Interactive TV Services for IPTV

IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) is a method of distributing television content over broadband that enables a more customised and interactive user experience. IPTV will mean a fundamental change in viewing habits. Viewers will be able to watch what they want, when they want to. Interactive TV services will be a key differentiator for the multitude of IPTV offerings that are emerging. Interactivity via a fast two-way connection will lift IPTV ahead of today?s television.

IPTV brings together the television, internet and telephone. Much like cable or satellite television, IPTV uses a set-top box (STB) that allows viewers to watch hundreds of channels and order movies through video-on-demand (VOD). IPTV uses broadband ADSL, the same technology that delivers high-speed Internet to the computer. This opens the door to much more interactivity and the potential for thousands, as opposed to hundreds, of channels.

Find What?s On

All IPTV services will offer basic interactivity to support navigation and search of the vast amounts of content. An electronic programme guide (EPG) will allow viewers to browse the linear and on-demand content that is available.

EPGs are likely to allow viewers to look at programme listings up to two weeks in advance, and also look back over programmes from the previous seven days broadcast schedule. A powerful search facility will allow viewers to look for programmes by title, genre and keywords. Filters will allow viewers to display lists of movies, music, pay-per-view events and high definition programmes.

The EPG will be customisable by viewers, who will be able to create their own line-up of favourite channels and content. As well as full-screen layouts, EPGs will have a mini-overlay mode which will allow the viewer to keep watching the current programme while browsing the schedule.

Personal Video Recorder

Many IPTV set top boxes will incorporate a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) that will allow programmes and interactive content to be recorded. Viewers will be able to watch one programme while recording another. They?ll also be able to use interactive services or video on demand while recording in the background. While watching linear TV programming, viewers will be able to pause and rewind live television.

The PVR will be programmed via the Electronic Programme Guide. Intelligent series linking will allow programme episodes to be recorded based on preferences; first-runs, repeats, or all occurrences. Programme and movie trailers will contain interactive links that can be selected to schedule a recording. Remote scheduling of recording will also be possible using a mobile phone or the web.

Enhanced TV

With IPTV, viewers will be able to watch a lot more television at the same time. Sports fans will be able to keep an eye on six games at once, on the same screen, or study one game from multiple camera angles. Viewer involvement will be encouraged through voting, competitions and messaging services.

Advertising

Interactive advertising will extend traditional linear advertising. It will allow advertisers to give product information in the form of an on-screen interactive brochure. This will re-enforce the brand messages and encourage viewer involvement with the product. It will also allow a direct element to be added to any TV campaign, with responses being captured from viewers.

Communication Services

The two-way nature of an IPTV connection makes it ideal for providing person-to-person communication services. Instant messaging services will allow viewers to ?chat? via text messages while continuing to watch TV. Video conferencing over television will allow virtual family gatherings when family members are spread across the world.

Services will be used both as stand-alone applications, and as add-ons to programming. Friends will be able to chat while watching a programme ?together? in different locations. Phone-in shows will be able to display callers, linked directly from their home.

Community Services

IPTV will provide many feeds of news, entertainment and information. Viewers will be able to personalise their ?feed reader? to match their particular interests. This will then collect up-to-date information such as news headlines, sports results, share prices and travel updates in a single place.

Dating services will allow subscribers to set up a profile and find compatible ?matches? to communicate with. Messages will be exchanged quickly, cheaply and safely, without the security concerns of meeting in the real world.

Betting & Gaming

IPTV will offer a range of betting and gaming on demand services. These will include sports betting services, where bets are placed on both live and virtual sports. The betting will be closely linked to the TV coverage, and will include in-running betting. There will also be a range of casino style games including roulette, blackjack, slots and poker. Some of these will be stand-alone games, others will be linked to programming with either live or virtual presenters.

Personal Content

IPTV will enable the secure sharing of video recordings, photos and music. Users with a home network will be able to share digital content with other devices such as PCs and portable media players. IPTV will be a key component in the connected home.

Users will also be able to share content with family and friends across the Internet. Effective digital content protection with consumer flexibility will be essential for such sharing to flourish. IPTV could even allow users to have their own television channel where they could share their views, photos and videos with the rest of the world as a video podcast.

Conclusion

Interactive television will provide genuinely useful applications that enhance the overall user experience of IPTV. Interactive services must be seen as part of the overall infrastructure of delivering television ? not just a bolt on.

To get the right interactive services to meet consumer demands will require experimentation. Content providers, broadcasters and network owners need to develop, trial, refine and roll-out interactive services. A lot has been learnt over the past ten years about interactive TV. This knowledge can help inform the design of interactive services for IPTV.

John Withnell is Managing Director of Long Dog, a company that provides a one-stop-shop for project planning, design and build of interactive TV solutions. See http://www.longdog.tv/ for details.

Advantages of a Broadband DSL Internet Connection

Anyone who has switched from a dial-up modem to broadband DSL knows the advantages of DSL internet access. The differences between the two are truly astounding. When people begin surfing the internet using broadband DSL after struggling with a dial-up modem, they never want to go back to a slow and often unreliable dial-up connection.

Broadband DSL connection speeds vary, but the average DSL connection rate ranges on average between 128 kilobits per second all the way up to 1.54 megabits per second. Typical dial-up modems can't even come close to reaching typical broadband DSL speeds.

The remarkable speed of broadband DSL has made internet use more convenient, and DSL has improved the quality of many existing online activities such as shopping, banking, downloading audio and video, and gaming. Besides a notable increase in connection speed and website navigation, with broadband DSL, internet users are always connected to the world wide web. DSL provides valuable information and online activities that remain just a few keystrokes away.

Broadband DSL saves money as well as valuable time. Broadband DSL eliminates the need for additional phone lines. People using broadband DSL are able to talk on the phone while browsing the net, and all computers within a household can surf the web independently with the use of wireless routers.

Security is another plus for broadband DSL users. Broadband DSL subscribers use their own private telephone lines to make contact with their DSL service provider. Cables and lines are not shared by other internet subscribers, and therefore user access is private and very secure.

Broadband DSL is constantly improving as new technology is discovered and implemented. When considering the cost of broadband DSL versus the cost of dial-up, there is no comparison. The benefits of broadband DSL are immeasurable. Broadband DSL is truly the solution for businesses and consumers wanting quick and reliable internet connectivity.

Stephen Kreutzer is a freelance publisher based in Cupertino, California. He publishes articles and reports in various ezines and provides information on broadband at 123 Broadcom!

Are You Using A DialUp ISP for SEO?

If you are using a dial-up internet service provider for SEO, it could be costing you a lot of time and money. This is especially true if most of your search engine optimization work is off-site optimization, including building links by submitting your websites to directories and submitting your articles to article directories.

I was submitting my articles and websites to directories using a dial-up internet service provider for several months. The work was very tedious and time consuming. Then, later using a cable internet service provider, what took me almost 3 months to do with the dial-up internet service provider, I was doing in a week with the cable internet service provider.

Going from a dial-up internet service provider to a DSL internet service provider can drastically improve the amount of work you can do in a certain amount of time also. Say, for example, your current dial-up connection speed averages around 30 kilobits per second and you switch to a DSL internet service provider. that has an average connection speed of 300 kilobits per second. The new DSL ISP is ten times faster than your dial-up connection. So, you would be able to do around ten times as much work.

Brian Shoemaker is the owner of ISPShakedown.com - directory of DSL and Cable internet service providers.

Broadband Suppliers Predict Internet TV Boom

Figures from European broadband suppliers reveal that the total number of broadband TV subscribers is estimated to reach almost 10 million by 2010. This will be a huge increase from the current number of about 650,000 and will give broadband suppliers almost 10% of the total pay-TV market.

Currently France and Italy lead the way in terms of numbers of subscribers to broadband TV services. The concept has taken longer to catch on in the UK, which is largely due to fierce competition from established satellite and cable TV firms. However, broadband itself is very popular in the UK with over 10 million subscribers in 2006, and growing by the minute, suggesting that there is a large untapped market for broadband TV services.

Broadband TV is more accurately known as IPTV (Internet Protocol TV). The acronym is used to describe services which broadcast on-demand television programming to consumers, delivered via a broadband connection on normal telephone line to TV screens. In recent years revenues from traditional fixed-line services have been declining in Europe so telecoms firms are looking to both IPTV and broadband to offset this. Increasingly they are offering customers such services in bundles rather than individually.

While broadband suppliers are using IPTV as a means to challenge established cable and satellite operators, the opposite scenario also exists. Cable and satellite TV operators are beginning to make headway into the broadband market in order to ensure they do not lose their coveted share of the lucrative television market to traditional ISP?s.

In the UK, Sky TV has acquired Easynet, a leading broadband supplier and heavy investor in Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), which signals its intention to broaden its range of services. The enormous company has also launched a film download service which currently provides 200 films for free to digital subscribers.

This is, of course, only the beginning as Sky intends to supply more than 1,000 films via broadband from their extensive back catalogue. Sky Sports subscribers will also be able to download sports clips through their broadband connections.

Peoples' entertainment needs are changing fast in the 2000?s and audiences expect to be able to access content whenever and wherever they want.

Broadband-is-cheap contains up-to-date news, information, and deals from leading UK Broadband Suppliers market.

Wireless Broadband Basics

Wireless broadband is a general term used for the technology that is able to gain access to the internet wirelessly, and at high bandwidth speeds. Wireless broadband is available on virtually any digital device, so long as it has the proper connectivity hardware. Such hardware can easily be attached to most PDAs and laptop computers.

One of the most popular and well known wireless technology standards is Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity), which allows users to access the internet over a wireless Local Area Network. The speed and range of Wi-Fi, however, is severely limited. There is another wireless connectivity standard, called WiMAX, which is considerably more advanced.

WiMAX is a protocol by which signals are sent to wireless broadband users. A WiMAX base station can theoretically beam a signal as far as 50km (31 miles), meaning that a single station could potentially cover an entire city (unlike Wi-Fi, which is only available in hotspots).

Although WiMAX are networks are available in several major metropolitan areas in the US, base stations are very expensive to build, and aren?t cost effective in less densely populated areas. Because of this limitation, WiMAX technology is not yet available in most non-urban regions.

Although WiMAX has been a major technological achievement, wireless broadband certainly doesn?t stop there. There are a number of other cutting edge wireless protocols currently in development. The most notable of these is a new protocol called xMax, which is similar to WiMAX, but a lot more efficient. It can cover a broader range at a lower cost, by piggybacking on radio frequencies. Although xMax is not yet available to the public, it will most likely be launched within the next couple of years.

Jeremy Maddock is the owner of a successful telecommunications news website.

Broadband Providers Cover 100% of Northern Ireland

This is a significant achievement for the region. Although it is not an EU prerogative to enforce governments to provide universal broadband access to their citizens, Northern Ireland has shown that it is highly regarded. Thanks to this achievement, NI broadband providers are now able to offer broadband services to every household and business in the country, regardless of their location.

In other parts of the EU, coverage has reached levels of around 90% but no one else can claim 100% coverage as yet.

It is widely believed that the universal availability of broadband has played an important part in the growth of businesses in the region. Various industry sectors have reported new levels of growth since the inception of broadband and it may have been impossible to achieve this without the service.

However there are still areas in which progress can be made. Just because there is 100% availability, it does not mean there is 100% take-up, so now the NI government must encourage as many businesses and individuals as possible to sign up to the service in order to reap its full benefits. The last thing they want is a big white elephant instead of a fully functional communications system.

100% availability also does not necessarily equal 100% satisfaction. Some customers who cannot receive the service through their fixed telephone lines have complained that they are being forced to pay more for broadband via an expensive satellite link.

However work is being done to rectify this situation and improve the networks, so many of households who currently may not be able to receive broadband via their telephone line, should be able to in the future, ensuring a more fair system.

At the other end of the spectrum there are people who can connect to broadband through a choice of mediums ? everything from cable or ADSL through a phone line, to wireless solutions such as satellite and radio broadband.

Northern Ireland will probably act as a blueprint for many other EU regions in the following years as broadband take-up continues to increase.

Broadband-is-cheap contains up-to-date news, information, and deals from leading UK Broadband Providers market.

Google Brings Millions of HardtoFind Library Books to Your Fingertips

Millions of hard-to-find books from five major libraries will soon be a lot easier to access: Google has made plans to scan and digitize them, making the books available on their widely used Internet search engine.

Google's latest endeavor is a large step beyond previous attempts to scan books so they can be read online (Google, Amazon.com and other smaller sites have offered glimpses of books and libraries online before). What makes this initiative so different is the sheer breadth of material that Google plans to cover.

Five libraries will be involved in the project in various stages:

* New York public library: Allowing Google a small portion of books no longer covered by copyright.

* Harvard University library: Is contributing a limited 40,000 volumes to guage how well the process works.

* Stanford University library: Will submit its entire collection to Google's scanners.

* Michigan University library: Will also submit its entire collection.

* Oxford University library: Contributing all its books published before 1901

To get an idea of just how large a project Google is taking on, consider that Michigan's library alone contains 7 million volumes, which is about 132 miles of books, while Harvard's library contains 15 million. The Michigan job is expected to take six years.

Although some in the field worry that this trend could signal the end of libraries, others are excited at the prospect of putting valuable information that was once limited in its use at the fingertips of all Internet users. The project will also create a digital record for material that was created before computers, thereby preserving it in a way that could not have been done in the past.

Google users will only be able to view bibliographies and other brief excerpts from the copyrighted books scanned from the libraries, while works no longer covered by copyrights will be completely available to the online public.

USA Today December 14, 2004

New York Times December 14, 2004

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have long vowed to make all of the world's information accessible to anyone with a Web browser. Now that vow will come closer to being implemented as Google has made an agreement with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.

Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library are some of the U.S. institutions that will be involved. The whole project will convert about 15 million books at a cost of $150 million, or about $10 per book.

Plus, the Library of Congress and a group of international libraries from the United States, Canada, Egypt, China and the Netherlands announced a plan to create a publicly available digital archive of 1 million books on the Internet. The group said it planned to have 70,000 volumes online by next April.

Doesn't that just want to make you get out of your chair and shout! I don't know about you, but I am excited.

As long as I am excited about Google I want to let you know that Google has been my home page for over seven years. Why would anyone want to have anything different?

Well, last week I changed my home page. Don't get worried, it is still Google but it is their new Google Suggest. It suggests queries as you type what you are looking for into the search box. By offering more refined searches up front, Google Suggest can make your searching more convenient and efficient, because it eliminates the need to type the entire text of a query.

In addition, the service can connect you with new query suggestions that are useful, intriguing and fun. Go ahead, try it, you might even make it your new home page. My guess is that in a few years this might be the main Google search engine.

While I am on the topic of Google, I have to tell you about the new version of Firefox 1.0. If you haven't switched to Firefox you simply must read my article on why you should do so immediately. Firefox isn't just for alpha geeks anymore. As of last week over 10 MILLION people have downloaded Firefox and installed it as their browser.

Many of you are already one of those 10 million, but the majority of you probably don't know that Firefox comes preinstalled with search engines other than Google in its toolbar.

I just found out the newest version has a neat feature where you can click the small triangle next to the bottom of the default G on the left of the Google search box and you will be able to use other search engines. There are three in there that I use all the time: eBay, Amazon and Dictionary.com. But I recently was able to go to a Firefox add-in page and with one click insert my favorite gadget blog Engadget so now it is one of the options.

Dr. Joseph Mercola
Author of Total Health Program
Founder of the renowned Optimal Wellness Center
http://www.Mercola.com - The #1 Natural Health Site on the Internet!

How to Get Cheap Internet Service

Ever want to have an internet connection but couldn?t afford it?

Did you ever encounter companies offering cheap internet services but has doubtful quality of service?

It is possible to get cheap internet service providers that offer quality services. All you have to do is look for it.

Try searching the internet, here you can find many internet service providers that can offer affordable rates with great quality. If you live in a large city, chances are, there will be so many internet service providers that compete with each other.

These internet service providers will offer great deals with quality services in order to attract and keep customers.

They can offer a wide variety of internet packages with incentives for their customers. With competition, you can be sure that they will try to attract as much customers as they can with low prices with rewards and bonuses included.

If you live in a small community, there will usually be one or two internet service providers. These providers usually charge higher rates because of lack of competition. You can find internet service providers online that can offer cheap internet services in many areas.

You just have to find out if these companies can reach your area. They can offer you WiFi or wireless internet connection, which requires just a computer and an antenna or internet satellite dish. WiFi internet connection can be relatively cheap.

You can also have cheap internet connection by using a dial up. Because of advancement in internet technology, dial ups are now very cheap and in some countries, free.

However, dial up internet connections are not fast, this type of connection is only suitable if you are just going to use the email or surf the web. If you are more into downloading large files, dial up will not work for you.

Research your local library about cheap internet connections and cheap internet providers that offers services in your area and can offer you some pre-requisites.

You can also find cheap high-speed internet services by researching in the internet, your search results may come up with cable, DSL, and mobile internet services. In these three, the most expensive is cable, and DSL will require a telephone line.

Researching in the internet also enables you to compare different companies and different kinds of internet packages. It is up to you to choose which of these are the cheapest and that meets your needs.

High-speed internet service are becoming more popular and because of this the price becomes cheaper and cheaper. Installation fees can be a bit expensive, but monthly fees can get closer to the price of the dial up. Some high-speed internet service provider?s offers free installation to attract more customers.

Keep in mind that the price of the internet depends on how you use the technology. If you use internet for just emailing, it is probably not practical to get a high-speed internet connection.

Instead, go for the dial up internet, it may not be fast, but can produce enough speed for email purposes. If you use the internet for downloading large files, then high-speed internet is for you.

Basically, this means that determining the price of the internet does not really depend on the numbers you see on a sales quote but it is really about getting your money?s worth.

Bob Hett has extensively covered the Internet Service Provider industry as an analyst and has researched the various companies for factors based on price, reliability, support and overall quality. Learn more at Cheap Internet Service