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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Watch TV On PC

By Jed Elaine

A recent field survey by NBC (NY Times, October 17, 2008) found free Internet streaming TV viewership to be gaining on conventional television - cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcast. By surpassing the quarter mark of total viewing of NBC's TV episodes as yardsticks, NBC has shown that there's no stopping Internet TV now. As with email, messaging, conferencing and telephony, Free TV on PC will soon become a standard internet feature.

Actually, Internet TV is nothing new. It's just that supporting infrastructure had not been in its favor in the early days. Conditions have advanced by heaps by now: broadband access, power PCs, super-sized storage and open hardware, software and networking. On top of it, internet user base volume has also long surpassed the critical mass level. The web is clearly rich for the picking by many an industry, not least Television.

The most well-known versions of television available on the net today are Internet TV, IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), Broadband TV and User Generated Content TV. They may be known by different names but basically, Internet TV is free and unrestricted video streaming, IPTV is a type of commercial TV entertainment, Broadband TV is similar to Internet TV but more Internet than TV as compared to the former which is relatively more TV than Internet and User Generated Content TV is short-clip type streaming best depicted by YouTube.

The appeal of distributing television programming through the internet is unquestionable. Take Internet TV for instance. From the providers' standpoint, it's inexpensive, quick-to-market, has boundless reach and advertising revenue potential or is just simply good advertising itself. For the viewers, the benefits are even more clear-cut, with it being free of charge, global, extensive variety and the ultimate combo of the two greatest favorites, TV and Internet.

It's not uncommon to see people 'multi-tasking' TV and PC these days, especially among the young. Sometimes, it's even purportedly necessary for their new-breed work or studies. Most if not all modern offices and homes have internet wired PCs anyway. So wouldn't streamlining the two activities into one be but only common sense? Plus with this, viewers are not the only one globally mobile, so will be their TV programming too!

True to form of the dynamic world of internet, the web is already inundated with free TV on PC of all shapes and sizes. Many are expectedly quite worthless. Fortunately, the supporting industries have not disappointed either. There is no shortage of computer programs retailing on the net itself that can pick out and organize the choice TV programming for you with their proprietary software. A handful of the industry pioneers are excellent value at only a fraction of what the big-time cable and satellite providers cost.

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