Homeowner Entertainment
First of all, The IPTV technology will raise the challenge to get entertainment budget from the homeowners, and this challenge will give a chance to telephone companies to compete with the standard television, cable television and satellite operators. In terms of subscribers and revenue, homeowner entertainment will stand for the largest application for IPTV service. Homeowner entertainment expected to achieve rapid growth in the near future, with that in mind this section will describe and discuss potential features of IPTV.
Digital Television
As mentioned earlier in this research, IPTV is based on a pull-push technology, which means by the request of the user service provider will stream the video on a selected output device. Currently Digital Television is the most trendy entertainment provider and it has a great capability of being compressed, so that it will be the primary application for IPTV service. Unlike, the cable and satellite television, IPTV service provider would transmit the requested video, and it could provide an unlimited number of channel viewing. Moreover, Cable and Satellite television is broadcasting has their TV programming schedule and because of the current broadcasting technology they can broadcast only one programming regardless of whether anyone is watching it. However in IPTV distribution development would enable the service provider to offer a great many of content and the content will be played when the users demands it. Thus, the IPTV architecture differs from the architecture of broadcast television and this enables to offer different and enhanced programming to match the demand of subscribers.
On-Demand Video
Cable and Satellite television providers has been delivering pay-per-view movies, sporting events and musical events or other programming to the subscribers for a long time. In comparison to cable and satellite VoD delivery, IPTV delivery is going to be much better. The main reason, why IPTV VoD delivery is going to be far superior is hidden in the fact that the new delivery method can provide unlimited programming where the earlier technology can provide limited to a few channels, which can provide limited content to the subscribers [7]. The process of VoD service is consists of three phases, first, a query, which is generated by the subscriber; send to the servers via STB, and then the data flows to the STB as a response to the query.
Figure 1: VOD structure [8]
IPTV can provide VoD service to the different scalable outputs, and this is the notable feature of it [9]. One contemporary example for IPTV VoD service is the iTunes Music store[1], which is launched by Apple Computer. The iTunes Music store began to sell one of the best television series Lost’s episodes for 1.99$ one day after the original broadcasting time. Apple Computer has also made a deal with Walt Disney Co, which is the parent of ABC television; Apple also delivers the old and new episodes of several hit television serials such as Pushing Daisies, Desperate Housewives to its users. In one year, Apple Computer’s novelty development was delivering more than two million songs, twenty thousand podcasts, two thousand music videos and several Disney and ABC television contents, which can be downloaded to the customers Mac or PC.
Business Television
Even if the main target market for IPTV is the consumer and household, however this new technology is correspondent for developing business applications over IPTV. For instance, in the finance industry, employee would like to check the changes instantly, and you can stream business television to employees desktop. In a business
Server environment, each local area network Workstation can be assigned to a different IP address. This enables to stream distinct video streams to various employees. For example, numerous employees might demand access to Bloomberg, while the other employees need to access CNBC or other finance based programming. Additional to that, due to the fact that IPTV can be scaled on a different ratios, it makes available to employees watch the requested services, while they are continuing their other operations on the same screen.
Corporate Communications
In the companies, mostly the chief executive or a corporate officer needs to give speech to the employees. In a traditional situation, for the corporate officer to announce the reasons of earnings getting up or down, the influence of a new product line, employee benefit plan changes or any other topics that need to be explained to the employees, one or numerous auditorium sessions are organized. The use of an auditorium in a conventional manner to brighten a recent event or declare a new policy can take a considerable time and effort. In case the auditorium is scheduled for some other event, the management to move an event to a different area and time could be significant. For instance, in Turkey, Digiturk, which is an satellite broadcaster, is providing corporate communication opportunity. This enables the companies to give online sessions to their employees without travelling or time requirement.
Additional to that, since employees will spend time to come and go from the site and to try to get a seat for using the auditorium; employee work rate can noticeably be influenced. Compared to this situation, by typing a message which is accessible by downloading via IPTV, the corporate officer may have the opportunity to be just one mouse-click away from the employees. Hence, employees could see the video at their spare time without stopping their work for visiting the auditorium or another conference room after alerted to the accessibility of the video by an e-mail which contains a URL to click. Just like that, the employee productivity can noticeably be increased by the use of IPTV for corporate communications.
Distance Learning
It is hard to be in two places while you are studying or working in college or other institutions, however, the current power and facility of distance learning makes it available to the public. Actually, the lecturers of data communications course in Macon, Georgia, used distant learning tools to teach the course. This was synchronously broadcasted to the monitors located in Milegeville, Georgia, which is the home of Georgia State University and College and to the learning centre at Robbins Air Force Base. Distance learning can be completed by the help of teleconferencing equipment, additional to that, using IPTV infrastructure with teleconferencing equipments, will increase the power of distance learning and locations will increase respectively.
Currently, distant education equipments are not full filling the requirements of the students; however, changing the existing technology with IPTV service will make a big difference [10]. Apart from the video, audio delivery is needed to interact with the instructor, rather than selecting one person to serve the microphone, IPTV service will collect the audio data from differentiated microphones. IPTV can be the milestone for the distant learning facility. Because the content will be scaled according to output, the academic person can track its course whenever and wherever they want. There are a lot of solutions available to provide IPTV distance learning, but the Figure below shows the typical structure for distance learning.
Figure 2: Example of IPTV distance learning structure. [11]
Moreover, Turk Telekom launched an infrastructure called “Vitamin”. This model combines the CoD with learning facility and it is delivering content to the elementary students around Turkey. Mobility of the people is increasing and with the improvements on current internet technology, the students will able to get their lessons to their mobile phones.
Video Chat
Chat rooms are one of the most preferred attributes related with the Internet and they are generally served by distinct Web portals and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The primary aim to use a chat room is commonly to exchange views on numerous different topics in a spectrum of popular culture subjects like Big Brother to education, politics and science. Not only people mostly participate in a chat room nameless but also sometimes the chat tool demands people to identify themselves before accessing the facility. When an individual enters a chat room, he/she can see the identifications of other people in the room at that time and what they are talking about by the texts they sent to the room.
The necessity to type text for chatting takes a considerable time between people who want to interact even if these chat room mechanisms are well-known and favoured for idea and view traffic between individuals. However, it will be possible to use a video chat facility by the use of Internet Protocol Television. Each individual could put a camera with microphone on their monitor and video chat room operator can get audio-visual by this camera. Users could see all of the chat room attendants in their subdivided screen with the help of applicable software. This software could also allow people to click on the image of a person to see it on full screen. Mostly used ‘messenger’ programs provided by Web portals like Yahoo, will change and evolve with the alternatives of video chat. These messenger programs, in which people compose friends list and communicate by texting messages, could be considerably developed by the use of video chat.
Mobile Television
Recently, mobile phone television is developing rapidly, essentially in Asia; users are watching television content through their multimedia devices mostly on their mobile phones, and this development and usage will jump to the other continents rather than later [12]. This is a sign that our mobile phones will change according to the development of mobile delivery. Mobile phone producers are equipping mobile phones with required components to watch online or stored content. Moreover, the new phones equipped with Wi-Fi support, as this feature provided, phones are capable to connect internet with hot spots, and this capability makes online content available to the users, even, in the near future 3G internet accesses will allow users to watch television programming without connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots. Thus, it is obvious that we will get the programming in our pockets soon. The second phase of television programming is stored content viewing; recently Disney is offering its films in micro-SD cards [13], in the near future, it is evident that television series will be served in digital secured cards, so users will just plug in that card into the mobile phone and if the mobile phone equipped with required hardware, users will able watch the content stored in the card.
