A Web-to-TV installation provides a way to show streaming television or other over-the-top content from the Internet, to a television set. Various technologies to do this include Home theater PCs (desktop computers running more user-friendly software for TV viewing), digital media receivers (also known as "media extenders", replaying content from a local area network), and Smart TVs (television sets and set-top boxes with Internet capabilities).
Several companies provide media extenders including Netgear and Dlink. Advanced game consoles - Xbox 360 from Microsoft, PS3 from Sony, and the Nintendo Wii - can be configured to stream or view content delivered from a PC on the user's home network.
A new entry from HDMI to Coax connects to the VGA output of a home PC/server and LocalCasts (transmits) it throughout the users house over the existing coax wiring as a normal HD Dolby 5.1 channel that is directly tunable by all connected HDTV's. A unique benefit of this approach is that no additional boxes are required at each TV because only single LocalCast device is required to insert a private channel on the homes coax distribution system. In order to do this the monitor output of the PC is digitized, MPEG2 compressed, and QAM encoded all at HD resolution and in real-time. The LocalCasting PC is controlled with an RF remote or RF keyboard that includes a pointing device to provide normal interactivity with any PC application within a range suitable for the normal home. Another important benefit of this over-the-top approach is that it provides the broadest access to internet content because it supports any content or application that can be viewed on a PC.
HD Encodulators are a new class of device in Digital Video Broadcast (DVB). Encodulators are devices that bundle a digital encoder and an RF agile modulator into one package. Encodulators accept uncompressed video as either HD or SD and encode the source to an MPEG transport stream. This transport stream can be based on either MPEG-2 or MPEG-4(H.264) broadcasting codecs. Once the video is encoded it is passed on to the modulator component of the device. The agile modulator overlays the MPEG transport stream onto a high frequency carrier wave for DTV broadcast. In the US this is typically in the 50 - 900 MHz range for terrestrial television, and 900 - 2600 MHz for satellite distribution. Standards used for terrestrial broadcast are 8-level Vestigial Sideband Modulation (8VSB) for over the air, and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) for cable TV. A typical example of an encodulator are the units from Thor Broadcast. These units include both a high definition encoder and a frequency agile modulator for all major DVB modulation types. Many more manufacturers are moving to this sort of consolidated hardware platform. In the last year other manufacturers such as Comlan have released similar units. In the future we will see more and more broadcasting companies moving to consolidated equipment, both to save on rackspace and on cost.
KylinTV provides a "box" that serves a number of Chinese language web channels. The service is sold on a monthly subscription basis. Time Warner cable announced plans to offer a web to TV solution.
Sony Bravia Internet Link provides Web to TV without a PC.
Sony has also announced plans to integrate this functionality into future TVs. Several major TV suppliers have made similar claims. The advent of high performance, low cost processors from ARM and Intel will ultimately bring the Web to (every) TV.
8VSB is the modulation method used for broadcast in the ATSC digital television standard. ATSC and 8VSB modulation is used primarily in North America; in contrast, the DVB-T standard uses COFDM.
Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) of the European Telecommunications Standardisé Institute (ETSI), European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting — Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in February, 1998. This system transmits compressed digital audio, digital video and other data in an MPEG transport stream, using coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing modulation. It is also the format widely used worldwide for Electronic News Gathering for transmission of video and audio from a mobile newsgathering vehicle to a central receive point. It is also used in the US by Amateur television operators.
Digital Video Broadcasting - Cable (DVB-C) is the DVB European consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital television over cable. This system transmits an MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 family digital audio/digital video stream, using a QAM modulation with channel coding. The standard was first published by the ETSI in 1994, and subsequently became the most widely used transmission system for digital cable television in Europe, Asia and South America. It is deployed worldwide in systems ranging from the larger cable television networks (CATV) down to smaller satellite master antenna TV (SMATV) systems.
Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are an American set of standards for digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. It is largely a replacement for the analog NTSC standard and, like that standard, is used mostly in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and South Korea. Several former NTSC users, in particular Japan, have not used ATSC during their digital television transition, because they adopted their own system called ISDB.
A cable television headend is a master facility for receiving television signals for processing and distribution over a cable television system. A headend facility may be staffed or unstaffed and is typically surrounded by some type of security fencing. The building is typically sturdy and purpose-built to provide security, cooling, and easy access for the electronic equipment used to receive and re-transmit video over the local cable infrastructure. One can also find head ends in power-line communication (PLC) substations and Internet communications networks.
Broadcast television systems are the encoding or formatting systems for the transmission and reception of terrestrial television signals.
Hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) is a telecommunications industry term for a broadband network that combines optical fiber and coaxial cable. It has been commonly employed globally by cable television operators since the early 1990s.
Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite - Second Generation (DVB-S2) is a digital television broadcast standard that has been designed as a successor for the popular DVB-S system. It was developed in 2003 by the Digital Video Broadcasting Project, an international industry consortium, and ratified by ETSI in March 2005. The standard is based on, and improves upon DVB-S and the electronic news-gathering system, used by mobile units for sending sounds and images from remote locations worldwide back to their home television stations.
A home theater PC (HTPC) or media center computer is a convergent device that combines some or all the capabilities of a personal computer with a software application that focuses on video, photo, audio playback, and sometimes video recording functionality. Since the mid-2000s, other types of consumer electronics, including game consoles and dedicated media devices, have crossed over to manage video and music content, such as the PlayStation 3 and the Apple TV. The term "media center" also refers to specialized application software designed to run on standard personal computers.
The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards are presented by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), while the separate Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards are given by its sister organization the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS).
Dreambox is a series of Linux-powered DVB satellite, terrestrial and cable digital television receivers, produced by German multimedia vendor Dream Multimedia.
Asynchronous Serial Interface, or ASI, is a method of carrying an MPEG Transport Stream (MPEG-TS) over 75-ohm copper coaxial cable or optical fiber. It is popular in the television industry as a means of transporting broadcast programs from the studio to the final transmission equipment before it reaches viewers sitting at home.
TiVo digital video recorders encompass a number of digital video recorder (DVR) models that TiVo Corporation designed. Features may vary, but a common feature is that all of the units listed here require TiVo service and use its operating system.
Hierarchical modulation, also called layered modulation, is one of the signal processing techniques for multiplexing and modulating multiple data streams into one single symbol stream, where base-layer symbols and enhancement-layer symbols are synchronously overplayed before transmission.
A digital television adapter (DTA), commonly known as a converter box or decoder box, is a television tuner that receives a digital television (DTV) transmission, and converts the digital signal into an analog signal that can be received and displayed on an analog television set. Some also have an HDMI output since some TVs with HDMI do not have a digital tuner. The input digital signal may be over-the-air terrestrial television signals received by a television antenna, or signals from a digital cable system. It normally does not refer to satellite TV, which has always required a set-top box either to operate the big satellite dish, or to be the integrated receiver/decoder (IRD) in the case of direct-broadcast satellites (DBS).
DVB-T2 is an abbreviation for "Digital Video Broadcasting — Second Generation Terrestrial"; it is the extension of the television standard DVB-T, issued by the consortium DVB, devised for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television. DVB has been standardized by ETSI.
A digital media player is a type of consumer electronics device designed for the storage, playback, or viewing of digital media content. They are typically designed to be integrated into a home cinema configuration, and attached to a television and/or AV receiver.
GB-PVR was a PVR application, running on Microsoft Windows, whose main function was scheduling TV recordings and playing back live TV. GB-PVR is no longer under active development and has been superseded by NextPVR, also known as nPVR.
A TV gateway is a television headend to a network UPnP router that receives live digital video broadcast (DVB) MPEG transport streams (channels) from terrestrial aerials, satellite dishes, or cable feeds and converts them into IP streams for distribution over an IP network.