How it is Possible to View TV on a Pc for Free
There are still more then a few countries around the world where Pay Per View (PPV) has not yet been established, and football and other games are televised for free.Broadcasts of some of the TV stations in these countries are available via video streams on the internet.
The quality depends on the rate at which video streams are transmitted. This quality is measured by the same units measuring how broad you internet connection is: Kb/Sec. Most streams are transmitted at a quality of between 100 Kb/Sec and 400 Kb/sec, so if your connection is somewhere around 750 Kbs there is no need to rush off and pay for a broader connection package. 400 Kb/sec is more or less the rate at which it is possible to watch the video stream on a full screen in reasonable quality. For quality lesser than that, the size of the media player's window has to be reduced.
While this method might be a good alternative to the good old TV set, there are still some problems associated with it. Millions of people around the world are trying to connect to the servers broadcasting the streams. These servers are not designed to support such a large number of users, so the load on them is immense. The number of users each of those ervers can support is limited, and sometimes even if you manage to connect to one, the high traffic might impair its functionality, in some cases causing it to crash.
To overcome these problems and offer a continuous broadcast, the different media players use a method called Buffering. The video streams are not shown live, and are delayed by a couple of minutes. This gives the players time to buffer the bits of video that are to be shown. This way when the broadcast is disrupted the player can go on playing for a few more seconds before it runs out of video segments to show. When streaming resumes the player will once again buffer the bits that are to come ahead.
The size of the buffer is important. If can't be too small, otherwise frequent interruptions will cause many delays. On the other hand the player has also got to show the stream and not to be solely occupied buffering it. It is recommended that the size of the buffer is set between 30 to 50 seconds.
All media players Buffer segments of a video stream prior to actually showing them. They will only show a segment once they are done buffering it, and while doing so they will start buffering the next segment.
On many occasions the server that functions as the streams' source is overloaded with clients asking for segments, and will not be able to satisfy this demand at a high enough rate. The clients' media players will have to stop showing the streams in order to finish buffering the missing segments, resulting in a segmented video stream.
That is where the brilliant P2P technology comes in to the rescue. It enables users to share stream segments. By doing so is creates numerous sources that replace the overloaded servers, from which the media players can download those segments at a satisfactory rate.
If you want to try viewing TV on your PC a good place to begin is with the people at PCTV. This is a branch of the well-known company, Pacific-Servers.com , and PCTV is currently offering a membership package that cannot be beat. Best of all, prices are extremely affordable. In addition, PCTV offers some wonderful bonus gifts for those who sign up. Visit http://www.pctv.pacific-servers.com to learn more.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - How it is Possible to View TV on a Pc for Free