GTV and G Sports on 9e

djdarraghj

Hi All,

Anyone able to pick this up on 9e. Is is an african provider of sports and other tv channels. .It is on 12019 H and I can get a 72 percent signal for this transponder but when i scan i can find nothing. According to Lyngsat the beam is european. Thanks in advance

Zaphod

If you look again at Lyngsat you'll see the modulation is 8PSK DVB-S2. So eventhough the channels are MPEG2 SD, you'll need a HD receiver to view them - there are no SD DVB-S2 receivers on the market AFAIK.

watty

Typical Software codec DVB-S2 PCI card in underpowered PC is pretty much an SD only receiver

djdarraghj

Well i rescanned with my dreambox and guess what. Found them all. There you have it. Very strong signal at 94 percent. Strange as the channels are meant to be focused at kenya and africa

Manc-Red

It looks a really really good package & its booming in at 85%, superb epg too - whats there reasoning in putting it on the european beam??


80% of all Premiership games LIVE!!!!!

Any cards available?? - Package with Sport (including fox & setanta africa sport) - will set ye back $35 dollars pm.

Bloody NDS though:(

Zaphod

My mistake - I was looking at the 11861MHz transponder just before the GTV one at 11881MHz. As you found, it's just standard DVB-S MPEG2 encrypted in videoguard.

GTV is run out of from London. So most likely it's uplinked from there to Eurobird 9. Then it's downlinked from 9E to Eutelsat HQ in France. From there, it's uplinked again to Eutelsat W3A 7E to the 12562MHz and 12645MHz TPs - both of these transponders have African footprints.

The interesting question is - if you bought an subscription to GTV, would it also work for the TP on 9E. Probably yes.

Eutelsat W3A Satellite Selected by Gateway Broadcast Services for New African Pay-TV Platform
PARIS, June 28 / / - Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris : ETL) today announced the conclusion of a five-year contract for capacity on its W3A satellite with Gateway Broadcast Services, which is preparing to launch an innovative new pay-TV platform for sub-Saharan Africa.

Called GTV, the platform will use Ku-band capacity connected to the African beam on W3A to broadcast direct to homes via satellite in up to 48 sub-Saharan African countries. GTV will initially launch a 15 channel service which will be uplinked to one transponder on W3A from Eutelsat's teleport in Rambouillet, near Paris.

GTV's objective is to offer a widely accessible pay-TV service providing a choice of high quality television programming at an affordable subscription price. The phased rollout of GTV began in East Africa in late June, to be followed closely by launches in Ghana, Tanzania, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia. GTV has been designed to vastly increase the numbers of pay-TV subscribers in Africa.

In addition to international films, popular series, music, sport and religious programming GTV will carry locally-produced content from across the African continent. The service will address the growing popularity of European football in Africa, including live broadcast rights to 80 per cent of the UK's Barclays' Premier League football matches for 48 sub-Saharan African countries.

Reception will be possible in every corner of GTV's target markets with a 90cm dish, a set-top decoder and any colour television. The service will be encrypted using NDS encryption.

Julian McIntyre, Managing Director of Gateway Broadcasting Services, said, "Africa currently represents the least penetrated pay-TV market in the world, but there is a huge appetite for the premium news, sport and entertainment that pay-TV offers. Eutelsat's single, high-powered footprint across the continent will help us to dramatically increase the accessibility of high quality pay-TV to millions of viewers."

Commenting the contract with Gateway Broadcast Services Olivier Millies-Lacroix, Eutelsat's Commercial Director, said: "We are delighted to have secured the confidence of Gateway Broadcast Services for uplinking and broadcasting GTV to homes across sub-Saharan Africa. From its 7 degrees East orbital location our W3A satellite provides premium reach to GTV's target markets combined with high power for Direct-to-Home reception.

Its selection by GTV underscores its growing contribution to the development of digital services across Africa.

snaps

Anyone know if cards/Packages are available?

watty

To african addresses

Zaphod

Pay TV in Africa
Going for goal

Aug 14th 2008 | KINSHASA
From The Economist print edition
A newcomer is shaking up satellite television in Africa


WITH only 14% of families owning a television, sub-Saharan Africans are in little danger of turning into couch potatoes. But the region’s economy is doing better than it has in decades, and many countries have a small emerging middle-class eager to spend their new wealth. That, at least, is the calculation of GTV, a satellite-television company created just over a year ago. So far it has signed up more than 100,000 customers in 20 countries—which, it reckons, translates into 1.25m regular viewers. This week it launched its first francophone service, in Congo and Cameroon, to be followed shortly by Côte d’Ivoire. GTV expects to be operating in 36 African countries by the end of the year.

This is shaking up the quasi-monopolies that Canal+, a French operator, and DStv, a subsidiary of Naspers, a South African media giant, have enjoyed for years. With few people able to afford a television, let alone a satellite subscription, pay TV remains limited to less than 1% of the African market. In Lingwala, a poor neighbourhood in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, only ordinary TV aerials can be seen sticking out of the houses lining the unpaved streets.


This is where GTV sees its opportunity. Traditional, free-to-air television in Africa usually combines poor reception with tedious programmes. By offering cheaper packages than its satellite-based rivals and tailoring content to appeal to local markets, GTV hopes to sign up millions of customers over the next few years. A subsidiary of Gateway Communications, a pan-African telecoms firm, GTV is piggybacking on its parent company’s satellite network and local experience.

In Africa, as in much of the world, sport is what people are most willing to pay for. When big soccer games are on, bustling cities like Kinshasa come to an eerie standstill as fans huddle around TV sets. European and particularly English football, with its big stars, is hugely popular. “Such emotion: it sells,” says Jean-François Mubiayi, a Congolese football commentator.

So when GTV snatched from DStv the rights to broadcast 80% of the English Premier League’s football games live across much of sub-Saharan Africa, it was a coup. GTV is also investing in local football leagues in Uganda, Tanzania and Ghana, and broadcasts local games live, often for the first time. This is helping to spruce up stadiums, revive moribund clubs and bring fans and sponsors back to the games.

Besides sport, GTV also offers popular soaps, series and films from Hollywood, Nollywood (Nigeria’s version of tinseltown) and other parts of Africa. It has added international news, religion and children’s programmes to the mix. According to a recent report on African broadcast markets from Balancing Act, a research outfit, GTV has captured five out of seven new satellite subscribers in countries where it competes with DStv. In Uganda GTV claims that it has already grown bigger than its South African rival.

Unlike its competitors, which until recently were happy to focus on the small but profitable group of affluent Africans and expatriates, GTV is betting on scale from the start, striving to make pay TV more affordable and accessible. Julian McIntyre, GTV’s founder and chief executive, points out that over 80% of his firm’s subscribers are first-time satellite clients. Collins Omondi, a policeman from Nairobi, is one of them. Before GTV launched in Kenya, he used to watch terrestrial television or go to bars to watch football, since he was unable to afford satellite. He subscribed to GTV last year to watch English football, and suspends his monthly subscription when the season ends.

The DStv giant is not sleeping, though. It had already started offering cheaper subscriptions before GTV appeared on the scene. It launched Africa Magic, a channel dedicated to African soaps and movies, mainly from Nigeria, five years ago. It also started supporting local football leagues in Nigeria, and is now doing the same in Kenya, Angola and Zambia. And it broadcasts Italian, Portuguese and Spanish football, too. Earlier this year it launched a basic package for a mere $30 a year.

Despite losing most of the English Premier League live games, DStv is doing well: outside its South African base, it signed up 140,000 new subscribers last year and had 680,000 subscribers in over 40 countries by March. It also has over 1.7m customers in South Africa, and is established in other big markets such as Nigeria, where GTV cannot yet afford to be, and Angola. Eben Greyling, DStv Africa’s boss, reckons that by 2015 it will have as many subscribers in the rest of Africa as in South Africa.

Greater competition is good, but there are problems. Customers are unwilling to pay for television unless they have reasonably reliable electricity, which cannot be taken for granted. Piracy is also a problem for pay-TV operators: anyone with a decoder can rip off premium content and retransmit it, and copyright is often hard to enforce in Africa. Kinshasa has over 50 free-to-air channels, for example, which sometimes shamelessly lift content.

GTV is off to a good start, having spent $130m on its roll-out so far. But it is not yet profitable, since it is focusing on building up critical mass. And competition will drive up the price of content. DStv has been going for over 15 years and has deep pockets—which will no doubt come in handy when the English football rights come up for grabs again next year.

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11920847