Television has for many years been a center of attraction for people, which allows us to enjoy a large number of movies, series, novels And many other things. Most people still prefer watching television to doing other recreational activities.
But like everything else, the way we watch television has evolved, allowing us to watch a greater number of channels with better video and audio quality. IPTV is one of the new technologies that allows us to watch television in the most comfortable way for us.
Today we are going to teach you everything about this technology that is revolutionizing the way we watch television. We will also show you what are the advantages compared to other ways of watching TV.
What is IPTV technology and what are its advantages and disadvantages?
IPTV is one of the most current technologies, whose function is promote distraction and recreation through audiovisual content, all through subscriptions of pay television signals (although we can also know, how to watch IPTV channels for free). It consists of one of a broadband connection, which is managed under the IP protocol.
We can get it and enjoy IPTV, just by being connected to an Internet service. The first thing we must understand, that this is not an online TV, but it’s a TV over IPTherefore, we can enjoy high-quality content from operators reserving parts of the bandwidth, which allows them to provide television services.
Next, we leave you the advantages and disadvantages of IPTV:
Advantage
- its easy setup is one of the main advantages that we can find with IPTV.
- We can choose which content to see, having a excellent video quality and flawless audio.
- Thanks to its different functions we can enjoy content from traditional TV channels as well as others that are typical of this programming.
- We can also store content to enjoy them whenever we want.
These and more advantages are what we can enjoy when we use IPTV as our television.
Disadvantages
- It is very dependent on bandwidth, fast and big. So we need to hire an extra bandwidth service, which in some countries it can be very expensive.
- High advertising content, although this advertising is always focused on our tastes, because it is personalized when we personalize IPTV.
For many this is a disadvantage, and it is that they ask for many requirements to be able to enjoy this technology. Such requirements are:
- Have a bandwidth that offers a high speed internet.
- What our signal / noise is greater than 13 dB and with an attenuation less than 40 dB.
We must understand that this technology is in full growth, so if we detail more thoroughly we can find many more disadvantages. But thanks to its great team of professionals, every day they continue to perfect it for our enjoyment.
What is IPTV television and what are these lists for watching audiovisual content online?
IPTV, comes from the acronym for Internet Protocol Television, whose translation means Internet Protocol Television. This platform allows us to see the schedules we want and when we want, as long as we have an Internet connection, since like satellite TV we need communication between two points, in this case the programming base that allows us to watch streaming content, with live streaming or on demand.
This process as we mentioned it, is done under the IPs, but these are something different than what we are used to seeing commonly. We can define that IPTV is a receiver of television signals that are transmitted through the Internet, with a technologically different system from online TV, oriented more than anything else on the transmission of live content.
If we want to benefit from this fabulous service, we only need to have in hand, a smart TV, smartphone, tablet or PC, which in turn must be connected to the Internet. Although this platform has paid subscription content, it also allows us to see some basic channels without any payment.
How do lists for IPTV really work?
Most of us are used to “normal” television, that transmits a signal through radio waves to its antenna or from the satellite to the antenna that we have at home, then the satellite dish converts or interprets this signal into an electrical signal and is decoded into sounds and images by means of the decoder.
In contrast to this, IPTV allows the transmission of medium power channels from the Internet, which we can enjoy two types of programs: live programs, Y prerecorded programs. Live programs are those that are transmitted while they are being recorded, and prerecorded programs are those that are stored in a space on the web, waiting to be reproduced by a user, known as “On Demand“.
To know how IPTV worksWe must first understand how the Internet works. The Internet can be compared to a highway whose series data are cars that circulate throughout it, so that more cars can pass through a wider highwaywhile not otherwise.
That is, if we do not have the bandwidth, they will not be able to enter the amount of data that this program will request for each second, so it can collapse and not allow us to enjoy what we want. To conclude, we can say that IPTV is not an ordinary television that reaches homes by means of satellite dishes or cables, but rather is transmitted in Streaming, whose main characteristic is that it must have an Internet connection.
Which allows us to see different content, and if such are in high demand at the same time, the multicast protocol is used (known as IGMP protocol), while those contents that are only requested by a user are transmitted by a protocol known as unicast.
What are the advantages of using IPTV instead of traditional television?
Traditional television still today it is widely used, however already many people are migrating to IPTV. Its migration is due to the amount of advantages it offers us, such we see them below:
- There are different traditional television services and not all of them offer good video quality, so if we want to enjoy better quality we must pay more, while IPTV always offers channels with all kinds of excellent quality programming at an affordable cost.
- As users, we can adapt the content we want to see, according to our preferences. This option unfortunately we don’t get it on a traditional TV.
- If we are companies or small businesses we can invest in IPTV advertising since every day it has a greater number of users which allows a rapid expansion of the business. Meanwhile, traditional television is losing more and more users.
- It does not need any other equipment to be able to function, just as it does not need cables or anything similar.
- Last on this list, is the ease in setting up parental control options, and its filter apps in relation to content.
What are the M3u or M3u8 IPTV lists and what are they for?
Many are the people who have doubts about M3u or M3u8 IPTV lists. In this section we will explain a little about these lists:
M3u lists
This kind of list is a type of file format, whose function is to store media playlist, so logically this does not reproduce anything more than a list.
At first this type of format was very complicated (not because of its structure, but because of its poor compatibility with programs), which could only be opened or created through a application called Winamp. But due to its necessity, many programs achieved compatibility with these types of files.
The format as such is very simple, since it is only structured by a set of texts, which specifies the addresses of the multimedia files that are going to be played. This file must be encoded in UTF-8 using turn the M3u8 extension. Each of the file entries indicates which is the path of the multimedia files that are in it.
We can see these types of files on our computers, but thanks to their great utility we can see them on online sites, as is the case with IPTV, which uses it to create its programming lists.
M3u8 files
As we already mentioned, it’s an audio playlist file whose encoding is under UTF-8, these types of plain text files are used by audio and video players, which dictates the exact location of each of the multimedia files.
M3u8 files are used as absolute paths, relative and URL to be able to refer to specific multimedia files, where you can also find comments embedded in them or in the contents that they have in a list. These files is the extension of M3u files, so their encodings are similar.