Video streaming is what’s “in” right now – web-based services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or zattoo are successfully competing with traditional linear TV programming. And alongside satellite, cable and antenna, internet network has long been in use for receiving TV programmes; this is known as “IPTV”.
But what about the picture and sound quality of these services? The “video” journal sought to answer this question by conducting an extensive test.
The winner in test category IPTV is Deutsche Telekom, while the streaming service from zattoo was named best Web TV offering.
On behalf of video, zafaco GmbH, a network test specialist with headquarters in Ismaning, Germany, gathered more than 1.1 million unique measured value on test connections in the period from mid-September to mid-October. The purpose of the exercise was to determine the technical quality of six IPTV providers and eight web-based streaming services.
Overall, the two test disciplines paint a welcome picture – however, particularly among the Web TV providers, there is a tendency for especially successful services to experience a higher capacity utilisation, which can negatively impact the image quality to some extent.
You can find the full evaluation and all the test results in the current issue of video 12/2018.