MEASAT teams up for 4K demo
February 28, 2014
By Colin Mann
Satellite communications service provider MEASAT is teaming up with broadcast technology services provider Village Island, test and measurement specialist Aviindos and satellite engineering company TotalComm for a demonstration of Asia’s first ever live multiple 4K HEVC satellite uplink/downlink and decoding services on a single DVB-S2 channel and single DVB-T2 channel at the ABU DBS 2014 show in Kuala Lumpur March 4-7.
For the demonstration, Village Island and Aviindos, in conjunction with MEASAT, developed the idea to empower the live transmission through a DVB-S2 transponder. This followed a request from the DVB group to demonstrate dual 4K services on a single DVB-T2 channel. The demonstration is also in response to generic deployment trends in South-East Asia to deploy digital TV concurrently via satellite and terrestrial means.
“The DVB-T2 deployment of a country is a step by step process which can last several years and some region with low density of population may be very late to receive the DVB-T2 stream,” said Jonathan Triboulet, Sales Director at Village Island Asia. “Only the combination with satellite can permit a complete and fair coverage of the overall country. We see it as a common requirement through the Digital TV deployment process to offer identical signals over terrestrial and satellite. The Satellite also offers the advantage to distribute synchronously the broadcast feed to hugely distanced terrestrial transmitters. We even start to see digital TV STB (Set-Top-Box) with hybrid DVB-S2 and DVB-T2 tuners.”
Naveendran Murthy, Sales Director, Aviindos, said that in order to monitor the carrier reception quality and continuity, a live carrier monitoring system would be set-up on-site for the four day event.
“MEASAT is excited to once again be part of an industry first, that is to support, at ABU DBS, the first ever live over satellite 4K Trials using HEVC. These trials demonstrate MEASAT’s drive to be at the forefront of new, innovative satellite services, as we work hand-in-hand with our partners to take technology from concept to application and then to businesses and the consumer,” said Raj Malik, Senior Vice President – Sales and Marketing, MEASAT. “The satellite connectivity for these trials will be provided by our MEASAT-3 satellite, which covers over 100 countries across the Asia Pacific. MEASAT looks forward to offering our MEASAT-3/3a platform at 91.5°E to provide both recorded and live 4k transmission, such as for the World Cup 2014 and 2016 Olympics,” concluded Raj.