an MPEG-2 transport stream.

© Digital TX Ltd

You can download and view the complete Digital TX IPTV briefing sheet in PDF format from the Digital TX Website.