Note
This is my undergraduate assignment in the Telecommunications Network course which creates a short description of IPTV obtained from http://electronic.howstuffworks.com/internet-tv.htm that I translated to English myself. This work has never been published and I as the author and copyright holder of this work adapted CC-BY-SA where anyone may share, share, republish and sell it provided to state my name as the author and notify that the original and open version is available here .
Content From The Past Decade
TV works by broadcasting live through the media (cable, etc.) or without the media (electromagnetic waves) that are captured by the antenna, while IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) works through the Internet network. Broadcasts can also be watched from media other than on TV, such as; computers, laptops, netbooks, ipads, cellphones and others. On Internet TV there are 2 types of broadcasts:
- Live broadcasts: broadcasts that are streamed live, cannot be paused, repeated or slowed down or accelerated.
- Videos on demand: videos on the Internet, we can watch where we want, when we want. Can be paused, repeated, slowed down or accelerated.
There were 3 types of services at that time on Internet TV:
- Free: free (other than paying for Internet connection), but lots of ads because that's one way for providers to get paid.
- Subscribe: pay to watch a channel.
- Pay per view: pay 1 time to watch or download.
The way Internet TV works is how the Internet network works:
- The user will send a packet request to the server about the broadcast the user want to watch.
- The server will send the video and audio in packets to the user.
- Just as Internet servers try to send packets correctly and regularly, computer users will organize and process packets.
- Decoder such as Windows Media Player, GOM, VLC or codecs, for digital to analog conversion for us to watch.
