Impressions on IPTV from TVoDSL

By Tsahi Levent-Levi

Categories: IPTV

February 5th, 2008

Last week I had the opportunity to present at TVoDSL 2008. What did I learn at the conference?

1. IPTV revolves around 3 concepts today:
   • Quality
   • Interactivity
   • UGC
2. Most people use Google Reader

Quality

Quality is key in IPTV. Using the IP medium means that you can’t guarantee quality the same way you can in traditional TV broadcasting. A lot of effort is being invested by companies to improve quality - through better video encoding, forward error correction, faster channel switching, testing and monitoring solutions, etc.

Interactivity

That’s the main reason why IPTV is being pushed forward. With the internet as a medium, you can do a lot more interactivity. Most talk about VOD (Video On Demand) or EPG (Electronic Program Guide).

UGC

User Generated Content. This is what sites like YouTube or Facebook mean today - you build the infrastructure and then let users fill it up with content. This is why many IPTV vendors look at UGC. It was tackled by how to create TV content in a UGC fashion, how to build the network infrastructure that will allow it, and how to show UGC on TV.

Google Reader

People sitting at the conference with their laptops were getting updated on their RSS feeds using Google Reader. Exhibitors used their own personal laptops for the same purpose when they didn’t have people to present their demonstrations to. This is probably part of the UGC trend today that IPTV should watch and capture as well somehow.

What do I think?

IPTV is important. Quality, interactivity and UGC will be key factors in persuading people to migrate to IPTV. Adding video conferencing as an enabler - which is what I presented there, can improve both interactivity and UGC. Video conferencing here is not the service - it is the enabler to interact with others using live video - services are added on top of it as needed.

Below you can see the presentation I gave there.

UPDATE: You can find the program of this conference, along with all the presentations here.