ATBA member, ARK Mediacom, Inc. (ARK), has successfully conducted the first end-to-end delivery of IP multicast content utilizing the nextgen standard of ATSC 3.0 from origination to the edge. This is an important benchmark in proving the ability to deliver a national network with broadband services over the ARK broadcast network.
The demonstration originated the content in Cedar Hill, TX using the transmission of ATBA member, International Broadcasting Network (IBN), from AMV Westar master control. Intelsat provided the satellite IP transmission via their gateway and uplink services using a Newtec supplied hub. The signal was then pulled down into the ARK lab environment at the Hitachi Comark headquarters in Southwick, MA. It was then transmitted through an ARK ATSC 3.0 broadcast television stack to a 3.0 Samsung television. As part of this phase of the proof of concept, DigiCap also demonstrated their home media gateway with wifi streaming of four discrete video streams to different devices simultaneously.
ARK is leveraging the power of television broadcasting to add an IP multicast extension to the Internet. The architecture of the ARK network brings the one-to-millions efficiency of broadcasting to the traditional one-to-one unicast Internet. ARK will reduce the cost per GB delivery of Over-the-Top (OTT) video content, software downloads and streamed IP media by two-three orders of magnitude compared to existing Internet service providers. All the different types of media content creators and distributors will benefit from ARK’s end-to-end direct delivery to the mobile and fixed devices of their audiences bypassing all of the existing gatekeepers.
We’ll have more on this soon – ATBA Got news? Send it to us at [email protected]
