PAGE CONTENTS
Objectives
The number of people in the world working or living abroad, displaced, refugee or from multiple backgrounds is increasing rapidly. Indeed, having access to information from other cultures is vital for any world citizen. Up to now, only the major broadcasters have been able to address their expatriate franchise, and then mostly in adjacent regions only. We call this type of broadcasting content ‘My Home Town Television’.
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My Hometown TV project is all about delivering television programming to the homes of expatriate groups. |
DiviTel delivers the promise of home town video by satellite and the internet. Satellite will be used both as a distribution medium, to get the broadcasters material to the service providers, and as a delivery platform for internet and DVB-based video. This solution creates a cost-effective and smart way for (third world) broadcasters to deliver content to their audiences across the world (mainly in Europe) by satellite.
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Challenges
Key issues in the project were the technical feasibility, usability and the consumer market for this type of content.
Plan
The project has created a prototype environment that was tested in a pilot. It encompasses the central elements of the broadcasting value chain for this type of content.
Around 15 pilot users received a program from a broadcaster in their country of origin for the two month pilot period. They provided feedback through questionnaires and interviews on the precieved quality, usability and added value of the programming.
Current Status
The pilot system for the My Home Town broadcaster solution including a proprietary graphical user interface was finalised and accepted by ESA. The pilot system consisting of a high end server with a professional capture card, large storage and professional MPEG-4 coding software was installed at Curacao, Dutch Antilles and content was transmitted over satellite to the European continent, where pilot customers have been able to watch content from ‘home’.
Market research and business planning as well as research into legal matters were carried out. Also other applications for the platform than originally intended were identified. This clearly shows that the ESA Telecom SME programme can be a real enabler for further commercial development to a medium sized company like DiviTel.
The final solution produced is generally described at: www.divitel.com