Archive for the ‘Distribution’ Category
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
So where do we stand today in our attempt to launch Canada’s first national public access television channel?
Slowly but surely, it’s moving forward!
A partnership is in the works, finding the first cable company to carry the channel is ongoing, development of the Automated Broadcast System is continuing, new Canadian programming is being found and put on the air…
But the best news is that the latest Linux distribution upgrade to our broadcast servers appears to have resolved the frequent synchronization issues we were having with the live Internet broadcast. Under the old system, the Internet streams would frequently go out of sync by as much as a second. But since the latest updates were applied, we’ve yet to find a single show go out of sync.
The only issue we’ve encountered is with the MPEG4/H.264 encoded test stream, which crashed while attempting to stream a movie that had caused us problems in the past (it worked perfectly on all the other test streams). So we’ve decided to drop the MPEG4/H.264 format altogether. The test stream would have never gone into production anyway since it’s encumbered with too many software patents whose excessively high licensing fees could have reached the tens of thousands of dollars per year.
And with Google announcing the development of a new competing open source streaming audio/video format called WebM or VP8, very soon there won’t be any reason to consider patent encumbered audio/video formats at all.
Because of all of these improvements, this corporation will soon begin offering consultation services for organizations wishing to implement their own Internet and cable based television channel infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of traditional television channels.
Yes, it’s a new era for broadcast television, one that is no longer encumbered by legacy equipment or software licensing fees, allowing all of us to concentrate on what’s most important: the content.
Posted in Advertising, Distribution, Management, News, Programming, Show Ideas, Technology | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
You can now view the channel’s live broadcast on-line. Simply click on the “Watch Live!” menu option just above.
This feature will only work on Web browsers supporting the HTML5 video tag feature. The latest versions of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome should properly support this feature. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari however do not currently support the HTML5 video tag. And it might take a while before either browser manufacturer decides to provide full support considering both Microsoft and Apple already offer proprietary video streaming solutions specifically designed for their respective platforms.
You may also watch the broadcast with the VLC Media Player. Simply open a network stream to the address http://38.104.152.86.
A note to cable television distributors. A high bandwidth, broadcast quality version of this stream is now available upon request. The proposed codecs are Theora video with Vorbis audio, packaged in an Ogg container. All of these formats may be used in any application of your choice completely royalty-free.
Posted in Distribution, News, Programming, Technology | No Comments »
Friday, November 13th, 2009
This day is dedicated to my late father, Jean Caron.
Broadcast streams are now available to all qualified cable providers. Please email us with your company information in order to gain access to all of the available streams.
The current broadcast system is still very much in beta mode, so don’t be surprised if occasional “crashes” are encountered for a while. The system will undergo constant improvements during the following weeks, incorporating many of the features normally found on major broadcast channels along with a few interesting surprises.
In order to properly view and process the current broadcast stream, you’ll need to download and install the VLC Media Player, and you’ll require a minimum of 4 Mbps of reliable Internet bandwidth. Integrating the stream into your distribution system however will require further research, which is why we’re asking for plenty of information on the equipment set-ups currently installed at many of the nation’s cable providers.
We would especially appreciate receiving electronic versions of your equipment’s instruction manuals if you can legally provide them. You may already possess the appropriate gear to properly interpret and process the broadcast stream in its native form, making the integration of this channel’s daily broadcast into your distribution system an almost seamless operation.
The initial streaming tests performed during the past few weeks have clearly demonstrated that this new approach to television distribution is surprisingly reliable and flexible. Even live broadcasts are a definite possibility, a feature that wasn’t initially required in the original specifications.
Is this the future of broadcast television distribution? That’s left to be determined. One thing’s for certain however. The enormous cost savings incurred by using the Internet as a distribution network instead of more traditional technologies makes it worthwhile to invest further time and money in this venture.
A great big thanks goes to all the people who have encouraged me — and who continue to encourage me — to pursue this new and exciting business venture.
Stay tuned!
Posted in Distribution, Management, News, Technology | 1 Comment »
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
From September 20 to September 22, the CCSA will hold its conference and annual general meeting at the White Oak Resort in Niagara-by-the-Lake, Ontario, where representatives from the nation’ independent cable providers will meet and discuss the latest issues regarding their industry.
It is also the time of the year where many representatives outside the cable industry will meet to promote their products and services to the various cable companies in attendance.
That includes television channels such as this one.
For the next few days, we’ll be posting updates on this channel’s progress in obtaining as many distributors as possible for its upcoming national broadcast launch. But instead of being posted on our blog, we’ll be posting them on Twitter for which the latest entries will be listed at the top of the middle column.
For those attending the conference, here are the links to the documents that were mentioned, all available in the Adobe PDF format.
Have a great conference.
Posted in Distribution, Management | No Comments »
Monday, December 15th, 2008
This channel now has broadcast target dates.
- February 28, 2009: Internet streaming launch.
- March 19, 2009: Official broadcast launch.
This doesn’t mean absolutely everything will be in place on day one. Instead, the goal is to launch a minimalist daily broadcast service (about two hours per day) in order to introduce and test out new distribution technologies. As these technologies are improved over the coming months, the length of the broadcast day will increase, and we will progress into a more conventional broadcast schedule.
The reason why the Internet streaming launch is scheduled before the official broadcast launch is very simple. Instead of distributing the channel’s broadcast signal via satellite as we originally intended, we now plan to distribute the channel’s programming to all qualified broadcast distribution undertakings (BDU) via the Internet. The delay between the Internet streaming launch and the broadcast launch will allow us to perform some debugging of the broadcast infrastructure.
We might even furnish the BDUs the necessary equipment required to receive the distribution signal, which may be in the form of a single netbook computer.
There are no guarantees these target dates will be met. But they are technically realistic considering the initial minimalist broadcast goals I have in mind, and the fact the software required to support this form of distribution is already freely available.
Besides. I’ve been on a partial sabbatical long enough. It’s time to get to work and finally launch my television channel.
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