Technology and Games

The next generation of television service which is about the break lose in the UK is Internet TV. We are now going to explain how your TV viewing experience will be improved with Online TV.

There have been many changes in TV technology since the first transmission in 1926, but everything we have experienced so far uses a technology called Broadcast Television. A TV channel broadcasts a series of programmes one after another either on a terrestrial TV channel, via satellite or via cable. If you have ever wished you could design your own television station with what you want on when you want, well now you can.

Online TV is based on streaming instead of broadcast technology; This means that the viewer can request the programme they want to view when they want to watch it, completely separately of every other viewer of the same services. Internet TV is more like a large online video library that you can access over the internet then it is a conventional broadcast TV station.

Nearly all TV producers are launching models that can connect wirelessly to your home broadband in order to be able to access the Online TV services but these models tend to be more costly than the standard models at present. Online Set-Top Boxes are also available, these will convert your existing television so that it can receive Internet TV services even if you aren’t ready to purchase a new television. When Freeview was launched you need at set-top box to use the channels and over a period of time everyone purchased tv’s which had it built in, Smart TV looks set to follow a similar pattern.

Smart TV isnt limited to your telly; You can also use Internet TV through your desktop PC, laptop and most leading games consoles. If you are out and about you can use your tablet PC or even your Smart Phone to see the programme and some of the services even let you pause a programme on your television set and resume from the same point on your Smart Phone.

There are presently 3 primary types of services that can be watched over Smart TV: -.

Commercial Services organisations such as LoveFilm and NetFlix have a collection of many thousands of movies and television programmes which you can watch through your Smart TV. Charges for these services are either charged on a monthly charge model or a pay per view model.

Catch-Up TV These services are operated by the Broadcast tv services and allow you to watch programmes that have been broadcast in the last week or month (depending on the channel). The best know and longest standing services is BBC iPlayer.

Social Media Services such as YouTube permit people to contribution videos, now with internet TV you can watch these in the same way as you can any other online TV service.

The UK competition commission believed that SKY had a dominate position in the pay per view TV market as recently as August 2011. By May 2012 they had decided that the development in the Smart TV market was so rapid that Sky no longer had a dominant position and no action was needed.

Competition between providers of movie services on pay-TV has changed materially and, as a result of these changes, consumers now have much greater choice, said Laura Carstensen from the commission.

Lovefilm and Netflix offer services which are attractive to many consumers and they appear sufficiently well-resourced to be in a position to improve the range and quality of their content further. .

Sky is also due later this year to launch its own internet TV service, called Now TV, which will offer films on a pay-as-you-go or contract basis, without the need for a full subscription.

Given that we no longer find there to be an adverse effect on competition in relation to movies on pay-TV, we are not now proposing any remedial action, Ms Carstensen said.

These comments serve to illustrate the speed of growth of the online TV industry in the UK.

The market is not yet mature and at the current time not every Smart TV or set-top box will allow access to every service.