A technical week at Canal Digital

Hi again.

Last week I was placed in the hands of the technical department in Canal Digital. It was an exciting week where I got to go “back to my roots”, being an telecom engineer and all. Although I have had a lot of telecommunications subjects during my period at school, it’s always more interesting to see how it works and is used in real life.

Broadcasting TV takes a lot of advanced computer systems 

Broadcasting TV through different systems and platforms takes a lot of advanced computer systems. At the moment, Canal Digital distributes TV through satellite, cable and IP streams. The TV-signals from the different stations are modified, modulated, encrypted and compressed before it is sent to the satellite.

This is me in the server room where the bits and bytes from the TV stations get prepared for their journey into space.

Transmitting signals to space

When the signal is ready to go, it is sent to the satellite uplink station through fiber cables. Then, the signal is transmitted to the satellite which is located 36 000 km into space (that is almost 1/6 of the distance to the moon!). The signal is received and by the satellite and retransmitted back to earth, then received by your parabolic antenna, sent to the set-top-box, decompressed, decrypted, demodulated and voala, you can watch your favorite show on TV. Quite cool I think.

Here I am on the roof in front of one of Telenor Broadcast satellite uplink stations. From here, the signal travels 36 000 km into space, and then back again and into your TV-set.

My first real live hockey match 

But enough satellite transmission trivia. Some of the guys at the technical department invited me to come to a hockey game after work. Hockey is a huge sport in Sweden (as opposed to Norway).  Actually it was my first real, live hockey match. A lot of fun, and the local Stockholm team “Djurgården” won the game.

I was invited to a hockey game. This is Djurgården vs Södertälje (3-1). As you can see, Telenor is present.