ABS-S ChinaSat

[EnoSat]

A long time ago, TBS produced a card only for the reception of the ABS-S standard for ChinaSat satellites.
Does anyone know or remember the details about card ?

[DVB]

It was TBS 8930, a PCI device.
http://web.archive.org/web/201503201012 ... /8930.html
I've never saw any offer for it, to buy...

[EnoSat]

Thanks, to "historic" reply

[Delta]

This is a very interesting topic.

For some time before, I have been struggling for collect original transport stream data from ABS-S ChinaSat 9. (Of course for the decrypted stream.)

ChinaSat 9 AVS+ channels can be received using only a 45cm diameter Ku-band offset antenna, which is certainly more economical than getting the same channels from C-band ChinaSat 6D/6E.

However, I soon started thinking about a question: What is the point of receiving ABS-S satellites?

You will find that currently TBS does not produce ABS-S cards, and there must be a reason for that.

It is important for us to find out the stream quality of ChinaSat 9.

We know that a channel on ChinaSat 6D/6E generally has a video stream of 11 Mbps AVS+ and an audio stream of 448 kbps 5.1 ch Dolby AC3.

After a period of work, we found someone who owned a TV station-grade ChinaSat 9 project receiver, which outputs the source stream of a specified channel (i.e. CCTV-1 HD) to a UDP address.

We analyzed the stream and found that it only had an 8 Mbps AVS+ video stream with a 2 ch MPEG-1 audio stream. And the picture quality is pretty much b******t. It is obvious that ChinaSat 9 is offering re-compressed streams coded with poor encoders.

In addition, ABS-S rural users also reported watermarks appearing on some channels (e.g. CCTV-6 HD).

ChinaSat 9 is a "second-hand dealer".

This means that if we are getting the same AVS+ channels with highest possible quality, which is the primary satellite stream without re-encoding, we still have to source from C-band DVB-S2 satellites ChinaSat 6D/6E.

Therefore, ABS-S satellites are currently only suitable for rural residents and project reception such as provincial TV stations. These fields are having dedicated equipment manufacturers to produce customized devices, resulting in public ABS-S receiving cards seemingly unnecessary.

[EnoSat]

A little historical portal about ABS-S reception in Central Europe
https://www.dxsatcs.com/abs-s-system