“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We can reduce the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… The Outer Limits.”

Eagle Broadband, a national provider of IPTV services, today announced the company began construction of its super head-end and satellite farm. The Florida head-end will collect signals from over 30 satellites to deliver content collected from more than 250 cable channels.

The new super head-end being constructed at NewCom International’s Miami teleport will allow Eagle to collect and digitize IPTV content gathered from the more than 30 satellites across North America. It will also gather specialty Latin content from additional satellites positioned further east over the Atlantic Ocean.

Eagle Broadband says it will complete the construction of its head-end by October 1 and in conjunction will roll out its IPTVComplete service. The service includes direct access to more than 250 channels of high-demand programming from popular entertainment providers, using a mix of standard-definition and high-definition set-top boxes.

Simulsat is the world’s only true full-arc multiple satellite antenna that is capable of receiving satellite transmissions from 35 or more satellites simultaneously, without adjustment or degradation in performance from one satellite to the next.

“Our IPTV solution is taking shape and we will soon deliver the most complete and high-quality cable offering to our clients around the country,” said Dave Micek, president and chief executive officer of Eagle Broadband.

Although the largest market for IPTV may be in Asia, since cable television enjoys large penetration in North America and Europe, satellite IPTV headends are an option for telephone operators, perhaps even broadband wireless operators.

Other IPTV providers in North America include:

• Intelsat’s Ampiage (below) also offers nationwide IPTV. Modeled on a “super head-end”, Ampiage originates from Intelsat’s Video Operations Center in Washington, D.C., where video and audio are received and processed from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. It is then distributed to telco and MSO video hubs nationwide via their powerful IA-8 satellite. Telcos and MSOs then distribute this programming content via DSL, fiber, cable television or broadband wireless to residential subscribers across North America.
  

  Ampiage claims telco customers can realize significant cost savings by taking advantage of Intelsat’s packaged offering, which, if the elements were procured separately and on their own, would cost them millions of dollars.

  Ampiage packages the acquisition, aggregation, encoding, encapsulation and encryption of licensed TV programming and centralizes content, offering hundreds of video and audio channels. Telcos can bundle standard and high definition televison programming with their voice and broadband services without incurring a significant upgrade cost, says Ampiage.

• IP Prime is SES Americom’s IPTV offering. IP Prime aggregates content at its satellite headend, then combines it with an encoding and transport function and delivers it, via their AMC-9 satellite, on C-band to cable and telco customers. Using MPEG-4, IP Prime makes it possible to transmit more channels, including HDTV, over existing DSL lines or fiber.It’s protected end-to-end by NDS’s conditional access system and transported seamlessly to the set-top box or the central office head-end. Trials are underway with rural coop, NRTC and BellSouth. The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association is their partner and represents more than 560 locally owned and controlled telecommunications cooperatives and commercial companies throughout rural and small-town America.
• GlobeCast, a subsidiary of France Telecom, delivers television worldwide via satellite and fiber networks. It ingests once to deliver content to any network via multiple platforms, including direct-to-home satellite, cable, video-to-mobile, IPTV/video-over-ADSL, and desktop broadband. It is now the world’s largest provider of delivery services to live television-over-mobile operators using its IP-based file delivery platform.
  

  GlobeCast WorldTV delivers international television and radio programming via direct-to-home satellite to U.S. viewers. It targets the millions of foreign-born viewers with more than 160 TV and radio channels from Europe, Africa, Asia & the Middle-East via Intelsat Americas 5.

• AT&T is offering its U-verse IPTV service in San Antonio, reports Telephony. AT&T also rolled out IPTV service in Houston this summer as well. AT&T has said it will lauch U-verse in 15 to 20 markets this year where it had built out its Project Lightspeed fiber-to-the-node network.Project Lightspeed is the SBC initiative to expand its fiber-optics network deeper into neighborhoods. That delivers IPTV via AT&T’s U-verse TV, voice and high-speed Internet access services.

  A variety of service plans are available from $69/month - $114/month. U-verse includes 200 channels of IPTV, Spanish-language programming, video-on-demand, and an interactive program guide. Features exclusive to IPTV include faster channel-changes, a mosaic approach to picture-in-picture displays, and content searches via keywords such as actor names.

• Verizon’s FiOS TV service, despite being delivered via fiber-to-the-premises technology, has more in common with the average cable company’s HFC network than with AT&T’s IPTV network. Migrating to IPTV is not necessary for cable operators, says CED Magazine. “Many of the features of IPTV — it’s scalable, it offers infinite channels, you can do targeted advertising — can be done with switched digital,” observes Nimrod Ben-Natan, Harmonic Inc.’s VP of solutions and strategy.

Market researcher, Jose del Rosario of Northern Sky Research, cautions that “it is a niche market on a country-by-country basis that has a limited number of players that each country market or regional market can bear.”

Rosario believes that in the U.S., “the satellite play is likely to be a transport mechanism for second and third tier telcos serving outside the coverage of tier one players”.

The IPTV program schedule is subject to change.

Consumers may prefer to get their own programming — On Demand — and make their own schedule. Walt Disney chief executive Robert Iger says Apple’s forthcoming iTV streaming media hub is a “compelling” device, that will change the way people enjoy and share their video content.

With enough bandwidth, anything seems possible.

Politics, more than technology, may ultimately decide whether AT&T controls the horizontal.

Related DailyWireless stories include; Movie Downloading, Clearwire: IPTV Carrier?, Be Your Own TV Network, WorldView, Intelsat Offers IPTV, The IPTV Gamble, AT&T’s WiFi TV, NAB 2006, IPTV: Is It Soup Yet?, IPTV Networking, Telco’s Left Behind in IPTV Armageddon?, PBS + MovieBeam, Cuban: Broadcasting Not Dead, Wireless IP-TV Box, IP-TV End Game, Cisco Buying Scientific Atlanta, SBC Picks IP-TV Settops, GoogleNet?, The Free Triple Play, VDSL-2 Ratified, IPTV: Is It Soup Yet?, IP-TV Settops, Legislators: Don’t Mess With SBC, DirecTV + WiMax?, Muni Wireless Laws, and Duopoly Laws.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Thursday, September 21st, 2006 at 5:05 am.