A Web-to-TV installation provides a way to show

streaming television Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air a ...

or other over-the-top content from the Internet, to a

television set A television set or television receiver, more commonly called the television, TV, TV set, telly, tele, or tube, is a device that combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers, for the purpose of viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or using ...

. Various technologies to do this include

Home theater PC A home theater PC (HTPC) or media center computer is a technological convergence, 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 ...

s (desktop computers running more user-friendly software for TV viewing),

digital media receiver A digital media player (also sometimes known as a streaming device or streaming box) is a type of consumer electronics device designed for the storage, playback, or viewing of digital media content. They are typically designed to be integr ...

s (also known as "media extenders", replaying content from a local area network), and

Smart TV A smart TV, also known as a connected TV (CTV), is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features, which allows users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart TVs are a techn ...

s (television sets and

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...

es with Internet capabilities).

Media extenders

Several companies provide media extenders including Netgear and Dlink. Advanced game consoles -

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...

from Microsoft, PS3 from Sony, and the

Nintendo Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

- can be configured to stream or view content delivered from a PC on the user's home network.

LocalCasting

A new entry fro
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 High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

'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.

Video on demand

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 Uncompressed video is digital video that either has never been compressed or was generated by decompressing previously compressed digital video. It is commonly used by video cameras, video monitors, video recording devices (including general-purp ...

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 fro
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.

Content subscription

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.

Internet-ready TV

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 fro

an

will ultimately bring the Web to (every) TV.

Press references

IP Business NewsDigital Media NewsProgrammer, Technology Provider and Analyst CommentsActiveVideo Networks Unveils First Platform To Bring Web 2.0

External links

Web to TV
category news Streaming television