I’ve been working on IPTV systems for the last few months now as a Flash and Flash Lite developer and designer, and above my original opinion of it’s future, some other things have become clear as I’ve gone through the vertical learning curve. Forget Sky TV, forget any satellite or cable provider’s traditional fair. The market is about to explode as it opens up to ‘all’ telecoms companies and alot of top software houses. Triple Play is a term you will all become familiar with in the next year. Microsoft are about to roll out their IPTV offering, which by all accounts is fairly comprehensive. Unusually, they are, comparatively, one of the first to market. Many more telcos will follow and have invested millions in R&D.

So, what is Triple Play IPTV? Well essentially as broadband has opened up (recently I have seen upto 24Mb non commercial) it has given the infrastructure to broadcast multi-media in a reliable manner. Essentially you would get a set top box (STB) in the same way you got your Sky STB, however, they are more like mini computers. Most of these run a version of Linux and run TV STB optimised browsers (ANT’s browsers being the most popular). Many of these have a cut down version of Flash SDK on board. Sadly at the moment, the majority are Flash 5, however more are starting to come with Flash 6 and there are 2 companies which use Flash 7. The future however, is Flash Lite 2. It wins hands down with it’s footprint, it’s potential for tight device coupling (e.g. it’s ability to hand off and use the devices native codecs) and it’s OO nature to name just a few points. Presently, Adobe seem to be dragging their feet and I have only seen Flash Lite 2 used on a few Nokia phones (Nokia 3230, Nokia 6260, Nokia 6620, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6670, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 6682, Nokia 7610, Nokia N70, Nokia N90) and one multi media device (the viliv, which looks damn sexy). Triple-Play (in it’s basic form) would give you IPTV, Phone and Internet in one package, for one price. The IPTV element will come with the facility to order Video-on-Demand (VoD), receive masses of national and international TV channels in real time (there’s no geographical limits on these), Electronic Program Guide (EPG), Games, Radio over internet, Personal Video Recorder (PVR) and MP3 download. The better ones will come with a mobile version also which will allow you to login to your account from your phone, check what’s on via the mobile version of the EPG, set your PVR to record any of those programs while you’re out, order VoD, watch previews (or even whole programs/films) and much more. Your TV, when turned on will allow you to have customised first screen look and content. It will operate more like a highly customisable browser window than a TV. Essentially you could have your own home page with Traffic cameras covering your route to work, Weather reports , recordings of last night’s football for example, all in one window. And it won’t just be you. IPTV is being pitched at the individual. When your wife or children or husband login they will get their configuration of news, programs, games and live feeds. You can have as many configurations as you like in any aesthetic configuration you like. High Definition will be standard and recent studies suggest that HD can be provided on an 8Mb broadband connection which many providers are starting to provide even in the UK.

The standards for this industry and the boundaries of the roles played by it’s participants are complex and unclear at the moment and there is much vying to position and lead, however, IPTV is here to stay and offers the unified data and media platform we have all been waiting for. It’s not the final answer but it is the right path to it.

From a Flash point of view also, this is a new arena and we need to put a consistent, reliable and an aesthetically and functionally superior application and UI in place and we are in a perfect position to do this, however, Adobe seem to be putting very little effort into this. If you look at their documantation regarding Flash on TV they don’t even reference IPTV (a site wide search on ‘IPTV’ will return literally nothing) they still have docs online referencing iTV and these are out of date by a long way and only useful for giving you some basic concepts. If you follow their Telecoms solutions information trail a possible reason for this emerges. They are pushing their end-2-end Breeze solutions 1, 2, 3. And don’t get me wrong, Adobe’s vision of unified muti modal platform is beautiful and I’m very excited about it. It’s just that they’re eating their own dog food at the expence of their loyal developers out there. Breeze, for those of you who don’t know, is created using Flash Communication Server / Flash Media Server. However, it has certain enhancements not available to the FMS developer in the street, so they’re withholding improvements from their own FMS developers and competing against them at the same time - Don’t get me started, but more about that in another post. Adobe see an End-2-end solution and the IPTV industry is so multilayered and complex that it’s simply not possible at this time. The boundaries between who does what are blurred or just plain undefined and trying to get any single chain of providers to work together on a single Flash platform would be impossible. we can put the thin end of the Flash wedge in there though and get it on the STBs.

Taking it a step further, with the tight and functionally superior integration of Flash and video that we use today with Flash 8, it really won’t be long before users are crying out for Flash 8 support on the STBs so they can produce and distridute their own content over IPTV as they do now on a comaparatively smaller scale with sites like youtube. Until Adobe get some IPTV content on their site, I will try to help fill this gap by publishing some more technical IPTV articles and opinions (with some pretty pictures) from the front line in the next few weeks.

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