For those of you serving the campus or hotel market, ZyCast has a product you might want to check out. Its CS2IP line of encoders, which the company showed last week at ISE 2015, allows for up to 128 SPTS IP output streams. This means your client could have over 100 channels available to them at any given time. The end points are only limited by the network and number of devices they wish to serve.
This device also auto-detects satellite feeds. You have the ability to connect a satellite feed to this box, select which channel you want to encode onto the IP stream and send it out. That’s one cable going into this box, not the “one satellite box per channel” as is the case with a number of IPTV devices. The cost savings to the client alone makes this product one to consider the next time you need to distribute video to several end points.
Specifically the device can take either DVB-S or DVB-S2 signals, demodulate them and put them on the IP stream. It does have LNB support for those instances when you are working with larger commercial grade satellites.
Related: ZyCast Steps To Forefront of HD Encoding, IP Streaming
The CS2IP series will stream in either unicast, point to point, or multicast UDP/RTP. This flexibility gives you the ability to determine who can see your client’s content and who cannot.
The box offers a web interface for configuration. The interface is not the easiest to navigate but after a few minutes a seasoned AV professional should be able to figure it out.
For hotels, campuses, hospitals and other areas where getting IPTV signals in various locations, this device certainly meets or exceeds others in the market at the current time. It’s definitely worth a look.
