NAB 2019 Reflections: Eutelsat's Mike Antonovich Explores Satellite's Role in OTT, At-Home Production The company's goal is to harmonize' distribution regardless of platform By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Wednesday, April 24, 2019 - 12:07 pm
Print This Story
Story Highlights
After launching the Cirrus hybrid satellite/OTT delivery solution at IBC 2018, Eutelsat rolled out the red carpet for the new platform at NAB 2019. The satellite veteran believes that Cirrus will reduce the technical and logistical challenges faced by satellite-TV operators seeking to launch or upgrade their service offering - whether they are using only satellite or both satellite and OTT networks. In addition, Eutelsat highlighted its SmartBEAM multiscreen delivery product, which allows platform operators to deliver IP-native video content to portable devices via satellite.
SVG sat down with Eutelsat Americas CEO Mike Antonovich to discuss the market's reaction to CIRRUS and SmartBEAM, the gradual growth of 4K distribution, the company's role in NASCAR Productions and PSSI's Technology & Engineering Emmy Award-winning at-home production workflow, and how he sees at-home changing production as we know it.
Eutelsat's Mike Antonovich: If you spend a couple hundred million for [sports] rights, you're going to want a satellite feed. I don't see that changing any time soon.
What has been the highlight of the NAB Show for you this year?
Our good partner, PSSI, along with NASCAR Productions, was awarded a [Technology & Engineering] Emmy for their [at-home production] efforts. The ability to do 26 live camera feeds, 120 auxiliary audio and data channels all in a single transport across two transponders on Eutelsat 113 West A C-band worked flawlessly for the NASCAR events. We and [Mediakind] were both acknowledged by Rob Lamb when he accepted the award, which is very gracious of him.
As the at-home production model continues to become more popular, how do you see satellite connectivity playing a bigger role?
We're seeing a lot of growth in [at-home] production, and the PSSI NASCAR project is great example of what can be accomplished. The big driver for us is the need for interactive data between the venue and the production facility. We're supporting that with some of these new technologies along with PSSI, which is adding voice and auxiliary data to these transmissions. Now you can show up at a venue and set up circuits for your voice and comms, video, file transfer, and general-purpose internet all over a satellite link. It's a true one-stop shop.
People require all those services [onsite] now, and they're consuming more bandwidth every day. In the past, you just shipped all hard drives with the files you thought you would need for the event, but that's not how it works anymore. Today's workflows require [the ability to] access all that content back at headquarters and pull that data into the field on an as-needed basis.
I also think it's important to note that live sports is becoming more and more interactive, and the need to feed streaming and OTT outlets with more feeds from the stadium is only growing. So there is more demand at the venue for bandwidth. And we believe satellite has a very valuable role to play in that.
Speaking of streaming and OTT, can you tell us a bit about Eutelsat's new Cirrus hybrid satellite/OTT delivery product?
Since [launching at] IBC, Cirrus has been fully commercialized, and it's been launched in two markets in Europe and the Middle East. It's a live service now. The premise behind it is harmonizing the look and the feel of the way consumers access content across all means of delivery. Whether it's going to a big screen or a handheld device, all satellite and OTT [providers] want the look and the feel of that experience to be unified and integrated. Here at the booth, we are showing how Cirrus can accomplish that easily and without a lot of headaches. We are demonstrating how you can view a seven-day look-back of all content on an OTT platform right on your phone with the feel of an EPG [electronic programming guide] from a traditional TV experience.
By July, we'll be launching an iteration of that [operating] over satellite. Whether it's traditional OTT over wired networks or wireless over satellite, we're going to have a solution set that supports whatever you need, as well as direct-to-home and B-to-B distribution of content. It's all about harmonizing the experience regardless of the platform.
What else is Eutelsat highlighting here at NAB 2019?
We're also extremely excited about our SmartBEAM solution. While SDI will be around in the industry for decades to come, we understand that IP is the future and everybody's looking to build IP infrastructure. We're going to support that in terms of all the ingest and distribution over satellite and over terrestrial networks and harmonize the two. Where SmartBEAM is very interesting is [its use of] Wi-Fi as a means of transport or delivery. We can encode video natively from SDI into HLS, transmit that over an MPEG-2 transport stream into an appliance that sends that directly to the Wi-Fi router in an authenticated controlled environment. So you get the benefit of satellite - the one-to-many [model] as opposed to [individual streams] in a traditional CDN world - while still embracing IP.
It's a great way to control not only cost but also quality of experience. I can encode once to a high enough bitrate that is acceptable for final delivery to a consumer, as determined by the programmer. The way the CDN business works, you surrender control of your network the minute you hand off the [stream]. They reformat it, reframe it, resize it to whatever the pipe is at the end. But, if the pipe at the end is Wi-Fi and yo
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
NAB 2019 Reflections: Eutelsat's Mike Antonovich Explores Satellite's Role in OTT, At-Home Production The company's goal is to harmonize' distribution regardless of platform By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
