Terms You Should know

ChannelGuide - This is our guide that is located here that lists programs that is suitable for watching on your Xbox 360.

PTV – Stands for Internet Protocol Television which is another term for videocast which came from podcasts. A videocast is a video version of a podcast. A podcast is an audio file that contains content other than music that is played on an iPod. A videocast is a video complete with visuals and audio that is downloaded again to an iPod for playback. IPTV is the generic term for television programming that uses the web for distribution instead of the traditional broadcasters like ABC, NBC and CBS.

RSS Feed – The term RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. This was developed originally to allow for streaming news to be sent to your browsers or RSS browsers but was later perverted into a means of distributing podcasts and now IPTV television. Put simply it is a file that describes a channel of content. Within the file are download links that RSS readers and programs like RSS Radio use to figure out whether there is content out there to be brought to your computer. Usually the RSS browser or RSS Radio will go look to see if there are new updates to the RSS feed file and if it finds an update it downloads the RSS file and downloads the latest content described within. The point of ChannelGuide 360 is to identify those RSS feeds that contain content that is suitable for viewing on your Xbox 360. You copy the links that are listed in our channel guide into RSS Radio and you’ll have IPTV programs delivered to your PC as they are released.

WMV – Windows Media Video. This is Microsoft’s proprietary video format that works Windows Media Center PCs and the Xbox 360. ChannelGuide 360 lists only WMV based feeds as that is what is necessary to play content on the Xbox 360.

Vidcast - This is video that is designed to be distributed via a RSS feed to either a portable device such as an iPod or other portable media. You will see the term vodcast used many times interchangably with the term vidcast or videocast.