Till the recent past, television could only be available through cable, terrestrial systems or satellite. Now, it has become available over the Internet. Streaming Internet television on an Internet place, such as a website are the primary models for this. The speed of Internet is much faster in today's day and age, what with technological advances, cheaper connection costs and practically millions of people online everyday.



Traditional TV content is available for free and can be legitimately distributed over the World Wide Web and many people are viewing TV online now. In addition, there is some Internet-only content that satellite, cable or terrestrial providers cannot broadcast and which can only be viewed online.

The process behind Internet television is that it uses the Internet connections to transmit a video to a target from a source. Thus the Internet is the connecting medium between you and the source, and it lets you watch TV online. Internet TV is used in the following ways: watching it on your home TV with the help of a set-top box or a direct connection from your computer, or on your computer itself, or on a portable device such as your cell phone. Also, interactive advertising and viewing any low budget, home video productions to more expensive and professional productions can be accessed through Internet television.

Internet TV can also show live channels, just like regular TV, or allow you to watch a show you like with VOD, or Video On Demand. Internet TV also allows for streams that can be recorded or copy protect streams. It can come for free, with subscriptions or fees, or advertisement supported. Internet television has many options. In the past, streaming technology and limited bandwidth made viewing television in the Internet a difficult task. Low bandwidth results in poor quality viewing.

Then the Dirac project done by BBC created a high-quality and scalable free codec for video streaming online. Internet television has been gaining so much popularity that a few companies have even developed the existing pay TV channels to TV sets over the Internet. They still have control over how it is used, though. It is necessary for the purposes of protecting pay-per-view and subscription models. In addition, the distribution of all kinds of media is copyright protected. There needs to be a balance between copyright and copyright associated revenue, and another delivery model for video at the same time. VOD or Video On Demand on the Internet uses another way.

The good thing about VOD is that it lets you select what you want to watch. In that sense, it is very interactive. Using the net for two-way communications will inevitably encourage interactive video content and make a lot of things possible which regular TV can't possibly do. This includes choosing from many camera angles, ordering a product sample and voting on an interactive show while you watch. Internet TV can be both free and subscription based, and it seems that it is catching on now like never before.