Although it is not IPTV Month any longer, there’s one thing that slipped my RSS reader (or rather, was marked for IPTV Month but I never got to it). And that’s the link between a mobile handsets and IPTV. A lot was said and done about mobile TV, and how the Olympic Games were a win for online and mobile content. But the bottom line? People want to see their mobile phone as a simple (and smart) remote control for their set-top boxes. Check out the following question on linked-in: If you could have one service or feature that tied your mobile phone to your livingroom what would it be? It got 16 answers. What do people ask for? Connecting their mobile phone to the PVR so they can record their favorite shows. I’d go a step further and say that full remote control over my home entertainment system would be great - this way, I can use the phone as a remote control for the whole thingamajig that sits in my living room while at home, and program remotely the PVR. It would be nice to have the EPG available directly on my mobile phone as well. And while I’m at it, why not get that iPhone second as a Wii controller?
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | October 6th, 2008 | Filed under Clients, IPTV
September is now over, and so is my IPTV Month here at VoIP Survivor. I’ve tried covering various topics during this month, but ended up focusing on the applications and the future of IPTV - without neglecting the signaling and protocol side of IPTV. There are two ways to view IPTV: As a television that is connected to IP, and then the question is what additional viewing options do you get? From the operator’s perspective, where triple-play and
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | October 1st, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
I recently purchased a Wii gaming console for my wife’s birthday. She is a Pilates teacher, and Wii Fit seemed like a fit present. While working on adding the additional wires to my living room’s overcrowded electronics display, I tried to figure out which electronic device is the real hub of my house. The future of my living room I am not a gadget freak - far from it. But I do have a modest home network, with
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 29th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
RTSP is a must for IPTV today. It is what makes VOD (Video on Demand) work. As a protocol, RTSP is quite simple: you open an HTTP connection and send messages over it that are similar to the physical remote control for video (play, pause, etc.). But will it do? Does IPTV really sum up to a smart web VCR? I already described my future TV, which requires more than that. Can SIP, our Swiss Army Knife, take the
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 25th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV, Standardization
Two days ago I wrote about the reason why IPTV must be interactive. And it’s simple - people expect it to be interactive. I also pointed the great speech Clay Shirky gave at Web 2.0 Expo. I came across another one - this time on TED Talks, where Peter Hirshberg gives the relationship of the computer and the television. Here’s a short transcript from the beginning of this talk: Peter: Let’s listen what happens when they get to
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 24th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
For awhile, I’ve been pitching that IPTV needs to be as interactive as possible. After hearing Clay Shirky’s speech about cognitive surplus (through Chris Andersons’ The Long Tail blog), it becomes easy to understand why IPTV can only work well by being interactive. Clay makes a point that television was there when, all of a sudden, society had too much free time in hand, due to the move towards a five day work week. And now, that we are
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 22nd, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
You can’t discuss communication protocols nowadays without bringing up IMS. Although IMS started as a mobile-centric protocol, it is now all encompassing and also includes IPTV. Since both Packet Cable and TISPAN make use of IMS, IPTV also has an IMS architecture connected to it. IMS for IPTV starts simply from the fact that operators today are mostly triple-play or quad-play players: their services include telephony, television, internet browsing and mobile phones. Quad-play doesn’t mean convergence in any way -
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 18th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
My interest in operating systems for different platforms has already shown itself when talking about mobile handsets. The same question applies to the IPTV world. As we move towards an appliance that sits in the living room and does essentially everything, what operating system will it be using? Are we going to be ruled by Microsoft or by Linux? Windows Microsoft is making moves towards the living room. It started with Windows CE being pushed on set top box manufacturers,
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 15th, 2008 | Filed under Clients, IPTV
I have started this IPTV series with a rant that current IPTV features are not enough. It is time I outline the list of applications for my future TV. Some of them are going to be related with connectivity while others with hard-core technology requirements. I will be skipping the usual suspects of VOD and EPG and assume they simply exist. Here’s the list of the application I’d really like to see in my future TV. 1. Video Telephony
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 11th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
This time, I’ll try focusing on IPTV as it is IPTV month here on the blog. paidContent.org gives some insights to a new chip from Philips that is supposed to handle video decoding and different content streams. I still think there are missing applications, but it’s a nice start. VOD can kill multichannel TV - not with its current pay per view model. IPTV can kill multichannel TV though. 20% of all viewing will be online - does this even matter? As we blur the lines between TV and the Internet, what does it mean? Not exactly IPTV (or VoIP) AND comes from a large site - TechCrunch. We’re now connected to everyone else out there in 3 steps. Not on LinkedIn - I still find people out of my network of connections there - more people should start using it. Mom - care to join? And on a totally different note, Bob Cringley is now promising more than a post a week. This is both good and bad: Good, because he’s always a great read. Bad, because it takes TIME to read his columns. Oh - and the actual content of the post in the link is quite IPTV-related.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 9th, 2008 | Filed under Around the net
