On the panel at IPTV India 2009 on Friday, I began taking notes of the services that IPTV has to offer consumers. IPTV, or Internet Protocol Television, is believed to be the future of TV: content is streamed to homes via Internet Protocol, and the service allows users to interact with each other and via a return path, unlike DTH or digital cable. One premiss is that this interactivity will eventually allow users sitting at home to interact live with TV, and enable service providers to offer them a wider range of content. The list of services currently on offer, however, doesn't appear to be significantly different from what is being offered to DTH subscribers in India: Time Shift TV, Video on Demand and Pay Per View, though the library may be larger. Keep in mind that although it is illegal, users do download TV shows from the net - whether on their home or office connections. So video on demand isn't going to be killer app, though Time Shift TV might work. There are other services like Messaging, Classifieds, videos (called A-Tube) and iControl Mail which Aksh Optifibre is currently offering, but for a consumer who already has broadband, this is hardly a value add; certainly isn't reason enough for me to switch to IPTV. In fact, IPTV does appear to be a limited - even restrictive - form of the Internet. So would I prefer that the TV be my access point to the Internet, or that the Internet…
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