Who is the UK’s largest IPTV service ?

What is a true IPTV service?
A pertinent question.

Informitv.com maintains that the 150,000 customers with BT Vision do not come into the reckoning and disregards the diverse video sites such as YouTube or catch-up services like BBC iPlayer and Channel4 4oD.

Thee crown it seems is worn by to Freewire TV who multicast the core 25 Freeview channels over an IP network to student halls and residences and presently have some 40,000 people on the service. The service is without charge, with top-up deals available to permit you to view channels such as Setanta sports. Presently it is restricted to running on Windows XP or later, with a TV set-top box and Mac support in the tube.

Subsequently if your classification of IPTV is that it is required to use multicast to bring the TV channels then FreeWire wins.

BT Vision just broadcasts the Video-on-Demand material over the broadband connection favouring to receive the Freeview channels over-the-air so it is a hybrid model as opposed to an IP based one.

If your classification of IPTV is every video service over a broadband connection (using the Internet Protocol, or “IP”), then the various catch-up TV services (iPlayer, etc.) and video websites, for instance YouTube, enter into the calculation.

One major advantage of the BT Vision and numerous online video sites is the capacity to pause content, not something that appears be in the pipeline for the Freewire service. It is to be distinguished nonetheless that multicast is expected to play a progressively larger part on broadcast distribution via the Internet.

While the service is presently only accessible to students, there are suggestions that Inuk’s wider rollout of IPTV services maybe on the cards.