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www.TELE-satellite.com —
02-03/2012 —
TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
Internet services and terrestrial/sat-
ellite TV are constantly merging closer
together. Many current digital receivers
already have an Internet connection
but most of the time this connection is
only used to load new software into the
receiver or to connect the receiver to a
local network. The total integration of
Internet video and audio content with
digital receivers is still in its infancy.
One of the companies that is inten-
sively working on this new technology
is Jiuzhou.
Jimmy Zhang is Jiuzhou’s Marketing
Vice Manager and tells us what it’s all
about: “OTT stands for Over-The-Top.
It means that viewers can not only see
their normal TV channels terrestrially,
via satellite or cable, they can now use
the same device to enjoy video and au-
dio content via the Internet.” YouTube
and VUDU, a movie service, are just
a few examples according to Jimmy
Zhang. The end user doesn’t really care
how the video and audio makes it to his
TV screen, as long as he can use one
remote control to access everything
that’s available.
Unfortunately, a weak spot in the
OTT technology is the bandwidth of the
end user’s Internet connection. Video
transmissions require a large band-
width. Therefore, right now these OTT
compatible digital receivers would re-
ally only have markets in Europe and
North America even though there are
many other regions that offer scattered
high-speed Internet access. “We’re fo-
cusing on these two markets”, confirms
Jimmy Zhang, “Buying power is the
highest there.”
The OTT technology is so important
to Jiuzhou that they have put together
a dedicated development team: “There
are 20 engineers working in the OTT
Team”, we learn from Vice General
Manager Richard who is responsible for
the R&D Team. “Our entire R&D Team
consists of 200 engineers”, clarifies
Vice General Manager Richard, “We’re
working with the Android as well as
with the Linux operating systems.”
Department Manager Yongjun Zhang
is in charge of the Application Team
consisting of ten engineers. This is
where the functioning of the software
is tested and optimized so that end us-
ers won’t have any trouble accessing
all the different Internet services with
their Jiuzhou receiver later on.
The best part is that OTT is only being