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According to a recent report on TV viewership data gathered by NBC (NY Times, October 17, 2008), free Internet
streaming is the most popular alternative to traditional television, accounting for roughly a quarter of total viewing based on field surveys of their TV episodes. Aside from streaming, paid downloads, VOD (video on demand) and mobile viewing were also assessed but their numbers were insignificant at best. The impressive amount of Internet streaming has indeed cast the writing on the wall for free TV on PC.

Actually, Internet TV is nothing new. It’s just that supporting infrastructure had not been in its favor in the early days. Conditions have advanced by heaps by now: broadband access, power PCs, super-sized storage and open hardware, software and networking. On top of it, internet user base volume has also long surpassed the critical mass level. The web is clearly rich for the picking by many an industry, not least Television.

Different kinds of television are distributed over the internet nowadays and the few most notable ones are Internet TV (ITV), Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), Broadband TV and User Generated Content TV (UGC TV). To broadly distinguish among themselves; ITV is free open-format video streaming, IPTV is closed and usually require set-top boxes governed under pay-per-view or subscription structure, Broadband TV is much like ITV with extended real-time interactive capabilities such as messaging, on-demand media, images and UGC TV are basically free-style individual short clips such as the immensely popular YouTube. Read the rest of this entry »