...and the list goes on and on.
While the focus of most
recent debates has been IPTV vs Internet TV, I would like to divert and pose the question: With the emergence of so many online video options, how do we describe them all by name? For the most part, we still continue to place video under labels that have long been used because their behavior is much the same as those terms. For instance, are movie downloads over iTunes video-on-demand?
There needs to be some form of delineation. Or does there? If movie downloads are video-on-demand, how do we draw the line between traditional pay-per-view TV and iTunes?
And to take it another step, are movie downloads Internet TV? Are YouTube videos "online video" or "video-on-demand"?
Here are some terms and sites that would generally fall under them:
- Internet TV - Sites like ManiaTV, MLB TV or ABC's airing of prime time TV shows
- Online Video - Technically, online video is no different than Internet TV, but the term has been more commonly used for sites that provide recorded video. This would include YouTube, but could also be AOL Video or Google Video. Can these drastically different sites be tagged as one of the same?
- Video-on-demand - Do we keep this tied to traditional TV or use it for all of these online video sites as well? Is online video synonymous for video-on-demand?
- Movie/TV Downloads - Is that online video or video-on-demand?
Would like to hear others thoughts on these and other terms. What do you think of when you hear these words or sites? How do you differentiate TV and video?