You probably know by now that the word "online" refers to the Internet. And (unless you were born at the onset of the 20th century) you probably know what TV is. But what is online TV in the first place?
Online TV might be more formally known as Internet TV which is basically a fusion of two major communication mediums (the Internet and television broadcasting.) The great thing about Internet TV or Online TV is that it gives the viewer more control about what he wants to watch. In the past, with conventional TV broadcasting, we could only watch what the TV networks chose to broadcast - and even then we would have to tolerate a mess of advertising through broadcasted commercials along with our preferred show. With the creation of Online TV, viewers can choose the content they prefer to watch, and whether they want to watch the advertising commercials that might be broadcasted over that Internet TV service. You can even opt to skip all the commercials altogether if you like.
Online TV gives more meaning to the sentence "The Customer is King." With Online TV, that becomes "The Viewer Rules".
You can gain access to either free Online TV services (which are based on the open-source concept format) or a subscription-based Online TV service (which means the viewer would have to pay a subscription fee to be able to watch the channels on that Online TV service.)
At present, the more common Internet TV infrastructure platform being used by network providers would be the Microsoft TV IPTV Edition. To get this to work, you need help from a set-top box which in turn is based on the most advanced compression technologies.
There are still problems with regards to expanding the size of the viewer-ship population of Online TV. These problems include:
The lack of adoption of set-top boxes and their complementary technologies;
Compatibility issues regarding which software pairs up best with which hardware;
The lack of appropriate bandwidth for home-based viewers;
The bandwidth limitations of the Internet backbone (which may worsen due to the influx of an unexpectedly large number of end users);
The cost and quality of streaming technology;
And finally, compatibility between the old guard (the traditional TV industry) and the new guard (the young blood made up of Online TV industry members.)
If you are in doubt as to whether your entertainment system is equipped for Online TV services, check whether it is described by some of these keywords: Streaming, P2PTV Broadcatching, Vodcast (or video on demand), Vlog (or video web logging), Television over Internet Protocol (or TV over IP), or Television on the desktop (or simply by the acronym TOD.)
Online TV is a perfectly legal form of business enterprise. However, some content providers may require you to attribute to them the content you are using. The content providers might also ban you from employing their contents for profit-making purposes (especially if they provide such content free of charge to you.)
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