Broadcast over Internet, HbbTV, OTT, Streaming

Abstract

Even the first edition of this book discussed already the convergence of broadcasting and the Internet. Works on the first English edition began in the year 2001, when access to the Internet from the home was fairly slow and was not suitable for television broadcast applications. In addition, the performance of the codecs of the time was far from what we experience today. The typical Internet data rate available in households around the year 2000 was approx. 55 kbit/s. Then simple telephone modems or in best case bonded ISDN channels were available. Even the professional company data links did not exceed data rates of about 2 Mbit/s. This situation changed drastically in urban areas especially from 2004. Twisted pair telephone lines enabled the use of ADSL [ITU-T G.992] (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) systems with data rates of 2 Mbit/s and beyond, while VDSL links [ITU-T G.993] (Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line) allowed data rates of 10–16 Mbit/s. Nowadays these figures reach up to 100 Mbit/s and beyond. However, ADSL and especially VDSL provide such transfer rates on only relatively short distances, ranging from some 100 m up to some km from the DSL access point (DSLAM―Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer). VDSL-DSLAMs are installed in street cabinets along pedestrian walkways, fed by fiber optic cables, while the homes are still supplied by classic twisted pair telephone cables.