Online TV May Be IPTV's First Step

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 15, 2005 @06:26AM from the baby-steps dept.

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?"

1 of 217 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

I had something like this by niskel · 2005-07-15 06:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.