said by tubbynet:from what i have seen (and i am by *no* means a video guy, but the majority of the savings from an iptv solution comes in on the provider end in terms of overhead space and management. you no longer have to worry about pulling down digital (most often) feeds, perform analog conversion (if required), modulate the data with a carrier, and then throw it on the wire (at a cost of frequency bandwidth of your existing plant). as more and more services have been added to the typical "connected" household, many providers (especially cable) have experience last-mile bandwidth crises because there is not enough spectrum to handle X analog channels, your smattering of digital channels, your upstream and downstream carriers for your internet, as well as a separate channel for digital voice. providers such as cox have tried to take an aggressive stand and push 1ghz plant to all markets, giving them a little more space to play, especially as d3 comes out and requires multiple channels for the up and downstream communication.
in a pure iptv solution (and i still consider fios iptv), all of your data remains digital, in the sense that there is no frequency modulation with a carrier at a central node. everything is just a packet on a data wire and you are limited only by the speed of your fiber links. less overhead, less gear, easier to mess around with channels, etc at the headend. the only thing that fios is doing (and is very advantageous) is the use of moca. they understand that most houses have been wired for cable/satellite and have existing rg6 through the walls, etc. using moca, they can push iptv to the home and let the moca boxen convert for easier viewing (even though a digital box is still required). i have a feeling that if verizon said that they needed to run new cables through a person's house for fiostv, the penetration rate of such a service wouldn't be as large.
my two bits.
q.
FiOS is not IPTV except for the VoD portion.
