IPTV: Telcos strike back
Sep 17, 2006 8:00 AM
IPTV is facilitated by broadband Internet pipes into the customer premise. Faster delivery of increasingly compressed digital content now enables the capability of broadcast-quality video and HDTV real-time streaming over the Internet. ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL2+ and the emerging VDSL methodologies are the enabling technologies..
Advanced compression codecs such as MPEG-4 AVC, Part 10, and VC-1/WMV are being used to deliver the high-quality video at a low bit rate. Audio is often delivered using advanced audio coding (AAC) compression.
IPTV has come to mean several things. Some describe it as a solely telco-based fiber technology. Others, as a move from sending all TV channels to all consumer’s homes simultaneously over cable, to using dedicated switched video circuits where only the desired programs are delivered to the consumer on a demand basis.
The Internet
The Internet as we know it today exploded in the mid 1990s; however, it was never designed for multimedia, and much less for broadcast-quality video distribution. New technology and fiber now make high-speed video and data to the home possible.
Internet Protocol
Internet Protocol defines a numbering and naming methodology for locating devices on a network. Four 8-bit octets define a logical, or IP, network address. This IP address is bound to a unique Media Access Control (MAC) number. This number is physically burned (flash memory) into a device, creating an unambiguous locator for each networked device.
As touched on in the last newsletter, cable operators are using IP methodology to distribute programming to the edge. Edge devices, servers and encoders, allow for distributed and more granular delivery of content.
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