A recent field survey by NBC (NY Times, October 17, 2008) found free Internet streaming TV viewership to be gaining on conventional television - cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcast. By surpassing the quarter mark of total viewing of NBC’s TV episodes as yardsticks, NBC has shown that there’s no stopping Internet TV now. As with email, messaging, conferencing and telephony, Free TV on PC will soon become a standard internet feature.

Boosted by power-packed PCs, multi-media peripherals and broadband transmission, all the historical setbacks upon Internet TV are now a thing of the past. The volume of internet users has also long exceeded the critical mass level for the economy of scale in both technological and commercial terms. This is well-demonstrated by the wide spectrum of industries already exercising a footprint on the web so why not Television?

The most well-known versions of television available on the net today are Internet TV, IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), Broadband TV and User Generated Content TV. They may be known by different names but basically, Internet TV is free and unrestricted video streaming, IPTV is a type of commercial TV entertainment, Broadband TV is similar to Internet TV but more Internet than TV as compared to the former which is relatively more TV than Internet and User Generated Content TV is short-clip type streaming best depicted by YouTube.

Like the other free services that are already in existence on the net such as email, messaging ……, Internet TV is without question a win-win proposition for both providers and users. It’s essentially another platform of the media industry and this one is low-cost and easy entry for providers, not to mention it already enjoys an enormous patronage, and growing. Viewer-wise, it’s even harder to ignore the deal especially for those with the internet habit and routine in their daily life.

It’s not uncommon to see people ‘multi-tasking’ TV and PC these days, especially among the young. Sometimes, it’s even purportedly necessary for their new-breed work or studies. Most if not all modern offices and homes have internet wired PCs anyway. So wouldn’t streamlining the two activities into one be but only common sense? Plus with this, viewers are not the only one globally mobile, so will be their TV programming too!

True to form of the dynamic world of internet, the web is already inundated with free TV on PC of all shapes and sizes. Many are expectedly quite worthless. Fortunately, the supporting industries have not disappointed either. There is no shortage of computer programs retailing on the net itself that can pick out and organize the choice TV programming for you with their proprietary software. A handful of the industry pioneers are excellent value at only a fraction of what the big-time cable and satellite providers cost.