Internet television (TV) is a way for viewers to stream TV shows through video providers which include namely Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video and Video on Demand (VOD). All of these companies have shown an increase of viewers at an average of 20% between the years 2011 and 2012 (Miller and Washington, 2013). A poll run by TVGuide.com has shown that the most prominent reason why people stream TV shows online is because they want to catch up on missed episodes while the next most prominent reason is because they want to catch up on newly discovered shows. A minority of the respondents said that they stream TV shows after they cancelled cable TV (Miller and Washington, 2013). With the existence of many more online TV providers, the industry is getting competitive and has shown massive growth over these few years with no sign of slowing down anytime soon (Pisharody, 2013). .
According to Zambelli (2013), live internet streaming spans way back to 1995 when ESPN streamed a radio broadcast of a baseball game. In the mid-200s, Adobe Systems bought over a company called Macromedia and introduced Flash which streamed media but with several nuisances that included bandwidth and scalability. Move Networks then tried to overcome the issues that Flash were struggling with by delivering the media in chunks to allow it to be distributed further whilst also lessening buffering time. In 2007, Netflix made a big jump in internet TV history. They didn't however start as an online streaming company, rather, as stated by Casey (2013), Netflix began only as an online DVD rental company way back in 1997. They then progressed to streaming video-on-demands to attract more customers which has led them to the success that they have now. Another famous online TV streaming company would be Hulu which had the simple mission to legally deliver cable TV to anyone, anywhere, anyway the want it (Lovan, Moraga, Orbegozo & Roberts, n.
