Zaplin and IPTV

With the increasing likellyhood of UK free to air TV vchannels not being availble in the Almeria area in the near future our community are looking into having community broadband with a 25MB VDSL line.  We have been told this should allow us to have 15 UK channels injected into the Community TV coaxial network.  At the moment we are at early days (not even had a price yet).  The IPTV is through Zapelin (don't really know what this is).   Our community is small just 70 houses.   Has anyone else used this system or has any knowledge of this system could you please let me know. 

This probably won't work. 

We have visited a few communities who have tried the vsat system. It is 'officially' for a single user system. As far as i'm aware the fastest available package is around 20 meg. Whilst in theory you could share this amongst perhaps 10 people, with 70 and streaming TV, it will fall over - simply not enough shared speed to support an IPTV system, too many users.

We have been called into a few communities to review issues where systems like this have been installed. All have the same problem - performance is simply not as anticipated & certainly with video streaming being the highest data useage, you simply cannot share a connect designed for 1 user (though fast) between 70!  Even allowing for not all users on at the same time (contention ratio) even 5 streaming at the same time would start to load the system up.

The problem is the Vsat companies do not provide a genuine community solution (or that we have been made aware of) - they make their money off the single user subscriptions. A few individuals have found a 'work around' where you can share the signal around, whether it be via wi fi or hard wire - which itself does work, but between a few people or neighbours perhaps - but between an entire community - the speed simply not sufficient. Maybe for an 'internet light' for a little web browsing, but with many users sharing, i've yet to see anything like this come close to working properly.

The other problem with installing wi fi in a community, is it will have a huge amount of dead spots, internet speeds are slower via wi fi - you can lose 50% going though a couple of walls - it is not an exact science. I have never seen a wi fi solution work well on a community as to do this properly and make sure you have 100% coverage in all areas and all properties / rooms would require more equipment / labour than most communities would spend  & that's assuming you have enough speed for all users, which presently seems to be highly unlikely.

Unless you have multiple Vsat connections, or a commercial grade internet landline solution or very few people on the system / streaming at the same time, I would suggest based on what we have seen so far, that this is not viable. 

They can also reduce the resolution to allow more users, but again this will be a trade off & ultimately most internet based systems require a 2 meg minimum (and that's not fantastic) if you have half the community watching TV at the same time (35) you would need be drawing 70 meg - based on a minimum, some streams or anything with a higher qualiry 6 meg (per user). If it does work the quality would have to be so low, you'd want to be watching it on a very small TV as anything larger it will look blocky.

We can install this type of equipment, but for this application we would advise against as based on the numbers given, would suggest it is a headache waiting to happen.

If you do want IPTV, then better to get your own internet connection & own box. Don't know anything about the Zaplin box, we offer a couple of options and there are many on the market - but it's all about internet speed - if you are cannot get this, it's no different from installing a satellite dish that is too small, it will just stutter and fall over.

Nigela, the system you are describing (Zapelin dot com) will indeed work as has been suggested.

The whole point of the ZMS (Zapelin Media Server), as explained on their website is that the whole community needs just ONE ADSL.  With a 25MB VDSL line you should in theory be able to get about 20 channels.  The ZMS will then convert this signal into DTT format and inject the new 20 channels into the coaxial network (headend).  This means that it does not matter if there are 70 or 7000 users, it will work.

These guys are installing these machines in Hotels, and basically, the ZMS is like one giant Set Top Box which takes the IPTV content and makes it available through the coax network.  All you then need to do is ask all the community residents to detect the new channels on their TV set.  The homes wont even need internet nor a Set Top box, just your everyday TV.

Thank you for your reply.