ipTV Technology, The Future of Television

Introduction: ipTV stands for Internet Protocol Television. Instead of traditional boring transmission through terrestrial, satellite signal, and the good old cable television formats, in ipTV, television services are delivered using the Internet Protocol Network such as LAN and Internet. ipTV is not Internet TV and Internet TV is not Web TV( for all-not-so-obvious-reasons, but lets stick to the topic).  ipTV offers Triple Play Services, i.e. a one stop solution for Live TV, Internet and Telephone over the same broadband connection. The weather can’t play much of a spoil spot as the services are offered over broadband (there will be problems when we switch to satellite internet, which is not recommended).

 

Features: There are indeed some features in the ipTV that can really make the job of a TV salesman very easy. Let us look at some of them:- Live TV:  Live TV or Radio channel feeds broadcasted or multicasted over Internet Protocol network. Time Shifted TV:  You can Start, Stop, Record, Pause, Play Live TV channels at your convenience.Video on Demand: Unicast Services on the subscriber’s demands to deliver required content(videos, movies, documentaries). VoIP Telephony: Extension of VoIP features like SMS, Voice messages, OTT services, FAX, voice calls, call forwarding, etc.     

Technology:

The diagram shows the IP network architecture supported by an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Infrastructure. Let me simplify the functional blocks for an easy understanding. There are three functional layers in the architecture: Service Layer (ipTV application platform), Control Layer (ipTV Controller) and the Media Layer (Transport Stream and Content Management). ipTV application platform is the user interaction portal with functionalities like Electronic Service Guide, Video on Demand. ipTV controller block is the functional block that provides interface to the IMS core and all session control functionalities like SIP, HTTP, etc. ITF (ipTV Terminal Function) performs the functionalities of encoding/decoding, buffering for both unicast and multicast streams and handles display and interactivity functions. The Media Layer, deserves a detailed explanation.

Your desired TV channels are picked up from satellites and the data is decrypted at the video processing servers. The raw streams are compressed into digital formats like MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. There are so many channels today. So the multiple channel streams are multiplexed (packed) into a single transport stream. The streams are packetized and sent over the IP network. The IP packets reach your home through a broadband access like DSL, where a splitter is used to separate out the TV from regular broadband (telephone and internet services). The desired channel can then be tuned into from the set top box. In the case of Video on Demand, the content is accessed by the subscriber over a unicast stream.

ipTV Manufacturers in India: With the digitization of the set top box services, it’s a golden opportunity to try out the ipTV Set Top Box! Airtel and Cisco are few good options to choose from.

Source: http://shivanshchaudhary.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/iptv-technology-the-future-of-television/