All things related to multicast

[Dov Zimring <>]

If you're delivering MPEG-2, the only reason I know of to go from 
digital to analog and back again is for premium high bitrate content 
that cannot be sufficiently compressed, usually sports channels.  In our 
space, DVB is fed to a transcoder (aka rate shaper, groomer, ..) where 
compression and IP encapsulation take place.  Minerva is one option, 
others include:
http://www.skystream.com
http://www.tutsys.com
http://www.bigbandnet.com

I'm not sure DVB can be transcoded to deliver MPEG-4 or Windows Media 9 
without going to analog and back.  I haven't seen commercial deployments 
of MPEG-4 or WM9 for broadcast content, the decoders are just getting 
integrated into STBs and it looks like VoD will be the first content to 
use the new formats.


Alan Crosswell wrote:

> Dov,
>
> Thanks for the pointers.  What are folks using for encoders?  I assume 
> they are mostly taking a DVB feed.  I recall Minerva having a box that 
> does this a while ago.  This sounds a lot more attractive to me than 
> what I've seen of a few deployments in .edu where individual analog 
> channels (frequently having been decoded from MPEG) are re-encoded 
> with one box per channel.  That doesn't scale well if one is truly 
> trying to deliver 100's of channels like "real" cable/satellite TV.
> /a
>
>
> Dov Zimring wrote:
>
> > These are Ethernet/IP Set Top Boxes and I see no reason these 
> > couldn't be used in the enterprise.  Most of the commercial 
> > deployments I've been involved with are telephone companies that own 
> > or share a Cable MSO and are looking to extend their footprint to 
> > provide video service via Fiber or DSL.  Encoding, transcoding, Video 
> > on Demand, integrated on screen caller-id, all that fun stuff
> >
> > A few of the players in this space:
> > http://www.aminocom.com
> > http://www.i3micro.com/i3web
> > http://www.2wire.com
> > http://www.bastinc.com
> >
> > For commercial deployments these vendors integrate with various 
> > middleware vendors to handle user accounts, retrieve corresponding 
> > program guides and take care of all the back office accounting and 
> > billing.  There are a number of middleware vendors out there, to name 
> > a few:
> > http://www.myrio.com
> > http://www.minervanetworks.com
> > http://www.infogateonline.com/content.asp?id=15
> >
> > There's a laundry list of other vendors for encoding/transcoding, 
> > VoD, encryption, etc.  I've spent lots of time in the trenches 
> > deploying IPTV over DSL with video headends that were built for CATV 
> > and then retrofitted for IPTV.  Happy to share what I know.
> >
> > Regards,