SAT>IP (or Sat-IP) specifies an IP-based client–server

communication protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics (computer science), sem ...

for a TV gateway in which SAT>IP servers, connected to one or more DVB broadcast sources, send the program selected and requested by an SAT>IP client over an IP-based

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of da ...

in either unicast for the one requesting client or

multicast In computer networking, multicast is a type of group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast differs from ph ...

in one datastream for several SAT>IP clients. While the system, originating from the DBS satellite operator SES, is originally geared towards receiving and distributing

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

broadcasts in

DVB-S Digital Video Broadcasting – Satellite (DVB-S) is the original DVB standard for satellite television and dates from 1995, in its first release, while development lasted from 1993 to 1997. The first commercial applications were by Canal+ in ...

DVB-S2 Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite - Second Generation (DVB-S2) is a digital television broadcast standard that has been designed as a successor for the popular DVB-S system. It was developed in 2003 by the Digital Video Broadcasting Proj ...

encoding, SAT>IP also specifies formats for the SAT>IP client request to specify programs broadcast via

DVB-C Digital Video Broadcasting - Cable (DVB-C) is the Digital Video Broadcasting, DVB European consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital television over coaxial cable, cable. This system transmits an MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 family digita ...

and

DVB-T DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Fe ...

. Only the SAT>IP servers need tuning hardware and software specific to the DVB-broadcast system(s) being used; SAT>IP clients can be any IP-enabled client multimedia device – Tablets, PCs, laptops, Smartphones, “connected” TVs, video game consoles, media players or others. The main difference of SAT>IP to other IP-based multi-media distribution systems such as IP-TV and DLNA is that the SAT>IP client does not select a program from a server specific list, but has to specify the DVB reception parameters such as the signal source (typically the satellite number in a DiSEqC switch), frequency, polarisation, Modulation system and type, the wanted PIDs and others. The SAT>IP client would rely for this on an Extended M3U Channel list. The SAT>IP protocol is standardized as CENELEC EN50585.

History

SES unveiled and demonstrated SAT>IP at the fifth annual SES Industry Days conference 2012, showing the distribution of satellite programmes over CAT5

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

, Power Line, plastic optical fibre and

WiFi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

networks. The first devices implementing the SAT>IP protocol became available in 2012. In February 2021 the alliance announced it was putting activities on hold. As of July 2024 the official SAT>IP website has gone offline along with its services providing metadata to SAT>IP clients.

Overview

SAT>IP is particularly aimed at satellite TV distribution in the home but can be applied to large multi-dwelling and hospitality reception systems too. Conventional satellite TV reception systems convert the received transmissions to an

intermediate frequency In communications and electronic engineering, an intermediate frequency (IF) is a frequency to which a carrier wave is shifted as an intermediate step in Transmission (telecommunications), transmission or reception. The intermediate frequency is ...

(IF) for distribution via dedicated

coaxial In geometry, coaxial means that several three-dimensional linear or planar forms share a common axis. The two-dimensional analog is ''concentric''. Common examples: A coaxial cable has a wire conductor in the centre (D), a circumferential ou ...

cables to one or more satellite tuners and demodulators in

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also known as a cable converter box, cable box, receiver, or simply box, and historically television decoder or a converter, is an information appliance device that generally contains a Tuner (radio)#Television, TV tuner inpu ...

es. SAT>IP allows the satellite TV distribution to share a data network and enables display and viewing of the signals on any multimedia IP device equipped with suitable software. Multiple SAT>IP servers and clients can operate on the same network with both

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscri ...

and encrypted pay-TV transmissions. The intention of the SAT>IP Project is to make SAT>IP an international standard that can be widely implemented worldwide and compatible across manufacturers and operators. The SAT>IP protocol was developed jointly by the SAT>IP Project partners, satellite operator SES, UK broadcaster

BSkyB Sky UK Limited (formerly British Sky Broadcasting Limited (BSkyB)), trading as Sky, is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television, broadband internet, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers ...

, and Danish TV software company Craftwork. Prototype SAT>IP equipment and the first certified SAT>IP converter was developed by Inverto Digital Labs, a Luxembourg-based Set Top Box and software designer. SAT>IP is a license free technology available to all manufacturers.

SAT>IP Alliance

In April 2015, at the Las Vegas

NAB Show NAB Show is an annual trade show produced by the National Association of Broadcasters. It takes place in April, and has been held since 1991 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The show's tagline is "Where Content Comes to L ...

, six satellite operators and equipment manufacturers announced the formation of the SAT>IP Alliance, a coalition to develop compatible hardware and software for SAT>IP technology. At this time, the SAT>IP Alliance founding members were SES, Hispasat,

Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...

Nagra Nagra is a brand of portable audio recorders produced from 1951 in Switzerland. Beginning in 1997 a range of high-end equipment aimed at the audiophile community was introduced, and Nagra expanded the company's product lines into new markets. O ...

, ALi Corporation, and

MaxLinear MaxLinear, Inc. is an American electronic hardware company. Founded in 2003, it provides highly integrated radio-frequency (RF) Analog signal, analog and Mixed-signal integrated circuit, mixed-signal semiconductor products for broadband communic ...

. In September 2015, Eutelsat joined the SAT>IP Alliance as a founder member and the third satellite operator. In May 2017 Irdeto and Verimatrix joined. As of April 2019, the SAT>IP Alliance members are: *satellite operators: **

Eutelsat Eutelsat S.A. is a French satellite operator. Providing coverage over the entire European continent, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas, it has been the world's third-largest satellite operator in terms of revenues. Its subsidiary E ...

** Hispasat ** SES *Conditional access system vendors: **Irdeto **

** Verimatrix *other: **Arcadyan **

**Zinwell The SAT>IP Alliance's declared aim is to an open, non-profit industry alliance to promote and further develop SAT>IP. In September 2017, the DVB consortium of broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, and regulators announced an agreement with the SAT>IP Alliance on the future development of the SAT>IP specification and that future promotion of the technology will be conducted jointly, allowing the overall DVB community to contribute to SAT>IP features and services. In February 2021 the SAT>IP Alliance announced that as the SAT>IP technology is well established and technical development now forms part of the DVB Home Broadcasting Standard, it has "put its activities on hold", although the SAT>IP Alliance website would remain open as an information resource for manufacturers and operators.

SAT>IP server

The SAT>IP server removes the RF tuner and demodulator from the client device, providing their functions as a common resource of the IP network. The server will typically contain two or more tuners to serve several clients with different channels simultaneously. It converts the satellite TV signals to IP in their broadcast quality, transparently without any transcoding, effectively removing the DVB-S/S2 layer and replacing it with an IP transport layer. This process can happen in a master STB (even as an addition to conventional receiver operation), in a distribution device analogous to an IF

multiswitch {{Unreferenced, date=December 2009 A multiswitch is a device used with a dual or quattro LNB to distribute satellite TV signals to multiple (usually more than four) receivers from a single dish and LNB. A typical Ku band universal LNB design ...

positioned close to the antenna, or even at the antenna itself in the LNB (an IP-LNB).

SAT>IP protocol

Converted to IP, the satellite TV signals can be distributed over any IP network, depending on the configuration of the server, using wired

, wireless (

WLAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office buildin ...

, 4G), “Power Line” home networks, optical fibre, plastic fibre, coax,

twisted pair Twisted pair cabling is a type of communications cable in which two conductors of a single circuit are twisted together for the purposes of improving electromagnetic compatibility. Compared to a single conductor or an untwisted balanced ...

(xDSL) or visible light technologies. The SAT>IP protocol is independent of manufacturers and was developed to enable SAT>IP client devices to communicate with SAT>IP servers. SAT>IP protocol is a remote tuner protocol based on existing protocols such as IP,

UPnP Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols on the Internet Protocol (IP) that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Gateway (telecommunications), Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile de ...

, RTSP,

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

, which have been complemented with extensions for satellite TV where necessary. The SAT>IP protocol is split into a media plane and a control plane. In the media plane, the SAT>IP server produces media streams in industry standard

unicast Unicast is data transmission from a single sender (red) to a single receiver (green). Other devices on the network (yellow) do not participate in the communication. In computer networking, unicast is a one-to-one transmission from one point in ...

RTP/ UDP. In the control plane, clients request access to satellites, transponders and MPEG streams using RTSP or HTTP. Only those transport stream packages needed for the TV transmission requested are carried over the IP network. The full protocol description (v1.2.2) is publicly available a
SAT>IP Protocol

Encrypted pay-TV transmission

The SAT>IP protocol doesn't provide any specific support for encrypted services. The specification only targets the tuner, and how to access to DVB streams over the network. So if the client wants access to encrypted feeds, it needs to have the correct support for them. This is easy when the client is a device with CAS/CAM hardware support (like a television or set-top-box), but it's unclear how to do it in a PC, mobile or tablet.

Products

Two categories of SAT>IP products exist: SAT>IP clients and servers.

SAT>IP clients

Software applications to use computers and display devices as SAT>IP clients have been produced by a number of companies. * DVBViewer.com: DVBViewer Pro is a digital TV viewer and recorder software application for Windows PCs which has been extended to use SAT>IP. The SAT>IP Viewer Android app is available and DVBViewer also produces an Android app for SAT>IP dish alignment, combining a dish angle calculator and signal strength/quality meter. * Elgato: Elgato Systems produces an app for Android tablets and phones, and an iOS app for iPad and iPhone as a SAT>IP client. *Tara Systems The Inaris SAT>IP viewer is available as an app for both Android and iOS devices. * tivizen: The tvizen SAT>IP app is available free of charge for Android devices.

SAT>IP servers

*Inverto: The first certified SAT>IP equipment to be produced for commercial sale was the IDL400S Multibox server from Inverto. The Linux-based Multibox can tune to four satellite signals and stream selected TV/Radio programs to four users' tablets, smart phones, smart TVs, game consoles or connected video devices over a wired and/or wireless home network. Clients supported by IDL400S Multibox includes iOS and Android Tablets and Smart phones, UPnP/DLNA compliant connected media players and video streamers (e.g. Xtreamer, Boxee), UPnP/DLNA compliant Smart TVs (e.g. Sony, Samsung, Loewe, Philips, LG), PC client (Windows Media Player, VLC player, TVersity, XBMC or Boxee), Connected game consoles, Proprietary Inverto clients (Volksbox Essential, Volksbox 2, Volksbox Movie) and others SAT>IP compliant Clients. *Zinwell: The Zinwell ZIM-1800 SAT>IP switch/server is the second to be certified to the new standard. The ZIM-1800 offers an opportunity for portable and IP device users to watch rich satellite programmes on their favourite devices, such as iPads, iPhones, Android tablets, smartphones, laptops, smart TVs or any networking devices. The installation and distribution cost can also be significantly reduced by using the Multicast and Unicast features in SMATV systems in hotels and flats. *Triax: TSS400 server *GSS: DSI400 server *Schwaiger: MS41IP server and DSR41IP client receiver *Telestar: Digibit R1 server and Digibit B1 client receiver *Blankom: SIA-108 professional headend streamer *Digital Devices: Servers producing SAT>IP compatible output over a connected network from cable (

) and digital terrestrial (

) tuners have been developed by Digital Devices. * Minisatip Minisatip is an open source software implementing a SAT>IP server application that runs under Linux. It was tested with DVB-S, DVB-S2, DVB-T, DVB-T2, DVB-C, DVB-C2, ATSC DVB cards. * SatPI: SatPI is an open source project that implements a SAT>IP server application that runs under Linux. It currently supports DVB-S/S2/T/C cards.

IP-LNB active head for satellite dish

In April 2013, SES announced the development by Inverto, Abilis and

Inc of a prototype SAT>IP LNB (IP-LNB), which was demonstrated at a conference held at SES' headquarters in Luxembourg. The IP-LNB incorporates eight-channel satellite-to-IP bridging technology to deliver eight concurrent channels via IP unicast or multicast to fixed and portable client devices. By combining satellite reception and IP bridging at the dish, the IP-LNB enables satellite content distribution to the home over a single Ethernet cable, which carries both the IP TV and power for the LNB through

Power over Ethernet Power over Ethernet (PoE) describes any of several technical standard, standards or ad hoc systems that pass electric power along with data on twisted-pair Ethernet cabling. This allows a single cable to provide both a data connection and en ...

(PoE) technology, reducing the overall system cost and power consumption. As of July 2012, the prototype IP-LNB was being developed into a commercial product. In September 2013 at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam, SES demonstrated a prototype IP-LNB, that is a SAT>IP server integrated into an LNB that can deliver eight concurrent HD channels via IP unicast or multicast from its Ethernet output. In June 2015, Triax launched its IP-LNB, providing eight channels in SAT>IP protocol on a single Ethernet cable, powered over that same cable through Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology. In May 2015, Korean company I DO IT produced the first flat plate antenna with a built-in SAT>IP server. The Selfsat>IP antenna is 566 mm × 300 mm in size and includes two conventional LNB outputs and an Ethernet output to stream eight different satellite channels around a home network.

Industry support

The SAT>IP website recognises the following companies as supporters of the SAT>IP standard:SAT>IP website list of supporters
Accessed May 27, 2020 * Arcadyan * Astro *

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data cen ...

* Devolo * Digital Devices * DVBViewer *

* Fuba * Futuraque * Geniatech * GMI * Grundig SAT Systems * Hispasat * Humax * HyperPanel Lab * Inverto * Irdeto * iWedia * Johansson * Kathrein * Labwise *

* MegaSat *

Microsemi Microsemi Corporation was an Aliso Viejo, California-based provider of semiconductor and system solutions for aerospace & defense, communications, data center and industrial markets. In February 2018, it was announced that Chandler, Arizona-ba ...

* Nacamar * Nagra Kudelski *

Red Bee Media Red Bee Media Ltd., formerly Ericsson Broadcast and Media Services (EBMS), is an international broadcasting and media services company and the largest access provider in Europe. Red Bee has its headquarters in London, England, with branch offi ...

* Schwaiger * Selfsat * Sensory-Minds * SES * SmarDTV *

ST Microelectronics STMicroelectronics NV (commonly referred to as ST or STMicro) is a European multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the largest of such companies in Europe. It was founded in 1987 from the merger of two st ...

* TechniSat * Telestar * Televes * Tivizen * Triax Group * Unitron Group * Verimatrix *

Vestel Vestel is a Turkish home and professional appliances manufacturing company consisting of 18 companies specialised in electronics, major appliances and information technology. Vestel's headquarters and production plant are located in Manisa, whil ...

* Wistron Netweb Group