ST Engineering iDirect

Satellite

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Redefining satcom solutions

With a media and broadcast innovation heritage spanning more than 35 years, ST Engineering iDirect is a global leader in satellite communications. The company’s equipment and services have been designed and developed to meet the most extensive requirements of the industry. ST Engineering iDirect offers an industry-leading portfolio of products that can meet the needs of any remote production scenario or application, as well as turnkey broadcasting solutions.

Distribution

Content drives pay TV and advertising revenues; hence the consumer demands more content at higher quality. Both together create the need to distribute more data over satellite. In many regions of the world, affordable satellite capacity is not available and service providers need platforms that are efficient and use advanced transmission technologies.
As a market share leader of 80% in DTH, ST Engineering iDirect’s large installed base proves that end-users and professional users benefit from its efficient technologies and mature product range. Its DVB-S2X transmission capabilities result in 15-30% efficiency gain in a typical distribution network. Combined with other advanced transmission technologies, such as Equalink pre-distortion and DVB multistream operation, network optimisations can result in doubling the capacity at the same OPEX.

OTT over Satellite

In 2021, ST Engineering iDirect and its partners Broadpeak, EKT and EasyBroadcast introduced SKYflow, a cutting-edge multicast ABR (Adaptive Bit Rate) ecosystem. The ecosystem offers cost-effective, ultra-fast, low latency delivery of live video to mobile devices and large screens alike for global audiences. The introduction of SKYflow now opens the door for many use cases that require satellite delivery of OTT services.
The ecosystem is hugely significant for service providers and telcos who have struggled to reach subscribers using congested networks. It confirms that satellite is the ideal medium to deliver this content due to its capability to transport high bitrates to the edge, multicasting performance and smart pre-positioning of content at the edge.

Contribution

Just like other businesses, broadcasters are also faced with increasing pressure on operating margins, while also having to retain the high expectations in service availability and reliability (Service Level Agreement compliance). To evolve with the changing technologies, broadcasters must have solutions that are flexible and scalable, and guarantee bandwidth efficient, OPEX friendly transmissions.
Modern newsgathering is not only about live video. Today’s news crews require access to many applications, including VoIP, video clip transfer, web and archive browsing, email and social media. All these applications require a reliable bi-directional IP ‘multiservice’ communication link of sizeable bandwidth, which allows news crews to operate as if they were in the studio. As the event may not be planned ahead, it is often unclear which type of IP connectivity will be available and reliable during coverage. ST Engineering iDirect’s Dialog platform allows the combination of live video transmission and IP connectivity via satellite to enable both data and video applications for Occasional Use services.

Cloud Media/Remote Production

Satellite is a vital component in any producer’s toolkit and is making waves for the versatility it offers. From film productions to news crews, cloud access is such a powerful enabler of productivity that demand for satellite connectivity as part of a blended all-IP solution is well justified, especially in remote areas.
ST Engineering iDirect is now able to provide a portfolio of products and technologies that can meet the needs of any remote production scenario or application. ST Engineering iDirect’s Mx-DMA technology is able to offer a single return link suitable for most use cases while reducing operational complexity and offering the highest bandwidth efficiencies. Where other solutions like terrestrial or cellular connectivity struggle, satellite guarantees that the quality connectivity required is available not only with the performance but agility to suit any environment better than other existing connectivity platforms.

Broadcast Turnkey Solutions

By offering broadcast turnkey solutions, the company is able to design, develop and deliver state-of-the-art hybrid satellite/terrestrial network infrastructures that support the contribution and distribution of news material in multiple live and file formats. These media networks connect broadcasters and media service providers together. That way, services run much smarter leading to benefits such as reduced OPEX and CAPEX and more importantly providing timely response to the growing and changing needs of customers.