Qatar gears up for 4K broadcasting
March 23, 2017
By Chris Forrester
Qatar’s Satellite Company (E’shailSat) is gearing up for more Ultra-HD content from its portfolio of broadcasting clients.
E’shail used the Dubai CabSat show to demonstrate its existing live UHD capabilities. It counts the beIN media group and its beIN Sports channels amongst its customers as well as the al-Jazeera bouquet of news and entertainment channels.
However, E’shail also admitted that the launch of E’shail-2 is not now going to happen before 2018, much later than originally anticipated.
CEO Ali Al Kuwari, speaking at CabSat, talked about the operator’s new teleport about to come on stream, and also highlighted the upcoming 2018 launch of the company’s second satellite, E’shail-2. The company showcased Live transmission of UHD channel via its E’shailSat satellite using the latest technologies such as HEVC encoding and DVB-S2X modulation. The UHD service by E’shailSat at CABSAT offer customers a complete end-to-end solution from playout to HEVC encoding to content transfer via public internet to E’shailSat teleport for uplink using the latest modulation scheme of DVB-S2X giving customers highly cost effective and bandwidth efficient solution.
A statement from E’shail said: “In addition to providing 4K UHD services for established news and sports channels, E’shailSat also supports a growing number of new Arabic channels to launch HD and SD services in the MENA region. Al Rafidain and Al Raed recently launched their channels exclusively on E’shailSat’s broadcast hotspot to reach customers across the region.”
“CASBSAT is an important event in our calendar where we have the opportunity to meet with our customers and engage with potential customers and technology suppliers. With a new teleport coming online soon and E’shail-2 scheduled for launch next year, we are presenting our innovative and technologically advanced solutions at CABSAT. This exhibition is an important element in our strategy to attract customers who value broadcasting independence, quality of service and efficient solutions”.