Although broadcast television has existed since the 1940s, it was only in 1994 that ABC World News was broadcast over the internet for the first time. It was around the same time that companies like AudioNet jumped into the streaming music business. From these early days, internet TV has had three main use cases: live TV, VOD, and interactive TV (iTV).

Listed below are the major milestones in the internet TV sector, as identified by GlobalData.

1926 – The first television images were demonstrated to the public.

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1954 – The first colour TV sets entered mass production.

1976 – VHS technology was invented.

1989 – Scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.

1993 – The digitalisation of TV signals begins.

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1997 – Netflix founded by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings.

2005 – Video-sharing website YouTube was launched.

2006 – Amazon launched its Unbox service, renamed Amazon Video on Demand in 2008.

2007 – Netflix started providing streaming content.

2007 – The first generation of Apple TV was released.

2008 – Roku announced the first Netflix internet video streaming receiver box.

2010 – Home movie rental company Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy protection.

2013 – Netflix released its first self-commissioned original series, House of Cards.

2014 – Amazon unveiled its first Fire TV device.

2015 – Major nations complete the digitisation of their TV signals according to the Geneva Agreement.

2015 – US TV provider DISH Network launched OTT TV service Sling TV.

2016 – AT&T-owned DirecTV launched its own streaming service, DirecTV Now.

2016 – Twitter struck a deal to live-stream Thursday night NFL games for free.

2017 – YouTube announced streaming service YouTube TV.

2018 – Net neutrality officially repealed in the US.

2018 – Amazon won the rights to show 20 live English Premier League football matches.

2018 – AT&T completed its acquisition of Time Warner for $85bn.

2018 – Comcast saw off a challenge from 21st Century Fox to acquire Sky.

2019 – Disney acquired selected film and TV assets of 21st Century Fox for $71.3bn.

2019 – Apple launched its own OTT TV service, Apple TV+.

2019 – Disney launched its Disney+ OTT TV service in the US.

2020 – NBCUniversal debuted its OTT TV service, Peacock, in April 2020.

2020 – AT&T launched HBO Max, its OTT TV service, in May 2020.

2020 – SVOD accounts eclipse traditional pay TV accounts, reaching 1bn, according to GlobalData forecasts.

2022 – IP video will be 82% of all IP traffic, according to Cisco.

2023 – GlobalData estimates that global SVOD accounts will reach 1.5bn.

This is an edited extract from the Internet TV – Thematic Research report produced by GlobalData Thematic Research.