By April 2015 Nilesat will have launched its new regional digital platform, known as
the Nilesat Smart Digital Broadcasting System. This major regional initiative
will provide for the compression and multiplexing of 360 TV services and 120 radio
services over 24 digital transport streams, with the ability to expand up to 480 TV
Services and 30 transport streams.
Nilesat currently broadcasts over 730 TV channels, and over 140 digital radio
channels uplinked from Cairo, Dubai, Amman, Doha, Riyadh and Beirut. Over 75%
of the TV channels are free to air, and the Nilesat audience in the MENA region has
shown steady growth, from 11 million households in 2003 to more than 60 million
households in 2013. According to the most recent surveys in 2013, Nilesat has the
largest audience share, with about 95% of the households in the MENA region.
Media Era Technologies (Mera-Tech) has been appointed as the integrator and
consultancy partner to assist Nilesat in building the next generation platform with
all its requirements. Mera-Tech provides the services that address all aspects of
designing the architecture, planning, and testing, deploying, and optimising the end-to-end solution.
Cisco is introducing new technologies that will help to enhance the company’s customer offering in the Middle East region and further. Cisco Media Production Solutions enable Nilesat to easily extend content to any business unit, partner, or customer device, anywhere in the
world, as well as to reduce costs by consolidating and virtualising media
applications and infrastructures. Cisco’s best in class solution based on D9036
encoder and DCM platform, provides all the important features Nilesat needs in the
digital headend, including acquisition, encoding and transcoding, video processing.
Bridge Technologies has been chosen to provide the digital media measuring and
analysis technology for the Nilesat Smart Digital Video Broadcasting System. The
company’s VB330 core probes, VB288 Content Extractor, VB272 Satellite RF S/S2
analysis, VB242 for ASI analysis, VB220 for IP analysis and VBC for probes full
management will be deployed at the main production facility and headends to
provide a comprehensive advanced monitoring capability for up to 900 services and
48 Transport streams over Nilesat’s network during the first phase of the project,
increasing to up to 1100 services and 60 Transport streams in the second phase.
Newtec delivered more than thirty M6100 Broadcast Satellite Modulators, including
full automatic redundancy, tailored to Nilesat’s specifications.
The provided solution can be upgraded to support DVB-S2X and Carrier ID insertion
(DVB-CID), on top of other Newtec advanced satellite technologies that are
compatible with the DVB-S2 standard, such as Automated Equalink, a linear and
non-linear pre-distortion technology. Additionally, Clean Channel Technology, a
combination of improved roll-offs for DVB-S2 and advanced filtering technologies,
allows optimal bandwidth utilisation. This results in even higher efficiency and a
significant improvement in performance without changing any system parameters,
making it possible to add more content (HD).
