Free TV, pay TV and now web TV. New equipment is bringing the entertainment riches of the internet right into the living room, writes Max Everingham, and it promises exciting viewing.
There’s nothing we like better than to regale you with tales of the advent of a new technology or service that is going to immeasurably improve the quality of your life, put a bounce in your step, a song in your heart and make you look good in front of all your mates.
You’re no doubt already across ‘3D TV’ and the delights that await you if you stump up the cash for one of the sparkly, new 3D-compatible televisions making their way into stores right now, but you may not know that these new televisions, and some of their regular old-2D counterparts, already carry another convenient entertainment service on board – namely, IPTV.
What is IPTV?
IPTV stands for ‘Internet Protocol Television’ but is just the army-speak way of saying that content – by which we mean movies, music videos, games and what have you – is sent to you using the same method that the internet uses, rather than over the airwaves, as with regular, free-to-air (FTA) broadcasts, or via satellites and cable.
It isn’t simply television broadcast over the internet, but rather a more comprehensive suite of products managed and distributed directly to you by the content providers, such as ABC, Foxtel and Yahoo, using the same technology. So you don’t just open up a browser and see it; this is a ‘closed’, managed system, which has its own advantages.
What’s the difference between normal TV and IPTV?
With regular TV and satellite broadcasts, the end-user (that’s you) can only see what the content providers can ‘fit’ into the physical ‘pipes’ that supply your home. They send everything they’ve got to you, basically, and you choose which of it you want to see by switching between channels using your TV or set top box. This takes up a lot of bandwidth and so the choice is necessarily limited.
But with IPTV, all that content stays floating mysteriously about in the ether, and only what you finally choose to watch is actually sent down to you. US IPTV providers like AT&T and SureWest are currently offering anything from 200 to 300 channels, for instance.
Get a generous broadband plan
Now if you’ve been following all this you’ll probably already have hit on the major stumbling block in the Australian IPTV landscape, and that’s the dreaded download quota.
Unlike in most other developed countries, broadband internet services come with a mostly-laughable download limit in Australia, so you pay, say, three times what you would for a comparable service in the US, then you’re only allowed to download up to 20GB before they charge more, or ‘throttle’ your service down to the kind of speed that makes weaving cobwebs look giddily fast.
So get yourself a good internet plan with a generous download limit and, preferably, the flexibility to chop and change plans at any time if you discover you need more, or don’t need what you have, as you get accustomed to using the services.
IPTV scene overseas
Australia, you will be astonished to hear, is somewhat behind the curve when it comes to IPTV compared with other countries. France leads the pack, with service provider Illiad bundling IPTV, ADSL broadband and VoIP phone services in a ‘triple play’ bundle for only $45 US a month. Compare that with the best Optus Yes! Fusion package here in Australia that costs $150 ($140 US) for a broadband and home phone bundle, which doesn’t include VoIP, IPTV and still limits downloads to 30GB before they make it unuseably slow.
The US is struggling with installing the coverage infrastructure required for full IPTV services (so you can imagine the problems Australia is facing) with only AT&T and Verizon seriously battling the entrenched cable and satellite operators, although AT&T’s new high-definition ‘U-Verse’ service is a powerful argument to make the switch.
In Europe, all the major phone giants are in on the act: British Telecom (BT Vision), Deutsche Telekom (Entertain) and France Telecom (Orange) all offer IPTV packages via a set-top box on payment of a monthly subscription. Do they have anything we want? Sure – France’s Illiad has made 20 channels from its ‘Freebox’ IPTV service available for download onto the Apple iPhone, iPad or iTouch.
IPTV – not quite there
But of course IPTV isn’t without its problems – whether they’re teething problems or prove to be insurmountable obstacles, at least in the short term, remains to be seen. ABC’s iView highlights at least two of the main stumbling blocks, and they are connection speed and image quality.
The future of IPTV rests on whether the interested service and content providers can rally themselves to provide a cheap, simple and fast system at very high quality. Until it does so, IPTV will remain yet one of the gimmicks that TV manufacturers use to convince a wary public to ‘upgrade’ from their perfectly serviceable flatscreen TVs and it will still be easier and way cheaper to turn back to Torrents.
We already have great video on-demand or postal DVD services, Blockbuster is just down the road and Foxtel has more movies than you can eat in a decade. If you want our money, oh mighty big-enterprise, you need to make it worth our while.
For more tech tips, tricks, how-tos and gadget reviews, visit www.gadgetguy.com.au
