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Bonum-1 blasts off to bring Russians the digital television
Bonum-1
Nickolas Ovsyadovsky, rus@satcodx.com
If you take a quick look at Russian satellite
television history, you will see that before
only Gorizonts and Expresses were used
to deliver sound and picture to cable and terrestrial
networks and private viewers at areas
which are unreachable by such networks.
Old satellites which in their majority are
out of their official working lifetime, currently
are the only choice for state broadcasters like
ORT, which can’t afford to lease capacity on
modern spacecrafts like Hot Bird or Intelsat
7-8 series, already owing satellite operators
for what they use today.
Private networks, which first of all care
about the quality of their service and customer
satisfaction, already make attempts to
find better ways of delivering the signal to
the viewer.
NTV, the biggest Russian private television
network at the moment uses Intelsat 704 to
cover Eastern Russia, Intelsat 604 for Western
Russia and Hot Bird 2 for it’s international
service. All transmissions are in MPEG-2/
DVB, which in comparing to other channels’
analogue systems, brings outstanding results.
The question of switch to digital was
still open regarding the DTH project of
NTV - NTV Plus, which is currently being
broadcasted from Gals 1, Gals 2 and TDF-2
satellites located at 36 deg. East in analogue
SECAM with Syster encryption.
NTV Plus was already thinking of expanding
it’s possibilities back in 1996, when
GALS-R16 satellite was ordered from
Informkosmos. Initially expected time to
build the satellite was 33 months, but during
the construction unpleasant thing were happening
in space - transponders on already
operational Gals-1 and Gals-2 satellites started
to fail, which forced the constructors
to replace the transponders on GALS-R16
satellites with foreign-made ones. This should
have extended the building time to 36
months, but unfortunately another problem
appeared, this time the Government was
unable to finance the building the way it
should. At the moment the time, when the
satellite will be ready to go to the geostationary
orbit is absolutely unknown.
Problems with existing GALS satellites
forced NTV Plus to search other ways of
protecting viewers from transponder failing.
TDF-2 satellite was leased from Eutelsat and
Hughes, one of the leading giants of the satellite
industry, received the order from Media
MOST (owner of NTV and NTV Plus) to
build another satellite, which could let NTV
Plus start the first
DTH digital satellite
television project in
Russia.
Bonum-1
launched
Bonum-1, the satellite
ordered from
Hughes, was successfully
built and
launched. The building
took 12 months,
after which the HS
376 HP satellite
equipped with 8 Kuband
transponders
was delivered to orbit
by Boeing Delta-2
rocket, blasted off from Cape Canaveral on
November 22nd at 23:54 UTC. The spacecraft
separated from the launch vehicle 73
minutes after that. 3 hours after the blast
off Hughes officials confirmed that the first
signals have been received from the satellite,
confirming it’s normal operation.
At the moment the article is written
Bonum-1 is still on it’s way to Russia’s “Hot
Bird”-position at 36 degrees East. The first
tests are expected to start in late December,
while the official launch of NTV Plus digital
project is scheduled to happen in late
January 1999. 6 transponders out of 8 are
expected to carry the digital package with up
to 50 channels in it. At least 2 transponders
will work in analogue mode backing up old
satellites, which can fail any moment.
The digital package of NTV Plus will consist
of all it’s already broadcasting analogue
channels, several new channels NTV Plus is
planning to start on basis of digital platform,
foreign channels and other Russian channels,
full list of which is not announced since not
all agreements are signed yet.
The digital receivers for the project will
be supplied by Philips. The Viaccess (the
CA system NTV Plus have chosen for it’s
digital platform) conditional access module
is already embedded in the new receiver.
Unfortunately, it will not be able to receive
anything but NTV Plus digital package. Evenly
free-to-air channels will not be available with
this box.
Bonum-1 footprint
However, NTV Plus announces that other
receivers, like Nokia Mediamaster 9600 with
Viaccess CAM will be able to decode the
package. So the viewer can still decide,
which receiver to prefer.
More satellites are to join the just-launched
Bonum-1 spacecraft. In April 1999, Ariane
rocket will bring Eutelsat W4 into orbit,
releasing Bonum-1 to travel to 56 East to
serve Eastern Russia with DTH television.
Later on, SESAT and GALS-R16 will join
Eutelsat W4 at 36 East. Russian “Hot Bird”
position is being constructed, and hopefully
even the financial crisis in Russia will not stop
it from expanding.
Sources of information:
1. NTV Plus online press conference at http://www.
ntvplus.com
2. Official press releases by Hughes and Boeing
3. ICSC ‘98
TELE-satellite International