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Information Technology News Open IPTV Forum faces hurdle
Information Technology News Open IPTV Forum faces hurdle | Open IPTV Forum faces hurdle |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Wednesday, 21 March 2007 | |
  
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Open IPTV Forum is to be applauded for its plan to fill in the gaps between existing standards used in conjunction with IPTV - such as 3GPP, DVB and DLNA - but the original membership list gives the impression that the focus will be on delivering traditional TV services to set-top boxes, except that IP networks will take the place of today's cable and satellite services. That's fine for the network operators and their hardware suppliers - and international standardisation can also help keep prices down by removing the need for limited production runs to meet the specifications required by small markets. Consumers may also benefit in terms of picture quality if all the content producers adopt the same standards so that not transcoding is required (some US sports coverage is technically dire by the time it reaches my screen via Foxtel). Many people don't care about the technology, they just want to watch TV and a set-top box is fine for them. But have we forgotten about convergence? The lounge room TV is still the major device for watching content, but we're increasingly consuming TV-style content on our computers and mobile devices. Membership of the Forum will not be opened further until the founding members publish their first set of standards. Let's hope that's not too late to get the guys from Redmond and Cupertino on board.{moscomment} |
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