I have noticed that alot of phone companies are trying out IPTV, but why is it just the phone companies.  Will it ever get to the point were someone could decide to build a set top box and send channels to it using a broadband connection? Now you can pick your phone company for alot cheaper with VOIP. It would be alot cheaper because their would be alot of companies to choose from. Companies can send 1 channel at a time to save on bandwith.

Good question.

My first answer would be that while both technologies operate over broadband, they vary quite extensively in nature. IPTV involves content creation, royalties, digital rights management, and publication to name a few major differences. Companies must spend a lot of time negotiating these agreements and they can be quite costly. You'll see telephone companies and larger companies reaching agreements with major content labels for distribution. Other companies will crop up offering STBs and IPTV over your standard broadband like you suggest. Many of them will offer custom programming and/or video blogging rather than your typical television lineups. There are already some that exist...just look at KyLinTV, ITVN, or Akimbo.

Another point is that we are talking about broadcasting video and not just voice. It's taken many years to get to the point where VoIP is a viable option. Look for IPTV to explode over the next 5-10 years as broadband speeds continually increase and consumers buy into it. 

 

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Curtis
TVover.net

All broadband is not equal. As CUrtis says, the Quality of Service is just not good enough to send video easily over the internet, with a consumer experience that rivals, say, Sky.

 

James' right. At the end of the day is not a matter of bandwidth but quality of service. Nothing prevents you to broadcast a number of channels, but those channels have to be qualified with strict delivery timing in order to ensure a proper experience. That's what telcos provide in the form of IPTV and VoIP, but obviously the bandwidth requirements for the tv are bigger.

REgards,
Hoopz

"Nothing prevents you to broadcast a number of channels"

That's not entirely true. If you were to simply try and broadcast multicast IP traffic, it would get killed pretty quickly by various routers throughout the internet. Then if you tried to get around that through IP tunnelling, you'd run into a whole host of problems depending on your situation. If you're HBO and you're sending video directly to people, your internet connection provider is going to charge you a hell of a lot of money, and the ISP's of your subscribers are going to be bitching up a storm.  

The simplest answer is just that the backbone of the internet is not fast enough to send broadcast video.