From very recently in the past few years, TV view-in has dramatically changed where there’s Internet Protocol Television rising high as a clear entertainer front-runner. There was quite a change in here in Calgary, where through television viewing, citizens have adopted this IPTV service much as home-based. But so, what is IPTV after all? The term stands for Internet Protocol Television, a technology by which television signals are transmitted over the Internet rather than through conventional means, like cable or satellite. To that end, there currently exists quite a bit of infrastructure here in the city, much of it laid by the residents of Calgary themselves when they paid for and signed up for high-speed internet service.
One of the major upsides of IPTV is how flexible it is. Unlike old school stay-at-home cable packages and their paltry number of channels—the obligatory locals, a few premium movie channels, and maybe some outdated music videos—IPTV lets you sort of pick your experience. The content you get lives up to the promise of “customization.” Granted, it’s not that live international-soccer-channel viewers are getting exactly the same content as, say, live-shooting-theShire-in-Movie-3 watchers are getting. But on the whole, the “authentic experience” seemed pretty well intact, at least for Calgary viewers, and without the canny abrogation of U.S.-Canada trade treaties that some companies have promise. Plus, the workings of the IPTV system are cool. They’re so much cooler, even, than those of your better-than-nothing basic cable system. And if we’re talking user experience, that’s gotta count for something.
Calgary has witnessed a steady increase in the uptake of IPTV services, and for good reason. The city boasts rock-solid internet infrastructure that provides exactly the kind of stable, high-speed internet access any kind of real-time, large-data service—such as video, for example—just requires. Increasingly, Calgarians use smart devices of all kinds that create more opportunities, not fewer, to enjoy video services at home, at the office, and on the go. Local IPTV providers have been part of this trend. They provide several packages that are not terribly costly, and their services cover what’s important: local channels and all the regional content a viewer might reasonably want to stay in touch with.
Despite all the benefits of IPTV, the service has several challenges. Chief among these are consumers’ concerns about their internet connection’s reliability. Even though high-speed Internet access is ubiquitous in Calgary, the connections are not often constant. Internet service that spikes and falls is, by obvious design, the most irritating type to watch television through, and it has also ruined more than one viewer’s viewing pleasure. Then comes the service provider choice and the dizzying spectrum of options one encounters having decided which provider to pick from. And finally, a viewer’s choice of IPTV service can even raise questions of legality. Some of us undoubtedly worry whether the decision we are making is a legal one and what possible ramifications there could be for us if we have made an illegal choice.
There is no question that television consumption in Calgary is being transformed by IPTV. That is to say using the internet for not just on-demand but live, linear programming. And the beauty of it, for those wanting to supplant the the old ways of getting television is what goes into the internet-based pipe: the variety, the interactivity, sheer amounts of stuff. Calgary’s IPTV viewer is on the far side of a revolution, the digital one, and enjoying a new flexibility and a convenience that TV watchers in Calgary, not so long ago, couldn’t even dream of.