Motama Updates TVCaster for Cheaper IPTV, OTT Content Delivery

Motama is cutting the cost of its digital DVB gateways for IPTV (News - Alert) and over-the-top (OTT) content delivery by a third with an updated portfolio of its rack-mountable, 19-inch head-end servers, dubbed TVCaster.

TVCaster is a portfolio of 12 turn-key models that offer an integrated DVB receiver, descrambler, remultiplexer and IP streaming server. It includes high-density servers for DVB-S/S2 for free-to-air channels.

All products come with an intuitive Web interface, a command line toolkit and a free software development kit (SDK), which allows for setting up, controlling and monitoring the servers. Also included is a service that extracts electronic program guide (EPG) from the DVB feeds and saves this information to XML files to be used in IPTV middleware.

The firm looks to be well-positioned: the total number of digital receivers/gateways worldwide is expected to reach 1.4 billion by the end of 2012, while cable and IPTV receivers reflect 30 percent of the total market of digital receivers currently in use, according to IHS Screen Digest. DVB receivers accounted for 61 percent of all receivers in use at the end of 2011, while ATSC and ISDB receivers reached 21 percent and six percent respectively.  Amongst digital broadcast receivers, DVB represents 68 percent of the total, with ATSC taking 23 percent and ISDB variants seven percent, as of the end of 2011. DTMB only represents two percent.

The firm also found that 57 percent of all cable receivers globally use DVB-C/C2 for transmission. The main competition is from ATSC-variant QAM in the U.S. market and ISDB-C in Japan. There is future competition to DVB from IP over DOCSIS, but growth from digitization of Chinese cable networks will bolster DVB-C/C2 in the mid-term, it said. Meanwhile, satellite receivers using DVB-S/S2 are the strongest platform for DVB. DVBS/S2 market share reached 68 percent in 2011. And, digital terrestrial is the only DVB platform which is dominated by free-to-air. DVB-T/T2 accounts for 55 percent of the terrestrial market, while the number of ATSC receivers is 3.5 times greater than that of ISDB-T variant receivers.

The updated TVCaster 400 series offers four inputs in one U chassis; TVCaster 600-S2 CI has six inputs and six CI slots in 2U; TVCaster 1400-S2 CI has 14 inputs and 14 CI slots in 3U; TVCaster 1200-S2 has 12 inputs in 2U; and TVCaster 2800-S2 offers 28 inputs in 3U.

All servers are now available with hot-pluggable redundant power supply and redundant disk array of solid state drives (SSD).

“Still, the price per input was improved by up to 33 percent, making Motama's servers a very cost-effective solution for customers looking for a high-quality product 'Made in Germany',” the company said.