Quote:
Originally Posted by oliver1948uk
. . . until something goes wrong and when they switch on for Coronation Street and the screen is blank. I would not like to trust the current state of the internet to bring TV channels 24/7
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That's the problem with IPTV. Lots to go wrong.
With Terrestrial Broadcast TV, there is still a lot that can go wrong, but there is also redundancy built in to almost every part of the system apart from the consumer equipment watching it. Even without the redundancy, the path is considerably more direct, which reduces the chances of failure itself.
I'm over simplifying, but the path each broadcast takes is essentially Broadcaster>Transmission Network Control Center>Transmitter>User's device.
The path taken for IPTV is essentially Content provider>Content Delivery Network>Internet>User's ISP>Internet>User. On the fact of it, not as complicated, but the term "Internet" covers potentially dozens of points of failure, including the ISPs local network, and any transatlantic links. Now, the Content Delivery Network is a form of redundancy itself as it should bypass any faults. The user's ISP should also have redundant links, at least to the major IPTV services, but there is still the problem of the local network that still introduces a lot of potential failure points. Most consumer ISPs will have redundancy on their connections to the internet, but that redundancy probably doesn't spread to the users.