Emerald Resort & Spa, Zanzibar

Design: MDS Net
Location: Muyuni Beach, Zanzibar

Make as many TV and radio programmes, transmitted by satellite, available in each of the suites and common areas of the facility as possible.

To extend the excellent customer services already offered in the resort, a Fracarro IPTV system was installed to continue this for TV distribution with antennas for receiving satellite signals and a distribution system on a LAN network.

THE SYSTEM

The main programs are received from satellite dishes aligned to two Eutelsat satellite orbital positions. The quattro LNBs (eight satellite polarity outputs in total) are linked to the SWP916TS multiswitches to supply the correct RF signals to the IPTV headend.

The IPTV content is managed by the 3DGFLEX, Fracarro’s flexible and reliable modular headend. In the 3DGBOX chassis, 5 x 3DG-4S2-BP satellite modules, each equipped with dual Common Interface slots, were used to receive the Free-to-Air or scrambled programs. One 3DG-BP-IPOUT streamer module was used to manage up to 64 IPTV multicast TV and Radio programs. The programs are transferred through an IP network composed of ethernet switches capable of optimising the use of data bitrate to the various endpoints (up to 700Mbits, the total available bandwidth).

An important advantage of the 3DGFLEX platform is its compatibility with multi-standard signals, making it possible to manage external AV content for the management of CCTV cameras and computers.

The IPTV system enables the resort to manage even a single program, for example to select the language depending on the requirement of the customer.

MAIN HEADEND
The 3DGFLEX modular headend receives the DVB-S2 satellite signals and transmodulates them into the DVB-T (digital terrestrial) standard, so all TV programs are available to every customer and can be received using a traditional television, without the need for an external decoder.

SIMPLIFIED MAINTENANCE
The 3DGFLEX control unit is characterised by its ease of maintenance, which can also be carried out remotely thanks to the integrated host controller.
The installer, therefore, has the ability to monitor all of the parameters of the control unit and is able to quickly arrange technical intervention, thus providing an effective and high quality maintenance service.
Thanks to the auto-remapping feature, for example, the 3DGFLEX headend also enables efficient management of special customer requests being able to remotely create lists of dedicated channels based on language and preferences, without the need to retune the TV sets.