1.1 Overview
When we watch television, it is not possible to ignore the vast change that television service has undergone over time. In fact, television services have been experiencing several developments since the invention of the television. The first analogue colour television broadcast was started in 1951 via terrestrial broadcast with only a single channel (Fink, 1951; Baker, 1984). Then, another television service was delivered via cable (Dees et al., 2007). After that, digital TV emerged with the benefits of digital signal transmission and digital compression techniques. These benefits let TV service providers broadcast a variety of channels with high quality within a limited bandwidth (Joshi and Maskara, 2012; Picard and Siciliani, 2013). Furthermore, digital TV bridged the gap between the TV industry and computing industry as a result of the digital transmission of signals. More recently, Internet TV, also called online TV, has been delivering TV services over the public Internet without any commitment on the part of Internet service providers. The user must surf the website of the TV service provider and enjoy watching live and on-demand TV content (Simpson, 2013). YouTube is the dominant Internet TV provider, with 85% of the Internet TV consumption in the USA (Lee et al., 2013).
With the prosperous evolution of digital video formats and broadcasting as well as the advent of high-speed broadband networks, a new era of TV system has emerged known as IPTV, which can be defined as ‘multimedia services such as television, video, audio, text, graphics and data delivered over IP-based networks that provide the required level of quality of service (QoS)/quality of experience (QoE), security, interactivity and reliability (International Telecommunication Union [ITU-T], 2006). In other words, IPTV is a television system that delivers its content to subscribers over a broadband network. The broadband network can be described as a communication network over which all the voice, data, video and text services are delivered to end-users instead of isolated delivery networks (Moore and Siller Jr, 2004). As high-speed broadband networks exploit the digital representation of content, IPTV offers a wide variety of channels with high quality and interactivity compared with other TV systems. In addition, IPTV gives a simultaneous transmission of auxiliary data (e.g., subtitles, electronic programme guide [EPG]).
IPTV has recently become a popular trend in delivering TV services due to the increasing number of broadband network users. Globally, many companies work as service providers offering IPTV services. In 2009, there were almost 600 commercial IPTV operators worldwide (Nordström, 2009). According to Multimedia Research Group Inc. (MRG, 2012), this number was more than 930 operators worldwide. In Malaysia, only two competitive IPTV service providers have been operating. HyppTV is an IPTV service provided by Telekom Malaysia (TM). TM launched its IPTV services in 2004 after migrating the service delivery to Malaysia's High-Speed Broadband (HSBB) network. The second IPTV service provider in Malaysia is Astro Byond launched in 2011 and has been transmitting through fibre-optic broadband. Astro Byond operates in partnership with Time Dotcom Berhad and Maxis.
1.2 Internet Protocol Television
Due to the expeditious improvement of IP networks, along with the significant growth of users' bandwidth, IPTV has become popular worldwide as a promising way of delivering TV-related services including live broadcasting, video on demand (VoD) and other continuous streaming services to end-users. The number of IPTV subscribers globally grew from 2.03 million in 2005 to 4.56 million in 2006 and reached 60 million in 2011. According to SNL Kagan, the number of IPTV subscribers reached 117.39 million by the end of 2014, and it is expected to reach 165 million by the end of 2017. According to Jacqui (2007), IPTV subscribers occupy currently more than a third of the TV-viewing market. In 2017, IPTV is considered one of the most recent technological advancements made by humans. Moreover, IPTV is widely recognised as a proven and popular way of providing TV-related services including live broadcasting, VoD and other continuous streaming services over IP-based networks alongside the Internet, telephony, gaming and other home-networking services. According to an ITU-T focus group (ITU-T, 2006), IPTV can be defined as ‘multimedia services such as television/video/ audio/text/graphics/data delivered over IP-based networks that manage to provide the required level of QoS/QoE, security, interactivity and reliability’.
The major advantages of IPTV are addressability and interactivity (GlobeComm, 2006). In a fast-paced world, subscribers love to watch what they want when they want to, instead of scheduled channel broadcasting. IPTV grants this facility to subscribers by allowing them to choose only the channel they want to watch. Unlike most of the legacies of TV systems, IPTV takes advantage of the two-way communication in IP-based networks to let end-users enjoy the unlimited interactivity feature. By means of the interactivity feature, users can subscribe/unsubscribe to any channel or programme anytime without any intervention from the service provider. Besides, IPTV offers a wide variety of high-definition channels, along with the streaming media on demand (VoD) and the simultaneous transmission o...
