With VOIP starting to become mainstream and a lot a large service providers having offerings for internet telephone, the question is what’s next? My guess is IPTV. Hardware for this type of service has started to take off with sales expecting to exceed $6.8B, and subscribers up to 68.9M by 2009, which I read over at IPTV news.
I have yet to find anyone with a set top box that delivers IPTV. But I know of a decent amount of sites that have streaming TV and movies by providing Television over IP. These are great services, but the quality sucks. I still find myself watching episodes of Lost or Heroes the day after if I miss the show because of work.
In an article over at IPTV-Forum they boost that Spain has 200,000 subscribers to MaLigne TV service. Although reading through the article it seems that most early adopters are countries other than the United States. I would guess this is because of the monopoly of the current cable networks.
So will IPTV and TV over IP co-exist? Once the quality and buffering of streaming tv becomes better I know I will find myself watching more shows, news, and movies over the internet than watching normal broadcast TV. I think I’m willing to watch "free" TV with Ads, than pay for TV and still have Ads. If you do a search for online TV there are quite a few listings for streaming video.
Cool links for Streaming TV.
ChannelChooser
Live Online TV
Free Tube
also check out ABC, NBC, and FOX all provide shows the next day.
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