EchoStar Satellite Services LLC, a subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation, has unveiled its News Gateway, which is now available to link local news video from all 210 DMAs. The TV news delivery service leverages EchoStar’s nationwide fiber network combined with IP multicasting technologies to route and deliver live, high quality video to and from thousands of stations.
The service was unveiled Thursday at the satellite industry trade show SATCON in New York City.
Through an easy-to-use online interface, news room directors, engineers and reporters can select, decode and route simultaneous live video content in real time from cities across the country. Selected video is then delivered to client locations through a dedicated fiber connection into EchoStar’s Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network managed by 24/7 network engineering staff.
The company says the number of simultaneously viewable sources is scalable to meet customer needs and is encoded in high quality MPEG formats, including standard definition from 210 DMAs and high definition from 170 markets.
“EchoStar pioneered the efforts with major US telco providers to implement a nationwide, fault-tolerant MPLS fiber network capable of transporting real-time, broadcast quality content,” said Ken Carroll, chief operating officer for EchoStar Satellite Services. “With News Gateway, we can bring this proven expertise to the broadcast community and deliver important television news of natural disasters or historical events to a nationwide audience, live and instantaneous.”
Through video over IP multicasting technologies, EchoStar is able to provide clients with access to the same content from up to 210 DMAs with minimal duplication of infrastructure. Staffers at the company’s regional uplink facilities actively monitor and manage every point in the data path to ensure uninterrupted delivery to client sites. Additionally, EchoStar says, the small footprint of the client-side hardware ensures ease of integration into existing video routing infrastructure.
