Satelliteguys coverage of Satellite 2009 expo

HokieEngineer

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Oct 13, 2003
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This expo mainly targets system designers, content providers, the military, and the broadcast industry. Since I was in the area I decided to stop by and take a look at some of the products being shown.

My first stop today was at the Echostar / XStreamHD booth. Echostar is showcasing its satellite capacity for lease, uplink facilities, satellite tracking and control, and its IP-TV service.

They had a Dish Network STB setup with live feeds are were demoing the "view from space" channel. As you've seen before on satelliteguys, there is a camera on Echostar-11 pointed towards earth. Their engineers thought it would be cool to show it off at the expo.

Also on display was the ViP-TV service. The STB is branded Echostar, however the menu system is identical to the Dish ViP boxes, however all the menus had Echostar instead of Dish Network. They were actually showing a live feed (They had a 1.2 meter dish outside pointed at 85) from the service. I asked about customers and the Echostar rep stated they had several potential customers demoing the service currently, but no firm orders.

The next company most satelliteguys members will recognize is XStreamHD. They were co-located in the Echostar booth and were showcasing their set-top boxes and technology. They are leasing transponder space on 85W to deliver their content to the STB. They are looking at a 2009 Q4 product launch, and are trying to get the product out before the holiday season. No specific content providers were mentioned, although they said "major hollywood studios". The content they had on display were MPEG-2 1080p movie trailers from various movies. Bitrates were on average around 30Mbps.

Another company using their satellite capacity of Echostar is MotoSAT, which incorporates a motorized VSAT antenna to deliver broadband Internet connectivity. Speeds max out at 16Mbit downlink / 2Mbit uplink. They are using 85W, 105W, and 121W to provide CONUS coverage, and redundant earth hubs (Arizona and Wyoming).

Well, off to browse more of the show. I will update this first post with new information as I come across it.
 

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Another booth I stopped by was the AT&T Cruisecast booth. They demoed this technology at CES, and are showing it off here as well. This is a mobile tv solution that uses a 12" diameter phased array antenna (see pictures) that mounts on the roof of your car or SUV. This is much smaller than the antennas previous used for mobile DirecTV reception. The magic that allows the small antenna is the broadcasting method employed by RaySat, who is partnered with AT&T. The feed for the service is coming from Intelsat G25, and uses RaySat's proprietary transmission technology over Ku band. Word at the booth was they plan on launching the service to the public in the next 60 days. They had a live demo in the booth and the video quality was decent on a typical 8-12" headrest lcd monitor. I wouldn't expect it to look great on a large monitor if you were thinking of using this service for tailgates. They will have 22 tv channels and 20 music channels at launch. Check the website for details: AT&T CruiseCast. Also, for more details on the technology used, check out RaySat's page here RaySat Dedicated Video & Data Distribution Platform with Blockage Protection Technology.
 

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Hokie are you still there? If you are please go back to AT&T Cuisecast and tell Winston to contact me. I have been trying to get in touch with him.
 
I don't typically have a lot of questions for people at those events but I'd like to know how XStream is planning on delivering streaming 1080i/p videos at 30mbps when the average DSL user is getting 10mbps or less and cable or fiber is not much faster. I know when testing Fyre bandwidth was a major issue when I was getting a full 10mbps and viewing HD videos and that required much less bandwidth than 1080i/p video with 7.1 audio... barring pre-loading videos onto their STB's (almost like Xbox Live) I can't see it working well.
 
I don't typically have a lot of questions for people at those events but I'd like to know how XStream is planning on delivering streaming 1080i/p videos at 30mbps when the average DSL user is getting 10mbps or less and cable or fiber is not much faster. I know when testing Fyre bandwidth was a major issue when I was getting a full 10mbps and viewing HD videos and that required much less bandwidth than 1080i/p video with 7.1 audio... barring pre-loading videos onto their STB's (almost like Xbox Live) I can't see it working well.

I believe XtreamHD's delivery is by satellite transmission, not IP.
 
I don't typically have a lot of questions for people at those events but I'd like to know how XStream is planning on delivering streaming 1080i/p videos at 30mbps when the average DSL user is getting 10mbps or less and cable or fiber is not much faster. I know when testing Fyre bandwidth was a major issue when I was getting a full 10mbps and viewing HD videos and that required much less bandwidth than 1080i/p video with 7.1 audio... barring pre-loading videos onto their STB's (almost like Xbox Live) I can't see it working well.

The content will come down via satellite.
 
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