There are three different IPTV formats. We will look at each of them individually.
Video on demand (VOD)
VOD streaming is exactly what it sounds like; you get a video whenever you need it. Movie streaming sites are VOD providers. There is no time limit on what you can watch.
You tell the service what you want to watch, it sends it to you over the Internet and you watch it.
Popular examples of VOD services are Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video.
Live IPTV
Just like TV broadcast, you can also watch live broadcasts on IPTV. A lot of people watch sporting events this way.
Besides streaming over the internet instead of traditional TV, live IPTV is about the same as regular TV.
FOX Sports Go, CBS Sports HQ, Bein Sport all offer live IPTV.
IPTV services
Although IPTV is definitely growing, it is still a niche market. Services like Netflix and Hulu offer plenty of TV shows, and video on demand is growing rapidly.
It is the other IPTV formats, where there is significant potential to change the way people watch TV, that have yet to take off.
Catch-up television is growing in popularity. Downloading apps for providers like FOX, CBS, and NBC allows viewers to view missed shows without the effort of setting up and recording something through a set-top box such as a TiVo (https://www.tivo.com/).
Sport seems to be the area of television that has adopted IPTV the fastest. There are many subscription sports packages that you can watch from your computer or stream to your TV whenever you want.
Many services are appearing and allow users to create their own VOD and live streaming services. This way people can share their skills, advice, and passions with anyone in the world.
Start your own IPTV service
If you want to start your own IPTV service, your best bet is to connect to one of these providers. They have the bandwidth, server capacity, and distribution channels you need.
All you have to do is sign up, choose a plan, and start uploading your content. What sort of content? Who will watch it? How are you going to make money? It all depends on you.
There are IPTV channels for learning magic tricks, getting in shape, learning to dance, watching movies and just about anything you can think of. If you want to share something with the world, you can use IPTV to do it.
Of course, you will still need to save all this content. Which takes a lot of work. But once you have done that, these services will make it easy for you to promote and distribute your TV shows, videos or movies.
It’s like making your own version of Netflix just for you and your subscribers.
IPTV in the World
Europe
In Spain, several communications companies are beginning to offer IPTV. Movistar offers since 2000 an IP television service under the name Imagenio. The telecommunications company Jazztel has also joined the bandwagon of this technology and offers the service under the name Jazztelia TV.
In the rest of Europe, various companies are also beginning to offer their IPTV services. The pioneer country was the United Kingdom and its company Kingston interactive TV. In France, France Telecom launched its first IPTV product at the end of 2003. Deutsche Telecom in Germany launched its commitment to IPTV in 2004. The Italian company Fastweb is offering IPTV over networks with connections 20 times higher than the current one and is one of the major European benchmarks for these services.
United States
In the US, Verizon and Bellsouth companies are beginning to offer their services in this field and develop their infrastructures. On multiple occasions, telephone operators offer IPTV together with telephone services and broadband Internet connection. This combination is called “triple play.” As for companies dedicated to technology, Microsoft has been the one that has shown a greater intention to develop its technology to offer Television over IP. It is based on its “Windows Media Series” technology that allows thousands of videos to be downloaded from the Internet, with movies or episodes of television series.
Latin America
In Ecuador, IPTV will be provided by the National Telecommunications Corporation (Andinatel and Pacifictel).
In Chile, Movistar Chile launched its IPTV service in June 2007, complementing its current Satellite Television service in order to offer various interactive services such as video on demand, among others. For its part, the Telefónica del Sur company is a pioneer in this type of transmission in Chile.
Likewise in Panama, the CTV Telecom company since August 2007 provides IPTV service through its latest generation fiber optic network, which is delivered to the residences of its clients.
In Mexico, Maxcom Telecomunicaciones offers MaxcomTV a product with which it manages to be a 3Play competitor using IPTV technology over ADSL in cities such as Puebla, Querétaro, Estado de México and San Luis Potosí since August 2007.
In the Dominican Republic the company Claro Codetel has incorporated the IPTV service, under the name of Claro TV.
Web TV
Related in some way to IPTV, we can speak of web-TV or “IP televisions”. The essential difference is that the latter are directly accessible over the internet, while the IPTV services like PrimeStreams (https://iptvsubscription.site/primestreams/) are “closed” systems outside the conventional network, which allows them to provide better service and create a monetization system equivalent to the cable TV. The technology is essentially the same, but its management is different. A distinction must be made between management platforms for this type of offer, such as Digital Novae Media, Narrowstep, biib.tv, WebTV Producciones and the content offers (channels) that are offered. Also, you must differentiate between content aggregators and channels itself. Aggregators are internet sites that integrate the offer of a multitude of producers of diverse origin and whose commercial positioning is the accumulation of all kinds of content, including that generated by the user. The “channels” offer their own original content line, generally specialized around a theme.
At this time, a latent trend is the integration of access to the network directly with the television, either by its inclusion by a television manufacturer, or by the connection of set-top-boxes (STB) that connected to the internet send images to the TV. With the generalization of these devices in homes, we would have both the services developed by the management platforms and the channels developed on the network themselves to be directly accessible from the home, potentially competing with any other audiovisual content. It is precisely IPTV service providers that are introducing this class of devices into homes, although with limited network browsing capabilities for technical reasons. As soon as it is possible to access any content from the television, the barriers and conceptual differences between IPTV and Web-Tv or IP television will disappear.