Internet television is going mainstream, offering consumers the opportunity to give traditional broadcast services the flick.

Next week Sky Television expects to get into the game with the launch of its Neon internet television service.

Product manager Sarah Pritchett says that when Sky TV first thought about launching a standalone internet television service 16 months ago, it assumed it would be catering for a specific group of "early technology adopters".

But she says the landscape has changed with Spark launching competitor Lightbox in August and United States internet TV giant Netflix deciding that it would bring out a local service for New Zealand and Australian viewers next month.

"I think we are now looking at a much broader group of people."

All three services will offer the opportunity to watch some new shows that have not previously aired on New Zealand television.

Lightbox "exclusives" include fantasy series Outlander and Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul. Netflix's line-up will include drama Marco Polo and sci-fi series Sense8.

Priced at $20 a month, Neon will provide films and shows that consumers could previously view legally by signing up to Sky Movies and its premium SoHo channel, such as Game of Thrones and Girls.

But Pritchett reveals it will also offer some first-run exclusives not available on Sky, including pirate-themed drama Crossbones, starring John Malkovich, and historical drama Washington Spies.

Demonstrating just how convoluted the new business of internet television has become, Neon has also scored first rights to Lillyhammer, a mafia drama that was made by Netflix.

A bigger bombshell, though, is that Neon will offer programming only in standard definition (SD) rather than high definition (HD) until about mid-year.

Pritchett acknowledges that will come as a surprise to some.

"I think people will question it because HD is obviously really important and something we are working on, but we are pretty confident with the quality of the stream we will get, which is great."

Another gap is that Neon will not initially play on Android tablets and smartphones.

Lightbox supports HD as will Netflix, which also promises to offer some of its programmes in the "ultra high-definition" 4K standard which offers four times the screen resolution of full HD.

There are other legal options that rate a mention, such as Australian internet television service Quickflix. Tens of thousands of New Zealanders are believed to have signed up to the US version of Netflix in breach of its terms and conditions and, of course, people pirate content.

But picking an internet television service is not an either-or thing.

With no long-term contracts, viewers could subscribe to any of the services, binge on the shows they want for a month and then cancel once they have had their fill, or churn from one service to another to test them each out.

Alternatively, they could sign up to Neon, Lightbox and Netflix, probably for no more than the cost of a basic $48.07 Sky Television subscription.

Forsyth Barr analyst Blair Galpin reckons it will take three years before any winner emerges between the services, if indeed one ever does win out.

Sky spokeswoman Kirsty Way accepts that for many people, the decision of whether to give the new services a go will be tied up with deciding how much to pay for broadband and whether or not to subscribe to Sky TV.

Uncapped broadband plans, which mean consumers can watch internet TV without keeping a wary eye on their monthly data cap, used to be a niche service mostly bought by keen gamers.

But the price has come down over the past year while the price of capped plans is edging up by about $5 a month.

The biggest internet providers, Spark and Vodafone, both sell phone and uncapped broadband plans for $99 and $109 a month respectively, just $20 to $30 more than their entry-level plans with lowly 40 gigabyte data caps.

InternetNZ spokesman David McCormack says it has no way of knowing how quickly consumers are migrating to uncapped plans, but anecdotally it looks like the shift may be in full swing and the price changes open up some new options for households.

Television fans who are not quite ready to unsubscribe from Sky and give up their MySky box could downgrade to a little-known service from Sky that provides access, via satellite, to free-to-air channels for $18.70 a month, while they dabbled with Lightbox, Neon or Netflix, for instance.

The monthly savings, even from Sky's basic service, would probably cover the cost of an upgrade to uncapped broadband, which may in turn qualify households to get Neon free from Vodafone for six months.

Speed as well as bountiful data is important when it comes to making the most of internet television.

Worldwide, the average speed of broadband is actually falling as more people clog networks consuming more data, according to the latest statistics collated by US cloud computing company Akamai.

It estimated global average internet speeds slipped 2.8 per cent to a ho-hum 4.5 megabits-per-second (Mbps) in the three months to the end of September.

But it is a different story in New Zealand where average speeds improved by 37 per cent to 7Mbps.

This makes internet television a more realistic proposition for many households.

Pritchett says Neon will stream in SD (standard definition) at a maximum rate of 1.8Mbps.

With broadband networks better able to handle the demands of internet television, the final piece of the jigsaw may be making it easier for people to watch it on the family television.

Most people with "dumb" TVs still resort to plugging a laptop into their TV with an HDMI cable if they don't want to watch internet television alone on their laptop or tablet computer.

Streaming media players such as Google's diminutive Chromecast devices, which went on sale in New Zealand just before Christmas priced at about $60, can help do away with the wires and cables.

Research published last month by US researcher NPD Group forecast 40 per cent of US households would own some sort of streaming media player by 2017, up from 16 per cent today.

Chromecast is designed to slot into the HDMI slot of a television. If the internet-television company has developed a Chromecast app, it can fetch programmes directly over the household's wi-fi connection, but at present it doesn't work with some services, including Lightbox.

The elephant in the room is that for people who are really into sports, there is no practical alternative in sight to forking out for a Sky subscription.

Sky this week began offering "season tickets" that will let people watch Super Rugby, NRL games and Formula 1 racing online without signing up to its broadcast service, through a new service called Fan Pass.

But viewers are balking at the price - $299 for each season pass - if the flood of indignant responses on social media is anything to go by.

Studios tend to sell exclusive rights to television entertainment and films in each country and that means more of the new choices facing viewers will be Hobson's choices.

For example, Netflix has been forced to admit that its New Zealand offering will lack some fresh content from Disney and Marvel that it will be able to offer in Australia, because the relevant rights have already been sold by the studios to Sky Television.

Sky chief executive John Fellet says experience overseas suggests that most viewers tend to buy internet television services as an adjunct rather than a replacement for cable or satellite television.

If he is right, the brave new world will result in people forking out more money, not less, for TV.

Others argue the industry is simply in a transition phase.

More people are starting to question why studios sell their rights on an exclusive basis in the first place and believe that if the television market truly fragments, film and television studios might have no choice but to follow the example of record companies and licence their programmes to all and sundry.

Think Spotify and Rdio, which each offer tens of millions of tracks, almost all the music that has been professionally recorded, for a fixed monthly fee, with artists rewarded according the popularity of their songs.

If that business model triumphs, the drama unfolding in the television industry may have another twist in its plot.