- Joined
- Jul 26, 2003
- Messages
- 50,798
- Reaction score
- 11,251
- Points
- 113
- Location
- Scottish Borders
- My Satellite Setup
-
TM 5402HD
Sky+ UK.
- My Location
- Scottish Borders
November 2014 - this is information I put together many years ago - the satellite names used are well out of date but the general info is still more or less valid. A/S
Ive been meaning to put this info up for a while, but an email to me has finally prompted me to put the info up for the benefit of all forum members. The info is a fairly typical sample of the questions we get asked about sports feeds and S~I~S. horse feeds in particular.
Are you aware of digital Sport Feeds which are available from various satellite, often the Eutelsat Satellites? If you are, is there ANY way that these can be accessed using analogue equipment? Most of them are broadcast in 4:2:2 format
Analogue sports feeds are exceedingly rare & so can be effectively discounted these days
4:2:2 is a digital format and thus needs digital equipment. There are various web sites that will give you feeds info :
http://www.satelliweb.com/index.php?section=livef
happens to be one Ive got bookmarked. Feeds come and go and tend to use the more obscure satellites (Eutelsat W2 at 16E is used for many feeds of all types, although its not unknown for them to appear on the main broadcast sats it is unusual).
If there isn't any way, is there a way of viewing them faster than using a normal 4:2:2 receiver (I'm viewing them in 4:2:2 at the moment, but the pictures are still 2.5 seconds behind live).?
If you are getting the 4:2:2 feeds at the moment then thats the best you will get - a dedicated receiver wont make any difference to how you see it. The delays from live will be caused by the lag from the round trip to 1 or possibly 2 or more satellites in multiple hops plus lags introduced by the equipment, compression, decompression, trips through digital frame stores, etc All the delays add up
I need these pictures as fast as possible, in a situation where half a second can make a colossal difference, let alone a 2 second advantage. I'm convinced there must be a way to get them, I just can't work it out. I've heard people talking about viewing the "uplink". Would that be possible?
Ah yet another in-run betting person desperate for that extra few tenths of a second advantage The uplink is the feed from the outside broadcast truck, and isnt actually visible unless you are sitting on the target satellite! The retransmitted downlink (which is the one going to the broadcaster TV centre) is the one you want - and its this which is the holy grail of all feed hunters especially the betting fraternity feed chasers.
Or is there any way to view pictures which are shown at an event. For example, at a tennis tournament, there are tv screens which are showing the pictures "live" and they are fully live. Yet when I get them on my screen off the "live feed" I'm 2.5 seconds behind
Those pictures at the event will be basically closed circuit tv, and are probably just the pictures from the host broadcaster. As soon as the pictures leave the sports complex the delays begin building up.
Look at it like this. An outside broadcast truck at a horse race uplinks onto say Eutel W2 16E (for the sake of argument) The feed is downlinked to BBC TV centre for retransmission on Grandstand. They bounce it back up to Astra 2D at 28E for transmission to Joe Public. The 2 satellite hops is around a second delay already just from the round trip BEFORE all the digital processing is done at the OB truck, BBC TV Centre, and the final digital decompression in your sat receiver. Things get worse where encrypted services are involved as there is an encryption & decryption delay added in too.
Now its obvious from this that if you can knock out that second hop and just watch the broadcast feed rather than Grandstand you will have at least half a second advantage over Joe Public watching Grandstand at home.
There is an additional problem of course - the betting industry has cottoned onto the fact that they are losing their advantage over the punter if the punter can see their feeds. Ive heard that many of the horse racing feeds have been encrypted for around 12 months using an encryption called BISS. Now, BISS is not the most secure encryption in the world, and many keys for BISS are public. However, I have seen a recent report the keys are changed daily.
From what Ive been told recently the keys are available, from whom I have no idea, but getting that information costs a lot of money
At the end of the day the best way to get the horse racing feeds is to pay for an S~I~S subscription. Initial cost is somewhere between 6 and 10 thousand pounds from my (rather limited) information with a similar amount needed for the subscription in later years. Im hazy on the exact details simply as my interest in horse racing doesnt go much further than the Grand National - and wondering if my nag in the work sweepstake will get onto the second circuit this year.
Ive been meaning to put this info up for a while, but an email to me has finally prompted me to put the info up for the benefit of all forum members. The info is a fairly typical sample of the questions we get asked about sports feeds and S~I~S. horse feeds in particular.
Are you aware of digital Sport Feeds which are available from various satellite, often the Eutelsat Satellites? If you are, is there ANY way that these can be accessed using analogue equipment? Most of them are broadcast in 4:2:2 format
Analogue sports feeds are exceedingly rare & so can be effectively discounted these days
4:2:2 is a digital format and thus needs digital equipment. There are various web sites that will give you feeds info :
http://www.satelliweb.com/index.php?section=livef
happens to be one Ive got bookmarked. Feeds come and go and tend to use the more obscure satellites (Eutelsat W2 at 16E is used for many feeds of all types, although its not unknown for them to appear on the main broadcast sats it is unusual).
If there isn't any way, is there a way of viewing them faster than using a normal 4:2:2 receiver (I'm viewing them in 4:2:2 at the moment, but the pictures are still 2.5 seconds behind live).?
If you are getting the 4:2:2 feeds at the moment then thats the best you will get - a dedicated receiver wont make any difference to how you see it. The delays from live will be caused by the lag from the round trip to 1 or possibly 2 or more satellites in multiple hops plus lags introduced by the equipment, compression, decompression, trips through digital frame stores, etc All the delays add up
I need these pictures as fast as possible, in a situation where half a second can make a colossal difference, let alone a 2 second advantage. I'm convinced there must be a way to get them, I just can't work it out. I've heard people talking about viewing the "uplink". Would that be possible?
Ah yet another in-run betting person desperate for that extra few tenths of a second advantage The uplink is the feed from the outside broadcast truck, and isnt actually visible unless you are sitting on the target satellite! The retransmitted downlink (which is the one going to the broadcaster TV centre) is the one you want - and its this which is the holy grail of all feed hunters especially the betting fraternity feed chasers.
Or is there any way to view pictures which are shown at an event. For example, at a tennis tournament, there are tv screens which are showing the pictures "live" and they are fully live. Yet when I get them on my screen off the "live feed" I'm 2.5 seconds behind
Those pictures at the event will be basically closed circuit tv, and are probably just the pictures from the host broadcaster. As soon as the pictures leave the sports complex the delays begin building up.
Look at it like this. An outside broadcast truck at a horse race uplinks onto say Eutel W2 16E (for the sake of argument) The feed is downlinked to BBC TV centre for retransmission on Grandstand. They bounce it back up to Astra 2D at 28E for transmission to Joe Public. The 2 satellite hops is around a second delay already just from the round trip BEFORE all the digital processing is done at the OB truck, BBC TV Centre, and the final digital decompression in your sat receiver. Things get worse where encrypted services are involved as there is an encryption & decryption delay added in too.
Now its obvious from this that if you can knock out that second hop and just watch the broadcast feed rather than Grandstand you will have at least half a second advantage over Joe Public watching Grandstand at home.
There is an additional problem of course - the betting industry has cottoned onto the fact that they are losing their advantage over the punter if the punter can see their feeds. Ive heard that many of the horse racing feeds have been encrypted for around 12 months using an encryption called BISS. Now, BISS is not the most secure encryption in the world, and many keys for BISS are public. However, I have seen a recent report the keys are changed daily.
From what Ive been told recently the keys are available, from whom I have no idea, but getting that information costs a lot of money
At the end of the day the best way to get the horse racing feeds is to pay for an S~I~S subscription. Initial cost is somewhere between 6 and 10 thousand pounds from my (rather limited) information with a similar amount needed for the subscription in later years. Im hazy on the exact details simply as my interest in horse racing doesnt go much further than the Grand National - and wondering if my nag in the work sweepstake will get onto the second circuit this year.
Last edited: