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Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN), a non-profit statewide cable television network with 10 million viewers, uses direct fiber connections to distribute live programming from its main HQ site in Camp Hill to the Comcast and Verizon cable systems and previously used satellite links to distribute to an additional 30 headends across the state.
According to Dean Vaccher, PCN Engineer, a key driver for replacing the satellite-based transmission with distribution over IP was the addition of high definition (HD) channels to PCN’s channel lineup. Previously, it only distributed standard definition (SD) NTSC 525 channels over C-band satellite links, with a yearly cost consuming a large chunk of its network operations budget. By replacing its satellite-based transmission with distribution over IP, PCN would be able to add HD channel distribution at a significantly lower cost than satellite.
NRWision, a community TV station serving the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, used a filebased system for the first nine years of operations, to upload non-live content created in the studio over an internet connection to a playout server in Unitymedia's network operation center (NOC). While NRWision had been part of Unitymedia's channel line-up for quite some time, it was not able to broadcast live over the internet.
This may sound strange given the fact that NRWision has 1 Gb/s connections to the desktop and - as a university - has a high-speed direct access connection to the Internet backbone. However, NRWision realized that high-speed internet connection is not enough to ensure successful live broadcast.