IPTV - Introduction

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) is a rapidly maturing technology for the delivery of broadcast TV and other media-rich services over a secure, end-to-end operator managed broadband IP data network. IPTV broadly encompasses a rich functionality that ranges from the acquisition, encoding and decoding, access control and management of video content, to the delivery of digital TV, movies on demand, viewing of stored programming, personalized program guides, and a host of interactive and multimedia services.

IPTV is distinctly different from “Internet Video” that simply allows users to watch videos, like movie previews and web-cams, over the Internet in a “best effort” fashion with no end-to-end service management and quality of service considerations.

IPTV technology, integrated with the higher speed digital subscriber line (DSL) access technologies (ADSL2, ADSL2+ and VDSL), offers attractive revenue-generating opportunities for the telecom service providers, enabling them to compete effectively in the “triple play” market space with the delivery of voice, data and video services to residential and business customers