Friday, January 16, 2009

Watch TV On PC

By Jed Elaine

According to a recent report on TV viewership data gathered by NBC (NY Times, October 17, 2008), free Internet streaming is the most popular alternative to traditional television, accounting for roughly a quarter of total viewing based on field surveys of their TV episodes. Aside from streaming, paid downloads, VOD (video on demand) and mobile viewing were also assessed but their numbers were insignificant at best. The impressive amount of Internet streaming has indeed cast the writing on the wall for free TV on PC.

Boosted by power-packed PCs, multi-media peripherals and broadband transmission, all the historical setbacks upon Internet TV are now a thing of the past. The volume of internet users has also long exceeded the critical mass level for the economy of scale in both technological and commercial terms. This is well-demonstrated by the wide spectrum of industries already exercising a footprint on the web so why not Television?

Different kinds of television are distributed over the internet nowadays and the few most notable ones are Internet TV (ITV), Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), Broadband TV and User Generated Content TV (UGC TV). To broadly distinguish among themselves; ITV is free open-format video streaming, IPTV is closed and usually require set-top boxes governed under pay-per-view or subscription structure, Broadband TV is much like ITV with extended real-time interactive capabilities such as messaging, on-demand media, images and UGC TV are basically free-style individual short clips such as the immensely popular YouTube.

Like the other free services that are already in existence on the net such as email, messaging , Internet TV is without question a win-win proposition for both providers and users. It's essentially another platform of the media industry and this one is low-cost and easy entry for providers, not to mention it already enjoys an enormous patronage, and growing. Viewer-wise, it's even harder to ignore the deal especially for those with the internet habit and routine in their daily life.

It's not uncommon to see people 'multi-tasking' TV and PC these days, especially among the young. Sometimes, it's even purportedly necessary for their new-breed work or studies. Most if not all modern offices and homes have internet wired PCs anyway. So wouldn't streamlining the two activities into one be but only common sense? Plus with this, viewers are not the only one globally mobile, so will be their TV programming too!

Having that said, the sheer volume and choice of raw free TV on PC can be overwhelming but the solution to this have been quick to emerge. How else but ? Since the television programming is viewed through the PC, it's almost automatic that computer software program would be employed to control and organize the access, download and watching of TV on PC. There is a handful of proprietary software retailing on the net that do an excellent job of it and as free TV on PC evolve, these software would only get better. - 2361

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