Introduction to Video Streaming Terminology
The video streaming and IPTV landscape is filled with technical acronyms: HLS, MPEG-TS, EPG, HEVC, TTL, Watchdog… To help you understand the architectural foundations and optimize playback on your LG webOS Smart TV, our engineering team has compiled this authoritative glossary.
A - C
AAC (Advanced Audio Coding): Standard lossy audio compression format. It represents the most universally supported audio codec across modern televisions and web browsers.
Alpha (α) Processor: LG's proprietary TV silicon lineup (Alpha 7, Alpha 9, Alpha 11 AI) providing dedicated hardware decoding pipelines for 4K/8K video and AI picture post-processing.
Bitrate: The quantity of digital bits processed per second in a video stream, typically measured in kilobits per second (kbps) or megabits per second (Mbps). Standard HD streams average 4-8 Mbps, while pristine 4K UHD broadcasts demand 15-25 Mbps.
Buffer (Video Buffer): A temporary chunk of application memory allocated to store pre-downloaded video data ahead of the playhead to protect against momentary network dropouts.
E - H
EPG (Electronic Program Guide): The digital on-screen schedule displaying times, titles, synopses, and channel icons for active television broadcasts.
Fast-Start: A stream prefetching optimization implemented in Vibe IPTV that decodes the initial video fragment before fully loading the segment, slashing channel zapping below 0.5 seconds.
FAST (Free Ad-supported Streaming TV): Scheduled, linear digital broadcast channels distributed over the public internet, monetized legitimately through programmatic ad inserts.
HLS (HTTP Live Streaming): Apple's adaptive video streaming protocol that breaks video streams into discrete chunks tracked by an .m3u8 manifest playlist.
H.264 (AVC): Advanced Video Coding, the most ubiquitous video compression standard in computing history, natively supported by 100% of smart TVs.
H.265 (HEVC): High Efficiency Video Coding, offering roughly double the compression efficiency of H.264, universally adopted for 4K and HDR broadcasts.
I - M
IndexedDB: A client-side, transactional NoSQL database standard built directly into webOS browsers. Vibe IPTV uses it to store persistent EPG timelines and user favorites securely.
IPK (Itsy Package Format): The standard archive format used by the LG webOS operating system to deploy standalone applications.
Jitter (Network Jitter): The statistical variance in packet arrival latency across an IP network. High jitter triggers buffer underruns unless the player buffer is appropriately sized.
M3U / M3U8: A simple flat-text file format specifying stream URLs and accompanying metadata attributes.
MPEG-TS: A continuous 188-byte packetized transport stream designed for real-time digital broadcast delivery with minimal latency.
O - W
OTT (Over-The-Top): Media delivery over the public unmanaged internet without requiring users to subscribe to proprietary telecommunication infrastructure.
TTL (Time-To-Live): A timer policy defining the duration cached items remain valid in memory before the player triggers a fresh server revalidation.
VOD (Video On Demand): Interactive video systems allowing users to watch movies and series on demand with full playback control (pause, rewind, second-accurate resume).
Watchdog: An automated monitoring algorithm that continuously inspects video playback to detect stalled streams and recover them without user intervention.
webOS: The secured Linux-based operating system developed by LG Electronics powering smart televisions worldwide since 2014.
XMLTV: The standard XML data schema utilized globally to represent and syndicate television schedule metadata.
Xtream Codes API: A lightweight REST / JSON protocol enabling streaming clients to dynamically query categories, streams, series, and EPG schedules on demand.