OSTN Distribution
OSTN utilizes a non-traditional method of content and signal distribution, the Internet2 high speed academic network. Whereas a traditional television network sends its programming to affiliates via satellite feeds, OSTN uses a high bandwidth connection via the Internet2 network to directly feed affiliates via standard LAN/WAN connections. Rather than require student television affiliates to purchase and maintain costly microwave, satellite, or dedicated fibre-optic transmission equipment, OSTN allows student stations and member institutions to receive the OSTN channel via existing high-speed IP-based network equipment.
The OSTN stream was initially a 1.6 megabit Windows Media stream, available live 24/7 over Internet2 to all member institutions. Windows Media encoding permitted a true NTSC quality stream of video to be transmitted at a relatively low bitrate. However, the WMV version of OSTN suffered from reliability issues, and was replaced in the fall of 2007 by a highly robust, scalable, and enterprise-grade IPTV distribution system. The current iteration of OSTN is a 2.0-4.0 MPEG-2 program stream, available via the Internet2 network. OSTN's new distribution system will allow the network to eventually offer itself as a 1.5-2.0 megabit H.264 program stream, and will be scalable to future implementations of an OSTN HD offering.
OSTN is delivered to consumers via two methods: over IP to the desktop computer via a web port and via traditional "legacy" CATV systems. When injected onto a legacy CATV system or onto a student television channel, OSTN utilizes a set top box converter device outputting analog NTSC or component video, which is then either mixed with local student TV programming (a network-affiliate model, such as Buckeye TV) or directly inserted onto the CATV line-up as its own separate channel.
Read more about this topic: Open Student Television Network
Famous quotes containing the word distribution:
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)