Streaming television

Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as television shows and films, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air aerial systems, cable television, and/or satellite television systems. Up until the 1990s, it was not thought possible that a television programme could be squeezed into the limited telecommunication bandwidth of a copper telephone cable to provide a streaming service of acceptable quality, as the required bandwidth of a digital television signal was around 200 Mbit/s, which was 2,000 times greater than the bandwidth of a speech signal over a copper telephone wire. Streaming services started as a result of two major technological developments: MPEG (motion-compensated DCT) video compression and asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) data transmission. The first worldwide live-streaming event was a radio live broadcast of a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the New York Yankees streamed by ESPN SportsZone on September 5, 1995. During the mid-2000s, the streaming media was based on UDP, whereas the basis of the majority of the Internet was HTTP and content delivery networks (CDNs). In 2007, HTTP-based adaptive streaming was introduced by Move Networks. This new technology would be a significant change for the industry. One year later the introduction of HTTP-based adaptive streaming, many companies such as Microsoft and Netflix developed their streaming technology. In 2009, Apple launched HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), and Adobe, in 2010, HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS). In addition, HTTP-based adaptive streaming was chosen for important streaming events such as Roland Garros, Wimbledon, Vancouver and London Olympic Games, and many others and on premium on-demand services (Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, etc.). The increase in streaming services required a new standardization, therefore in 2012, with the contributions of Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, and other companies, Dynamic Adaptive Streaming, known as MPEG-DASH.