Travis, There is an important distinction to be made between IPTV and Internet TV; IPTV is simply television delivered over IP whereas Internet TV is IPTV delivered over the Internet.
This is an important distinction because no service provider (that I know of) is actually providing Internet TV, for the reasons that you defined--regulating quality of service over the Internet at large to deliver a solid customer experience with video is difficult. (There are some standalone offerings (such as joost) available over the Internet). All things considered, many of these services, using a combination of good content networks, compression, and buffering, do deliver a reasonably good user experience, although not as flawless as traditional television. However, IPTV itself is in use and is a very solid technology. IPTV is simply using IP as a delivery mechanism; usually, the service is located on the providers network and so has a very controlled path to the end user with little to no opportunity for service interuption. While the Internet at large may have variances in quality; your own network probably is (or should be!) of a consistantly good quality. There are many examples of very high quality IPTV implimentations that deliver at least as good of an experience as traditional television. IPTV over wireless is a different story, though, and is a bit of a technical feat due to the nature of wireless and the limited bandwidth. The main restriction, however, for most service providers isn't technical--the technology is sound and works quite well (wireless has some issues but is not impossible), but the simple problem of obtaining content. -- Clint Ricker Kentnis Technologies 800.783.5753 -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
