IPTV Vs. Cable

IPTV is a service that certain carriers provide in a business strategy similar to that used by the cable television industry. The customer signs up for the service, gets the set-top box (STB) and receives TV and video-on – demand (VOD) programming similar to

IPTV is a service that some carriers provide in a business model similar to that used by the cable television industry. The customer signs up for the package, gets the set-top box (STB), and provides TV programming and video-on – demand (VOD) close to a cable company’s distribution. The consumer watches programming on a television set then.

However, the main difference between IPTV and cable is that the cable was designed as a one-way transmission network. All the programming available goes from a central head end over a hybrid fiber cable system (HFC) where fiber runs to the neighborhoods. From there the offerings are sent to the home through a coax cable (usually RG-6 / U or equivalent).

The coax drops can number from a few hundred to over a thousand at every neighborhood node where the fiber ends, meaning lots of neighbors share the bandwidth. Does it?? TV matters but speed must be shared for Internet access. An STB with a tuner selects the customer’s desired channel with input.”? Remote controller. Connecting to the Device is through a single cable modem.

While cable is essentially a one-way system, there are so-called reverse channels allowing the STB box to speak to the head end of the cable. The cable company may block any channels for which the customer is not paying.

Cable TV systems use a sophisticated system, developed by CableLabs, called Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS). It splits up the fiber and cable bandwidth into several 6-MHz wide channels. Those channels suit the original analog TV perfectly. They have been used over time to transmit digital television.

Those cables have also increased their bandwidth over the years. Most networks today deliver a maximum bandwidth of 860 MHz or 1 GHz. With the advent of effective video compression and modulation techniques such as multilevel quadrature amplitude modulation ( QAM), cable companies are able to cram two or more digital TV signals into a single 6-MHz channel. And, with very high speeds, those 6-MHz channels make great Internet access spectrum.

The DOCSIS program is now used by most cable providers to deliver Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) at competitive prices. Cable-TV companies are thus the leaders in the market for services with triple-play.

DOCSIS 3.0 uses 256 QAM and bonds together four 6 MHz channels, so the maximum downstream speed is 152 Mbit / s and upstream speed is 108 Mbit / s. 3.0 has yet to be adopted by a few providers, but Comcast has installed it and now offers data rates in some parts of the United States to compete with the current speed leader, Verizonâ?? At FIOS.

IPTV uses the Internet and IP as opposed to cable, and as such is inherently a two-way system. The video is encrypted, compressed and then placed into IP packets. The packets are then sent via fiber, and eventually via an Ethernet connection to the television set.

Because the system is bidirectional, the customer can easily talk to the provider in several ways. That is supposedly one of IPTV’s great advantages over two-way cable transmission. Although it still needs to be thoroughly explored or established as a â?? Mallâ? Nonetheless, this interactivity is said to be the key feature of IPTV.

IPTV is simply a baseband as the cable uses forms of broadband modulation. The more efficient MPEG-4 (H.264) is the prevailing video-compression method, although older systems still use MPEG-2.

Since the future is certainly fibre, several efforts are being made to extend fiber to home (FTTH). AT&T?? Unless they develop a full FTTH solution, s U-vers could be slowed down or some markets unavailable.

Also for the cable industry a FTTH solution has been created. Named RF over Glass (RFoG), it uses the same RF / modulation systems as are also found with the current hybrid coax fiber network. Rather than a local node, the fiber runs directly into the home. The consumers STB normally performs the optical-to-electric conversion at the neighborhood node of the HFC. While it has yet to be adopted, it provides the cable operators with a relatively simple and inexpensive way to upgrade in the future as dictated by competition and customer demand.