It’s during the last few years when the television-watching public experienced an apparent tectonic shift of viewer habits, especially in Canada. The emergence of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) has led to people looking for creative ways of watching their favorite shows apart from the traditional cable offering. Indian IPTV—they’re doing it too—is not just a fashionable statement, but manifests a serious, albeit seemingly harmless, change in how viewers presumably engage with media. With IP-based systems, viewers now are said to be better engaged, with way more options at their disposal, and are purported to be living a pretty “enhanced” life.
Television programming delivered through the internet is called IPTV. Compared to traditional delivery formats, such as satellite and cable, the use of internet to deliver a customizable experience for television really struck viewers in Canada. IPTV not only has the potential to deliver content that is desired by most modern viewers but also enables them to pay much less for it. On the Internet, the viewers have content at their command; they can pretty much find any sort of programming they want, whether it happens to be “local,” “regional,” or “international.” And even though those kinds of services are available, to many it seems a lot cheaper (and a lot more fun) than buying a basic digital cable package with only 25 channels.
Perhaps the most outstanding advantage of Canadian IPTV is the enhanced viewing experience. Most IPTV providers use cutting-edge technology to deliver content in stunning high definition. Because the content is not packaged and sent over an old system of coaxial cable but rather delivered in “packets” along the internet pathway, there is no way for it to arrive at its destination in anything other than perfect order. This is really important in an era when there is only one way to deliver a good customer experience, and that is to always have the content that is requested arrive in an almost magical way. IPTV also serves up to all of the devices that a person can possibly own—there are no limits. In addition to perfect content delivery, IPTV allows the viewer to experience the content in a way that is pretty much just fantasy for those watching through the old cable pipe.
The way Canadians access content is changing, and it’s for the better. Centering on this change are Canadian IPTV services, which is increasingly becoming a way of watching television but remains still at a nascent stage in the country compared to other parts of the world. So, what is IPTV? Short for Internet Protocol television, it brings essentially TV channels and on-demand video to viewers over an internet connection. It is quite a service that works for most Canadians. It allows them to watch channels and shows in a way that’s largely identical to how previous generations consumed the medium, but with clever added features actualizing the promise of a 21st-century-viewing experience.
The potential payoffs from Canadian IPTV are unambiguous, but problematical aspects should be taken into account. Internet access can be a stumbling block, especially in rural areas where the infrastructure does not support high-speed internet, which is a necessity for happy IPTV users. In either urban or rural situations, we’re talking about a somewhat ironclad bandwidth scenario in which the user requires a minimum of 8 to 10 Mbps for trouble-free viewing—16 to 20 Mbps if you want to be really, well, safe. But this isn’t the whole rural reliability story. In parts of the countryside with no access to wired internet, the user is limited to either satellite or 4G LTE service, the latter of which cannot be guaranteed to provide the needed bandwidth 100% of the time either.
Canadian IPTV is shaking things up for those who have cut the cord. It’s smarter. It’s more flexible, and it has a way of delivering television content that feels a lot less like the “old” television. For people who have left the traditional cable bundle behind, Canadian IPTV feels like a “new” alternative, or at least, an alternative “new” enough that we can place Canadian IPTV—along with its other several and varied “new” alternatives—in the “streaming” category of television viewing.