In most Western nations there are about 500 TV sets per 1,000 people, but in Australia and the United States – where 75% of households have two or more TVs – the figure is more than 800 sets.

Our typical per capita daily viewing is more than four hours for adults and six for children.

Television viewers today have access to more content from more sources, and they want it on demand rather than at times dictated by the networks and advertising income.

Devices such as digital video recorders (DVRs) from TiVO, Slingbox and Foxtel’s iQ offer some ‘smarts’, but the single biggest advance in user interaction and control is the Internet.

High-speed broadband – using ADSL2+, VDSL or fibre to the home (FTTH) – has had a dramatic effect on mainstream channels. And the ‘fast tracking’ of programs from the United States is causing networks to rethink how they deliver programming (and make money).

Channel Nine has offered various programs, including Macleod’s Daughters, The Strip, Canal Road and Sea Patrol via its website for nearly two years, calling it ‘Catch up TV’.

Channel Ten started doing the same this year with Rove, Kenny’s World, Rush, Neighbours and Good News Week.

But of all the channels, the ABC has the most extensive online viewing options with its iView system.

These networks and the use of Internet protocol have created an alternative delivery method for television and other video services such as YouTube and Apple’s iTunes video rental.

Television is now being delivered using the broadband medium IPTV, or Internet Protocol Television, which encodes MPEG-based digital video signals in a series of Internet protocol packets that are delivered over a packet-based network such as Ethernet.

If you have watched a video clip from YouTube, then, in its broadest sense, you have used IPTV. But when most people in the industry talk about IPTV, they mean watching conventional channels with a high-resolution, jitter-free picture.

The difference

So what is the difference between IPTV and conventional broadcast TV? In a word: control. IPTV, being based on a two-way protocol, gives the user greater interactivity with the medium and the content. The provider can better meet the wishes of the user, who has influence over the programs and timing.

IPTV is the engine that will drive the new era of interactive content. The success or failure of operators – free and pay – will depend on them being ahead of the game with the new technologies, content formats and business models IPTV ushers in.

In its simplest form, we already have access to interactive features of IPTV – the ‘trick play’ functions of pause, rewind and fast forward that we find on DVRs such as TiVO. This does not allow us to change the content or its inherent linearity, only how we control the viewing and when we view it.

At the next level, IPTV features allow you to ‘touch’ the program content, perhaps by ordering a product being advertised or voting on a reality TV show via your remote control.

In its most sophisticated form, IPTV will immerse you in the program – the content itself being changed by viewer input.

Get ready to use your TV for much more than simply viewing free-to-air programming.

We are beginning to see some of this interactivity in the Australian market, mainly on pay TV provider Foxtel. Foxtel’s ‘Red Button’ gives limited interaction – the data is already imbedded in the content stream, so it is not the true interactivity of two-way communication.

Video on Demand (VoD) is another advantage of IPTV. Unlike the ‘near video on demand’ offered by Foxtel, it gives you the freedom to choose from a variety of content and start watching when you want – pausing, fast forwarding and rewinding.

It is just like watching a DVD, the main difference being that it is delivered using IP and can be received online and in real time.

VoD has been a great success in other markets, particularly Asia, but the problem for Australia has been the restrictive licensing agreements with the Hollywood movie houses, the distribution channel and our lack of high-speed broadband networks.

In Asia there are about 22 million broadband subscribers connected with fibre, and in the US there are 3.7 million, offering the networks and the market scale to enable a new business model for the delivery of premium video content.

Australia has fewer than 8,000 subscribers connected with fibre. Although we have many ADSL2+ subscribers, to deliver a quality IPTV and therefore VoD service the content providers expect a secure network with suitable electronic protections.

Also, the video stream needs to have a low latency 6-8Mbps dedicated circuit with quality of service, which is something no ADSL2+ network in Australia offers.

Converged services

The most exciting advantage of IPTV is in converged services. Many of us have a smart phone, such as Apple’s iPhone, which enables us to make calls, synchronise contacts and calendars, and use email.

Converged services on television enable us to watch programs, read email, answer the phone, check local weather, look at fuel prices, order food, browse the Internet, or plan a trip and then download it to a GPS device.

Convergence for television also means we have more variety of content, which can be from YouTube, RooMedia, ABC online, NineMSN – or any of the multitudes of online sources that provide short-play videos.

Verizon in the US has made great use of the IPTV platform to deliver converged services. It has a unique approach of using a hybrid of RF and IPTV.

Content such as standard pay TV channels is provided over the RF medium (albeit via FTTH) – a proven and very reliable technology.

Interactive content, including VoD and a large array of converged services, is delivered over the IP medium.

FiOS – Verizon’s product name for its FTTH and IPTV solution – gives viewers the ability to select from a number of content sources all managed by little applications and icons.

IPTV and the convergence of content is about using a medium that we frequently take for granted and applying new paradigms for its use. I once heard it described as ‘lean forward’ television – users are encouraged to interact more with the content, thus making them ‘lean forward’ and become more aware, rather than being a typical couch potato.

At the moment, neither Foxtel nor Austar supports residential deployment of their content using an IPTV medium. They still have several commercial and technical hurdles to overcome.

Because of this delay, and the lack of quality VoD content, it will be some time before IPTV goes mainstream in Australia.

By 2010, it is estimated 400 million households around the world will have access to the new medium.