Television In The Online Age

Concept:
Internet television allows the users to choose the program or the TV show they want to watch from an archive of programs or from a channel directory. The two forms of viewing Internet television are streaming the content directly to a media player or simply downloading the program to the user's computer. With the "TV on Demand" market growing, these on demand websites or applications are a must have for major television broadcasters. For example the BBC's iPlayer brings in users which stream more than one million videos per week, with one of the BBC's headline shows "The Apprentice" taking over 3 - 5% of the UK's internet traffic due to people watching the first episode on iPlayer.
Every night the use of On Demand TV peaks at around 10 pm, most providers of the service provide several different formats and quality controls so that the service can be viewed on many different devices. Some services now offer a HD service along side their SD, streaming is the same but offers the quality of HD to the device being used, as long as it is using a HD screen. During Peak times the BBC's iPlayer transmits 12 GB (gigabytes) of information per second. Over the course of a month the iPlayer sends 7 PB (petabytes) of information.
Before 2006, most Catch-up services used peer-to-peer (P2P) networking, in which users downloaded an application and data would be shared between the users rather than the service provider giving the now more commonly used streaming method. Now most service providers have moved away from the P2P systems and are now using the streaming media. This is good for the service provider as in the old P2P system the distribution costs were high and the servers normally couldn't handle the large amount of downloading and data transfer.

Control:
Controlling content on the Internet presents a challenge for most providers; to try to ensure that a user is allowed to view content such as programmes with age certificates, providers use methods such as parental controls that allows restrictions to be placed upon the use and access of certificated material. The BBC iPlayer makes use of a parental control system giving parents the option to "lock" content, meaning that a password would have to be used to access it. Flagging systems can be used to warn a user that content may be certified or that it may be post watershed for a programme. Honor systems are also used where users are asked for their dates of birth or age to verify if they are able to view certain content.

Broadcasting Rights:
Broadcasting rights change from country to country and even within provinces of countries. These rights govern the distribution of copyrighted content and media and allow the sole distribution of that content at any one time.
An example of programmes only being aired in certain countries is BBC iPlayer. Users can only stream content from iPlayer from Britain because the BBC only allows free use of their product for users within Britain because those users pay a TV license to fund part of the BBC.
Broadcasting rights can also be restricted to allowing a broadcaster rights to distribute that content for a limited time. Channel 4’s online service 4OD can only stream shows created in the US by companies such as “HBO” for 30 days after they are aired on one of the Channel 4 group channels. This is to boost DVD sales for the companies who produce that media.
Some companies pay very large amounts for broadcasting rights with sports and US sitcoms usually fetching the highest price from UK based broadcasters.
Profits And Costs:
With the exception of Internet connectivity costs many online television channels or sites are free. These sites maintain this free TV policy through the use of advertising, short commercials and banner adverts may show up before a video is played. An example of this is on the abc.com catch up website; in place of the advert breaks on normal television a short 30 second advert is played. This short advertising time means that the user does not get fed up and money can be made off of advertising, to allow web designers to offer quality content which would otherwise cost. This is how online TV makes a profit.