THE BIG DISH CORNER's

Featured Links

Starting this month (November 1998) i will, each and every month, offer some new links to interesting new or relaunched satellite sites. Or to sites that are related to recent news events, and other recent developments in the satellite industry. This month the featured links are to the new download service for the DVB standards. And to the Satellite frequency chart services created after the departure form SatcoDX of its founder and editor to start a his own new service.

November 1998

DVB Standard Docs available on Web for Free

Starting November 1st all DVB specifications, standards and guidelines will be available on the world wide web. The DVB, or Digital Video Broadcasting group is an European based industry collective of broadcasters and equipment manufacturers. The DVB standards are normative for all digital broadcasts in Europe. The DVB is in competition with the ATSC or Advanced Television Standards Commitee from the US for adoption of its standards in other countries. With the free availability on the internet of its standards, the DVB expects to see further acceptance from "the market" especially among equipment manufacturers.

The Standard Documents are published by the ETSI Documentation Service, the publishing department of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Previously the documents were only available, against payment, in printed form and recently also as cd-rom. EDS will continue publishing these "value-added products".

EDS website's Download Section features a searchable index including all (types of) standard documents published by ETSI, not just those developed by DVB. A search for the term "dvb" will return all DVB standard documents. Wich may be dowloaded in the PDF (Portable Document Format) file format. Or try searching for a particular Standard Document by directly entering its name. Look here for a short overview of the various DVB standards, their subjects and names.

Links:

DVB, Digital Video Broadcasting Group
ATSC, Advanced Television Standards Commitee
ETSI, European Telecommunications Standards Institute
EDS, ETSI Documentation Service
Download Standards
DVB Standards Overview

Frequency Lists: Falling Out

Last month saw the break up between Christian Lyngemark and SatcoDX. Lyngemark, founder and editor of the popular Satellite Frequency Chart service, left SatcoDX to start his own service Lyngemark Satellite Chart. According to Lyngemark he left after the situation had become "unworkable". And conflicting views between Lyngemark and Alexander Wiesse, manager of SatcoDX and publisher of Tele-Satellite International, as how to solve the problems with the servers and continuity of the service, could not be resolved.

"There were far to many problems with the server during September, and we had different ideas of how to solve that. He [Alexander Wiesse, ED.] wanted to "hop around" on cheap servers, while I wanted to have a stable/secure new home."

Relaunch

At the time Lyngemark announced his departure the "SatcoDX Team" announced a relaunch of their service. Since the departure of Lyngemark meant the charts had to be reconstructed, the service would temporarily be of a rudimentary nature. According to the "Team" a fully reconstructed service should be ready for a full relaunch this month.

"Unpaid Bills"

The continuity problems Lyngemark spoke of became obvious to the visitors of the familliar url's of Tele-Satellite Int. and the extended services it sponsored. All of a sudden, these sites were began sporting messages about unpaid bills. Not long after this the TSI homepage became available on a new domain. The SatcoDX worldwide frequency chart service was also transfered to a new domain, www.satcodx.org. But was unavailable at times and at other times had to resort to the old www.satcodx.com domain.

Additional Services

After the premature shut down of the server for Tele-Satellites sponsored services, primarily mailing lists for regional transponder watches like Henk Room's SAT-MidEast, some of these extended services were transfered to a new server, while others like Sat-ND found a new home of their own. The Lyngemark Satellite Chart, besides its worldwide frequency chart and footprints, offers two additional services Satellite Address, a database of satellite broadcasters' contact details and Satellite Logoshots a collection of screenshots. Both Lyngemark and SatcoDX have announced new features and services for the (near) future. SatcoDX is working on the DX'er's dream of universal files to automatically reprogram your receiver, but currently these files are just tabulated text files, instead of a HTML table. They admittedly do not yet have any idea as how to go beyond this.

The Departure of Lyngemark leaves SatcoDX with a lot of work to restore the service. What the result will be of this divided efforts remains to be seen. Both Lyngemark and SatcoDX have announced new features and services in the (near) future. However the current state of affairs is that the well-known frequency listing service is available from the Lyngemark Satellite Chart, while SatcoDX the reconstruction is not yet completed.

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