SatSig topic:

Watch TV channels through the internet

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Jan 17^th, 2007 at 5:52pm

Hello everybody,

I was interested in watching TV trough the internet and stumbled upon the following site:

I bought the software because it was cheap.

I must say I'm surprised of the possibilities! I want to share it with you all so if you're interested take a look.

Regards.

Jan 17^th, 2007 at 9:15pm

On the practical side, using satellite broadband to watch satellite TV is a losing proposition. The vast majority of satellite broadband providers require service agreements limiting customers to a specific throughput over a specified time. Since SatTV probably constitutes the most egregious form of streaming video, satellite broadband customers would almost certainly find their connection either throttled or terminated within hours.

//greg//

Jan 17^th, 2007 at 11:57pm

It is an impressive idea and I've tried experiments with both TV (Amino STB) and Audio (podcast) via the internet. It was very expensive both to send and receive, far more than I could afford, since every viewer had to pay the full cost of a transmission from origin to destination. With many people simultaneously receiving unicast streams my server was soon putting out several Mbit/s. This was technically not a problem - the cost implication was however. I would be interested to know how this new software works. Where does the TV start out and how does it get to each viewer. Does each viewer re-transmit the packets to a further couple of nearby viewers perhaps, like a gradually spreading tree ?

An attractive application seemed to be within large private wired LAN networks (e.g. hospitals, hotels, business, campus) where the routers are all managed and can be multicast enabled - also where there is much etherent capacity unused.

Satellite IPTV broadcasting seems economically feasible since the transmission cost is once only and you can have multiple viewers. It should be is no technical problem adding IPTV multicast to our VSAT outlinks. It does need a critical number of viewers however to pay up front to get the service started.

Best regards, Eric.

Jan 18^th, 2007 at 1:20am

Look at it from the standpoint of the consumer whose only broadband alternative is satellite. Then consider what they pay for. HughesNet Home plan for example permits one user somewhere in the neighborhood of 170MB total throughput (send and receive) over any given four hour period (225MB in the wee hours). The instant they hit the "Fair Access" threshold for their subscriber plan, throughput drops to dialup speed. And for $60 USD/month at that. I shudder to think of the video quality resulting from trying to squeeze even one full length feature film into say, 150MB. By comparison, some of Microsoft's update files are larger than that.

Wildblue's not much better, and only marginally cheaper at $50/month for their Value plan. Users are permitted to download 7.5GB over any 30 day period. I think the upload threshold is about 2.3GB in the same 30 days. If you use either/both on the first day, you're outa luck for the next 29.

This IPTV may be a workable proposition over terrestrial broadband - via providers who do not impose a throughput cap. But without more info on the methodology, I can't see it as a viable proposition over consumer grade satellite broadband connections.

//greg//