Online TV May Be IPTV's First Step

An anonymous reader writes "According to the San Diego Union Tribune Time Warner Cable is letting its customers in San Diego watch live television over their hi-speed internet PCs via 'Online TV'. Time Warner's Broadband TV service (no cost above the min system requirement of cable and hi-speed modem) offers the identical '80 channels that are available with its standard cable TV service.' According to Judy Walsh, Time Warner's San Diego division president, 'It's basically like having another outlet for watching TV. It's TV on your PC. It's that simple.' Is this really the first step towards full-fledged IPTV or is this a service for dad's who can't wrestle the remote control from their kids?"

Comments

I had something like this

[niskel]

My ISP has/had (I don't know, or care, any more) a service like this for a while. Whil not as robust as this, it had ~8 channels. News, Comedy, TechTV/G4, TSN, Much Music and some other stuff. In this situation though, the buffer was always underunning. The picture quality was sub par for even regular streaming video. On top of all this, it was incompatible with anything but Internet Explorer. You could look at he source if you were clever though to get the stream addresses but as a regular consumer service, you shouldn't have to. My experience with Internet TV has been poor so I may be biased, this new service may be great but I'll believe it when I see it.

Re:What is the point or purpose of IPTV?

[overshoot]

Can someone enlighten me why IPTV matters?

IPTV forever frees the broadcasters from the shackles of fair use: with Microsoft's help, they can dictate whatever terms they like for viewing.

IPTV also frees the system manfacturers from the shackles of competing with an installed base: at any time, they can declare your particular display, computer, hard drive, etc. to be noncompliant and the system will stop working until you upgrade.

Between these two, it's a Brave New World for two business sectors which were facing market saturation and declining revenues.

Re:57 channels and nothing on ...

[AtariAmarok]

"No matter which pipe delivers it, TV is still the intellectual equivalent of raw sewage"

The same is true of books and everything else. Television is subject to Sturgeon's Law no more and no less than everything else. The "smash your television!" mentality is dangerous close to the book-burner's mentality.