A TV gateway (also called network TV tuner) is a television headend to a network UPnP router that receives live

digital video broadcast Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) o ...

(DVB)

MPEG transport stream MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS, MTS) or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast systems ...

s (channels) from terrestrial aerials, satellite dishes, or cable feeds and converts them into IP streams for distribution over an

IP network The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

VBox-Live-TV-UPnP-Network-Tuner-with-NAS-PVR-and-OTT

TV gateways allow users to stream broadcast live TV content to connected devices on the IP network, including tablets, smartphones, computers, gaming consoles and smart tvs. They also allow multiple users to watch and record different channels at the same time. The device offers multi-platform, multi-screen broadcast television with rich live TV content and high quality HD channels.

Digital TV signals used in TV gateways

Most TV gateways support

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

(FTA) television services found in many countries. These include services such as

Freeview Freeview may refer to: *Freeview (Australia), the marketing name for the digital terrestrial television platform in Australia *Freeview (New Zealand), a digital satellite and digital terrestrial television platform in New Zealand *Freeview (UK), a ...

and Freesat in the United Kingdom, TNT in France and TDT in Spain, and basic cable packages in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and others. A few TV gateways also support third party conditional access modules (CAMs) for premium

pay TV Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, b ...

channels, which are transmitted by using a CAM CI card provided by the broadcasters or by third party manufacturers to access their TV service.

Uses

While many first-generation TV gateways support only one channel or a limited number of channels, modern TV gateways provide multiple

TV tuners A TV tuner card is a kind of television tuner that allows television signals to be received by a computer. Most TV tuners also function as video capture cards, allowing them to record television programs onto a hard disk much like the digital vi ...

that can process several channels simultaneously. The more channels a TV gateway provides the more users it can service at the same time. Modern TV gateways also allow users to record TV programs to a USB flash drive, or external hard disk and in some cases, shared folders or network attached storage (NAS).

Electronic program guide

An electronic program guide (EPG) is like a traditional TV listing magazine but available online or on a TV service like aerial, satellite or cable. It allows viewers to find out what shows will air and search for programs they’d like to watch. EPG's also allow users to set reminders and record shows automatically. Most TV gateways with PVR functionality offer EPG data. This can be free of charge for data processed from the broadcaster TV stream (according to standard DVB EN 300 468 and technical specification TS 101 211) or via a paid service provided by a third party online EPG provider.

Whole house DVR

Whole house HD-

digital video recorder A digital video recorder (DVR) is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes with direct to d ...

allows users to record programs on a centralized TV gateway DVR and then watch them on any device connected to their home network. TV gateways with whole house HD-DVR require storage to record live TV programs or schedule future recordings using the EPG. Whole house DVR TV gateways use a number of storage mediums to store recordings: * Attached

USB storage The USB mass storage device class (also known as USB MSC or UMS) is a set of computing communications protocols, specifically a USB Device Class, defined by the USB Implementers Forum that makes a USB device accessible to a host computing device ...

such as removable HDD or USB flash drives * Network Windows shared folder * Network attached storage (NAS)

Streaming protocols

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 ...

(HTTP) protocols are mainly used in consumer grade TV gateways to provide a small number of simultaneous users with the flexibility to view multiple channels.

Multicast In computer networking, multicast is 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 should not be confused with ...

(UDP), is mainly used in professional-grade TV gateways to enable efficient broadcast of a preset number of channels to a large number of simultaneous viewers. Multicast TV gateways are used primarily by

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded media, ...

broadcasters, hotels, hospitals, and

digital signage Digital signage is a segment of electronic signage. Digital displays use technologies such as LCD, LED, projection and e-paper to display digital images, video, web pages, weather data, restaurant menus, or text. They can be found in public ...

applications.

Discovery protocols

Universal plug and play (UPnP) is a set of

communication protocols A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchron ...

that permits network devices, to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the network and establish functional

network service In computer networking, a network service is an application running at the network application layer and above, that provides data storage, manipulation, presentation, communication or other capability which is often implemented using a client� ...

s for data sharing, communications, and entertainment.

M3U M3U (''MP3 URL'' or Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3 Uniform Resource Locator in full) is a computer file format for a multimedia playlist. One common use of the M3U file format is creating a single-entry playlist file pointing to a st ...

- The m3u8 file format is a de facto standard playlist format suitable for carrying lists of media file URL. Advanced TV gateways use M3U in addition to UPnP to offer better application support, allowing for faster channel zapping and provide a preset channel list.

References

{{Reflist Digital media players Media players Set top box Internet of things Information appliances Digital television Film and video technology Interactive television Internet broadcasting Streaming television Multimedia Peercasting Streaming media systems * * Television technology Television terminology Networking hardware Television time shifting technology