Internet Television

The first over the internet broadcast was ABC's World News in 1994.
From then on, a company named Audionet offered music streaming and early work begun for television programming broadcasting from Cisco.
Internet Television is very useful for areas such as India, that are not able to acquire access equipment to watch television, such as cable.

Image source link.

If you click on the above picture, you can see what a video on demand website usually looks like.
The picture is of the BBC iPlayer, which brings in many users that are wanting to catch up on what they have missed.

Internet television allows users to select which content or television show they would like to watch from many websites.
There are two forms of viewing internet television, these are:

• Streaming content directly to a media player on the website itself
• Downloading the content to the user's computer

A lot of providers now offer a HD service alongside the standard service. As with a TV, the computer screen must be capable of projecting HD.
The majority of all major TV broadcasters offer a catch-up or on-demand service on an internet television platform.
Although most internet television services allow content to be viewed for free, some content must be paid for.

Most of these websites make profit through video advertising, commonly found before the video is played or midway through.

As with TV, there are broadcasting rights.
An example of this could be the BBC iPlayer again, the website will only allow viewers in the UK to stream the content, this is done by checking the users IP address.
There are also rights in place to only allow content for a limited time.
An example of this could be Channel 4's on demand, also known as 4oD.
On 4oD, most of the content has a 30 day availability from transmission.

Even gaming consoles, such as the Xbox have applications for streaming video content.

The video above shows HBO on the Xbox, programmes and movies can instantly be accessed with a few presses of buttons.
As you can see below, these are just some of the on-demand video applications found on Xbox.
Even BBC iPlayer and 4oD can be found on the Xbox for British viewers.
Sky Player is also available with live streaming from multiple channels, for this a Sky subscription isn't even neccessary.

Image source link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_television
http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/how-tos/online-sharing-social-networking/the-history-of-internet-television.html#b
http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/UK/index.html
http://www.audionetwork.com/

All of the above text and images were sourced from the sources provided in the above links.