On Definitions: IPTV And Not-So-IPTV

In the last two years, I have read about and worked in various IPTV and not-so-IPTV projects and developments, from small scale deployments for corporate used to tier 1 telecom operators. Because my field is mainly products & services innovation and less the actual deployments, we looked at a lot of market studies, financial calculations, business models, and business cases. It is amazing, how much misinformation can be spread by using the wrong terminology - or relying on assumption that “IPTV” means the same throughout the studies. I’m not sure:

Is this due to pure laziness, because one would have to dive deep into the numbers to make studies from different research companies and operators comparable?
Is it a misunderstanding of the term “IPTV” from non-technical industry experts that are rather looking at IPTV from what they think “IP” and “TV” might mean?
Is the term “IPTV” maybe defined too technical, without keeping the industry ecosystem in mind, and that IPTV might be more than a technical solution?
Maybe a lot of people jump on the bandwagon of IPTV and hence are very interested in keeping its definition ambiguous and open to all angles.

in Wikipedia IPTV gets such a rather broad definition. IPTV becomes everything has has to do something with being able to watch assets that are also available on your TV. Now it becomes tricky, because in a couple of years that becomes a circular definition. So what’s traditional TV again? Coming from the telecom space (and being a technology geek), here’s my definition….

What Is IPTV?

Sean Riley, senior vice president of sales for Fox:

[IPTV] is a process where our distributors [franchised operators] take our linear networks and chop up the signals into little packets and send them out over a secure network and put it back together for their customers.

The first generation of IPTV is simply the transport of traditional TV signals with the Internet Protocol hence the name Internet Protocol Television. While the service offering IPTV usually shares communication lines with normal Internet and Voice-over-IP (VoIP) traffic, it uses a dedicated closed delivery platform.

IPTV generally requires a set-top box in order to decode the IPTV signal and display it on a TV screen. IPTV was initially driven by telecom operators who wanted to offer a bundle of services – triple play: telephony, Internet, television – that would increase stickiness and reduce customer churn rates. Because most telecom operators already had an Internet infrastructure and Internet customers, transporting TV signals over their existing IP infrastructure seemed a logical step. The first generation IPTV is also referred to as “Me-Too TV”, as it does not offer anything different than traditional TV services over cable or satellite. First generation IPTV is currently the most common manifestation of IPTV.

The second generation of IPTV integrates existing Internet-based services or dedicated value added services over the bidirectional Internet infrastructure, such as on-screen caller-ID, interactive programming guide, search, discovery, advertisement, and interactivity. In addition to the channel setup of traditional TV providers, the second generation of IPTV also adds niche content such as short films, independent movies, niche music video channels, or local content. However, many traditional TV providers now offer such channels, too, over their regular cable or satellite spectrum. The second generation of IPTV still uses a dedicated service production platform, but provides developer toolkits for third party application developers, and might go as far as providing a direct interface for value added services on top of the carrier’s TV offering. Second generation IPTV still requires a dedicated set-top box in order to decode the signal and display it on a TV screen – it is still not consumed on PC screens. Second generation IPTV deployments are in their adolescence and start to pick up speed quickly in order to differentiate themselves from “Me-Too TV”.

The second generation of IPTV still includes a ‘traditional’ TV set (as opposed to a mobile or handheld device, a personal computer with a more universal disposition (mac, linux, win, whatever…), a DVR without display as in Slingbox, etc.) and a set top box. Now the two questions are:

“What is a traditional TV set?”
- A TV set that still expects an RF signal input to receive programmed content by TV channel providers - does that exclude some digital TV sets that also receive DVB-T or ISDB-T?
- A device that is sold at major retailers as a “TV”?
- From a patent: “A main television set comprises a plurality of tuners, a selection circuit for selecting, out of receiving signals received by the plurality of tuners, the receiving signal for broadcasting …”
- …
“What defines a set top box?”
- Something that is boxy and sits on top of the TV - which would exclude a Microsoft XBox 360, which actually stands and is fluffy shaped?
- Just an additional hardware device (box) on top of your existing viewing device - which would include a cable modem, but what happens if the set top box is built into your TV, and you use your screen also for your computer?
- …

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Central building blocks of IPTV service operators, here shown with a DSL-based access network

A carrier that provides first or second IPTV services will implement, integrated, or otherwise realize one or more of the following building blocks (here shown for a DSL network architecture, that could be replaced with any other network architecture).

It is important to note that not all telecom carriers are using the Internet Protocol to deliver TV content. In North America, Verizon’s FiOS is reserving part of its optical spectrum within the FTTH rollout for the same RF encoding used in cable networks. However, such telecom carriers struggle with very similar problems in terms of bundling, triple and quadruple play, offerings beyond Me-Too-TV, etc. For that reason, many consultancies speak of Telco TV instead of IPTV in order to broaden their target audience.IPTV uses many standards coming from various standards bodies (ITU, IETF among many others). Most of those standards are mature, have had implementations available for many years but have been used widely. Inherently, IPTV is a technology based on open standards. To make it a reality the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) has created the IPTV Interoperability Forum whose mission is to ease integration between vendors. MSTV is a name often used to refer to the Microsoft TV product marketed to telecommunication operators. MSTV is a proprietary implementation of IPTV and in its current form doesn’t interoperate with standard IPTV solutions. In June 2007, Microsoft re-branded its IPTV platform as Microsoft Mediaroom.

What Is IPTV Not (Yet)?

VoD: For marketing and simplicity reasons carriers often include Video-on-Demand (VoD) under the IPTV umbrella. Television usually includes a fixed programming within the channels. With increasing personalization one could argue that VoD is a TV-Station-Of-One, where the user defines the programming.

Multicast, Unicast, P2P: Though the delivery of IPTV is mostly implemented via IP Multicast, where IP packets are simultaneously sent to and received by a group of interested receivers, the delivery method is not a significant IPTV characteristic. Other delivery mechanisms are Unicast, where a receiver gets its dedicated stream of packets, and Peer-to-Peer (P2P), where a number of receivers mutually supply each other with parts of a stream that were originally ‘seeded’ by a central Live TV subsystem. A P2P delivery system for TV can be deployed in a proprietary way that would qualify as an IPTV platform. However, recent traffic simulations of Detecon have shown that in Europe only in a few cases the legal and regulatory requirements as well as the existing access network architecture make P2P superior to Multicast. P2P traffic load on network elements can exceed bandwidth limitations by far, especially on the edge routers into the core network. The access network architecture of most carriers is not ready yet to support TV-like service provisioning over the Internet without dedicated platforms.

Web TV: The term Web TV or Internet TV is misleading and should be replaced by Over-The-Top-TV – provisioning of TV content over an existing Internet connection by any service provider. Internet TV is generally watched on a PC screen and comes in two flavors: providing traditional TV content such as series, movies, and shows through websites and integrated software players on or off the website; providing programming and content through overlay delivery network that runs on another carrier’s Internet service. In the first case, TV stations such as ProSieben, BBC, or NBC transcode their shows into media formats for common PC players such as Microsoft Media Player, Apple QuickTime, or Adobe Flash, and display the content shortly after they “aired” over traditional TV delivery channels; in the second case, providers such as Joost, Babelgum, or Zatoo provide proprietary clients with dedicated support servers within the network and a proprietary delivery protocol in order to transmit content – either pre-programmed, live traditional TV channels, or On-Demand.

Mobile TV: Though current mobile TV offerings are all using the Internet Protocol to delivery data streams to a handheld or otherwise nomadic device, mobile TV is usually not seen as part of a first or second generation IPTV service offering, but as a complementary and distinctly different service. There is a wide range of potential mobile access technologies for TV: third generation mobile data and communication networks (3G) like HSPA and MBMS; fourth generation mobile data and communication networks (4G) such as WiMAX; WLAN technologies such as 802.11n; digital broadcast standards such as DVB-H and DVB-T, MediaFLO, DMB, and ISDB-T. However, 3G airtime is expensive, 4G is just started to be rolled out; WLAN has only local reach and is more nomadic than mobile; digital broadcast standards are specifically designed for broadcasting and miss the opportunities of additional narrow-casting or value added service on top.

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