The Hype of Internet TV

Watching TV by free to broadcast channels,cable TV or satellite receivers has been a common feature in most countries. We can easily remember there are so many Astro tv receivers installed outside home in Malaysia ( especially in big city like Kuala Lumpur ). People in Indonesia ( mostly middle class ) also enjoy so much the satellite TV receivers ( known as parabola in Indonesia ).Whenever I was in the journey from Sumatera to Java and vice versa during my university years I can see many satellite TV receivers installed in front or top of the house even in remote area. Astro,IndoVision and KabelVision are also trying to penetrate the still wide cable TV market potential in Indonesia.People in Singapore also enjoy heavily the cable TV ( so far only one cable TV provider here,Starhub ), mobtv.sg ( owned by MediaCorp Singapore ) and several others waiting for the realization of their operations.

Watching TV from internet or what usually termed as Internet TV or IPTV can be classified as new thing to do for most of us. Academically it is being termed as disruptive technology as it is not a common and wellknown technology yet and the quality somewhat still less than current existing technology. It is actually still a hype currently but slowly moving toward a better technology / choice in the future.

My first experience with Internet TV is with PPLive. The website is www.pplive.net. Some people said it come from China but I can not confirm about this yet.What we need to do is downloading and installing the software to enjoy it free. The PPLive Internet TV mainly featuring TV channels and movies from China,Hongkong,Taiwan and some from Korea and Japan. The legality of the programmes broadcasted by PPLive still a doubt for me. They do put advertisement at the beginning of the streaming and do not cut the advertisement inside the programmes relayed from the actual TV channels.Somewhat this is the way it generate revenue for its free service to the viewers.

So far watching PPLive can be a good and fun experience provided you have good internet speed ( where it can be an expensive thing to have in developing countries such as Indonesia except then if GOI finally build the Palapa Broadband Internet Infrastructure ).Watching Internet TV is a bandwidth consuming activity so without any good bandwidth the quality can be really bad and nothing to enjoy. In multimedia networking we know about concept so called as buffering. Buffering being done to make sure it have enough bits downloaded first before start playing the movie/TV programmes or creating buffer/stock for the playing process. It actually being done to make sure continuity of the play. If the play simply a combination of stop,play,stop and play it will not be a good and relaxing watching experience.

One of the latest hype for this Internet TV is the innovation from Skype founder ( Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom ). They just sold their Skype to eBay for 2.6 billion USD last year and made them as very rich guy in this planet. But they simply do not stop there. The latest baby from them is Joost,an internet TV.

Currently Joost is still under Beta testing by limited users.From several sources which I can get from the internet and friends basically Joost promises some features like this :

1. No user generated content like Youtube

So the quality of the content is more professional.It focused more on the network-quality programs.

2. It planned for free

They do put ad to generate revenue for them which is the same like current 50 years old TV model.

3. Simplicity

It basically use the up down buttons more often in the software compared to the current 37 buttons TV remote. Soon it can be applied and watched from cell phone and Apple’s iPod due to its simplicity.

4. So many choice of channels

They plan for expansion up to 5000 channels. Something which clearly an abundance choice for people. I have 50 channels from my cable TV subscription and I hardly watch each of it. Only several favourites TV channels often viewed by me.And now 5000 ? It is a really incredible number to enjoy in the future.

From all the writing and example from PPLive and baby Joost above I can predict that the hype of Internet TV if really being planned and executed with full supports from many concerned parties ( especially governments which build the network/Internet infrastructures and big companies which produce the TV content and gadgets ) can be a good technology replacing the current existing technology. Let see it to happen then.