Satellite TV Channels Research Articles

GMM Optimization Using Neural Networks for Persian Language Detection

Language identification (LID) in speech signals is an important classification task. In this paper Persian language verification is proposed and evaluated. The system is developed by using Gaussian mixture models as a basic system for tokenizing and a Neural Network as the backend processor. Gaussian Mixture Models can be utilized to model the distribution of feature vector in speech signals for classification. We gathered our language identification corpus from different Satellite TV channels. The results are presented for a system using the GMM Tokenizer in combining with Neural Network. The results of GMM-NN system compared with GMM-Tokenizer system. It is shown that using the Neural Network as the backend processor improves the results significantly.

Rate of Arabic language TV start-ups shows no sign of abating

One expert calls it “an ocean of channels.”[1] Another says it’s “a paradox of plenty.”[2] And yet another laments that “a noisy marketplace makes it increasingly expensive to find, keep and grow a profitable market share.”[3] These are all accurate characterizations of a seemingly accelerating proliferation of Arabic language satellite TV channels in 2007. At last count, 280 of these outlets were vying for the attention of viewers in the Middle East and beyond. And more are on the way. For some years, Arabic has been the language of choice of more international broadcasters in more countries than any other language except English. That was the case for radio even before the rise of television. The principal challenge to TV executives and producers shows no sign of letting up in this sixth year after 9/11. It is: how to make a dent in an already overcrowded market. The latest competitors in the outside world for the eyes of the Arab Middle East include Russia TV Today, reported to be launching a 20-hour-a-day service in May, expanding this to 24/7 by the end of the year. France 24 inaugurated an Arabic television service on April 4 comprising four hours broadcast daily to the Maghreb, Levant and Europe with plans to grow in stages to six, then 12 hours daily. Deutsche Welle TV is expanding its current three hours a day in Arabic TV to eight hours. And BBC Arabic TV is due to go on the air next fall, restoring a service that previously existed between 1994 and 1996.

The great Indian Willow Trick: Cricket, nationalism and India's TV news revolution, 1998–2005

The emergence of India as the financial and spiritual heart of world cricket in the 1990s is intrinsically linked to India's satellite TV revolution in the same period. The 1990s began with just one Indian television channel – the state owned Doordarshan – but by 2006, Indian viewers were remote-controlling their way through more than 300 private satellite television channels. While the reasons for this phenomenal growth of the television industry are varied and complex, cricket has played a central role in the story. This paper will outline Indian satellite television's linkages with cricket and what they mean for notions of identity and expressions of Indian nationhood. In particular, it focuses on India's 24-hour television news networks – there are more than 50 in 14 languages. Unlike any other country in the world, the Indian television news industry has consciously ridden on cricket's shoulders to such an extent that by 2006, cricket-oriented programming accounted for the greatest expenditure in news gathering and the greatest visibility across most news channels. Television producers looked towards cricket because of its indelible link with what might be called Indian-ness, but their focus on the game, in turn, substantially redefined and reinforced these linkages.

British Arab Muslim Audiences and Television after September 11

This study of British Arab Muslim audiences in Cardiff, Wales, explores their reactions to the events of 11 September 2001 and their perceptions of media representations of Islam and Muslims. The availability of Arab satellite television channels in Britain enabled the respondents to see news that bolstered existing perspectives and a sense of Arab Muslim identity. Their news consumption allowed them to challenge dominant Western media narratives about the causes and consequences of the attacks. The study concludes with a discussion of ethnocentrism in the light of these findings.

North America: Multiplying media in a dynamic landscape

Perhaps no region on earth has been as affected by the dramatic pace and extent of media development since 1990 as North America, where most have ready access to new media, such as the Internet and the latest telecommunications devices, as well as the traditional newspapers, radio and television. Even traditional media have undergone profound change as convergence and cross–ownership brought them together in vast media conglomerates dominated by a handful of global corporations. Digitization has taken hold in the United States and Canada, increasing commodification and cross–ownership of all forms of communication, from movies and music to the written word, and bringing together once separate domains of print, broadcasting, telecommunications and computer technology. Yet all is not monolithic on the North American scene. This increasing concentration of ownership has evolved at the same time as increasing fragmentation of media markets and outlets. Explosive growth in cable and satellite television channels, musical variety and the Internet, have given citizens many more choices and in some cases easier access to outlets for their own creative and political expression. Throughout North America, increasing cultural diversity has also led to products and policies serving multicultural needs in an information society. As a less powerful, less populous neighbor with close economic and cultural ties to the United States, Canada’s history has been one of resisting cultural and economic domination. This theme continues in the current era, in the face of evolving trade agreements attempting to drop restrictions and barriers. At the risk of becoming irrelevant in the Internet era, North American media have been quick to establish their online presence, with virtually all mainstream newspapers and broadcasters now posting news on Internet sites, and an increasing number of community newspapers and local broadcasters joining the trend. The accessibility and effectiveness of those Web sites vary greatly. Media whose primary goals are to inform and educate, such as public broadcasters, have used the Web to enhance that mandate, with some of the most accessible interactive sites. Those who simply aim to generate revenue post a bare minimum of news content, and charge fees for access to their most valuable online resources, such as archival databases. The digital age has also changed the way journalists work, with significant cost savings and staff reductions as large media organizations pool resources and share material. Reporters use satellite phones and internet hookups to file stories from off–site, including abroad, and at times the same reporter writes stories and shoots television footage. In some cases the changes have eliminated locally based correspondents; instead “parachute reporters” travel to the scene with little knowledge of the region and situation. While these reporters may serve to entertain and persuade those back home, they can be ill equipped to educate and inform.

FIT-recommend ing TV programs to family members

The proliferation of cable and satellite TV channels exposes the viewer to a huge variety of contents requiring the investment of substantial efforts in search of interesting programs. Recommendation systems may alleviate the problem by proposing the preferred programs according to prior user choices. However, in most homes, watching TV is a “family” event requiring the recommendation system to represent the individual preferences of the family members, identifying them for recommending the preferred programs of all the current viewers. This work deals with the representation and adaptation of family member preferences. We introduce FIT, a Family Interactive TV system that aims to filter TV programs according to the different viewer's preferences. We assume that the choice of a viewer may change in the presence of other family members. For creating initial family members preferences’ profiles, FIT uses a predefined stereotype user representation along with the user preferred watching times. Implicit relevance feedback is assessed by monitoring the actual viewers watching choices. FIT checks its prediction, updating the member/s preferences and their correlated vector accordingly. In case of error detection, FIT will verify the mistake with the user. We evaluated FIT predictions by comparing it with two other algorithms (one that request user identification, and another that chooses randomly the program genre). Simulation results indicate that FITs performance resembles the system that asks for user identification (without requiring that), and considerably outperforms the random system.

Romania: From Tele-Revolution to Public Service Broadcasting, National Images and International Image

Under the Ceausescu regime, Romanian Television was part of a powerful propaganda machine. The December 1989 uprising became known as a "Tele-Revolution" as some of its key moments were broadcast live. It also had negative effects on the image of the country. If reforms have been slow, enormous changes have taken place in the Romanian audiovisual landscape in the last 10 years: a regulatory Authority was set up in 1992 and audiences can now choose between the programs of public and/or private broadcasters; 40% of Romanian households are cabled, and satellite television and thematic channels are also gaining ground. In 1999, a Council of Europe report made several recommendations for Romania's public service broadcasting to be an asset capable of promoting a high-quality audiovisual cultural policy, strengthening social cohesion and contributing to rehabilitate the image of Romania. The paper suggests that while Westerners may take some credit for helping Romanians on the road to achieve the former, they should also take some of the blame for the deadlock reached on the latter.

Asymmetry of information, entrepreneurship and complex environments: a study of market stimulation and destruction in the satellite television industry

This article is concerned with a specific market niche composed of very small, and small enterprises (SE) providing access to satellite television channels directly to an individual’s home (DTH). It focuses on the role within that niche of a specific segment providing products which are generally termed “pirate” by governments, companies and the public. In this context, it examines the nature, and consequences, of information and influence asymmetry between SEs and large broadcasting companies, especially as it relates to the national and European policy process. Finally, it considers whether other small enterprises can learn from the experience of the satellite television sector.

Low-cost time synchronisation and tagging using satellite TV teletext broadcasts

A low-cost method of generating pulses for time synchronisation between widely spaced (∼1000 km) stations is described. Using standard teletext transmissions broadcast on commercial satellite TV channels, a timing accuracy of better than ±30 ns can be achieved. A simple extension of the technique enables the recording of date and time information.

Supper with the devil — a case study in private/public collaboration in broadcasting: the genesis of Eurosport

Time-honoured distinctions between public service and commercial broadcasters are eroding. A chief driver of these changes is a rise in the prices of programmes and of the cost of television sports rights in particular. Many contemporary instances of these trends were foreshadowed in an early example of cooperation between European public service broadcasters and their commercial rivals in the 1980s. The EBU-sponsored satellite television channel Eurosport was a notable example. Eurosport was established in partnership with News International's Sky Channel in the late 1980s, a partnership that was brokered by the BBC. The history of Eurosport exemplifies the erosion of long-established distinctions between public service and commercial broadcasters in Europe. This process of `convergence' between public and commercial broadcasters will make special arrangements to protect and foster public service broadcasting difficult to sustain.

Investigation of Receptive Fields Using Representations of the Dihedral Groups

We investigate families of receptive fields (i.e., low-level filter systems) that receive their inputs from sensors located on a finite, regular grid. We will first introduce a class of models that describe the behavior of such systems. We introduce the representation theory of the dihedral groups to derive some important properties of such systems that originate in the structure of the grid (and not in the particular nature of the system). We will show that representation theory leads directly to algorithms with a structure similar to those of the FFT. We demonstrate possible applications of the theory in the field of low-level vision by showing how to construct and analyze different types of filter families. All these different approaches are simplified by the same, universal, coordinate transformation. In the second part of the paper we demonstrate how the proposed method can be used in the computation of the Karhunen-Loeve expansion. We show that the correlation matrix of an arbitrary stochastic process that has the symmetry of the dihedral group is block diagonalized by the coordinate transformation developed in the first part of the paper. In our experiments we investigate images from four different data sets: one set consisting of 39 images of size 512 2, one set consisting of 55 images of size 256 2, one set consisting of 1000 of size 256 2 captured from a satellite TV channel, and finally 2000 images of size 256 2 from a video tape. We show that in all cases the eigenvectors computed from the block-diagonal approximation of the correlation matrix are good approximations of the eigenvectors computed from the full correlation matrix. We show with an image coding example that both sets of eigenvectors (the vectors computed from the full matrix and the vectors computed from the approximation) give practically indistinguishable results in this application.

New type of DBS receiver utilizing optical fiber as IF transmission line

An optical fiber transmission system that transmits the IF signal for direct broadcasting satellite (DBS) TV channels from a low noise converter to the main chassis of the DBS receiver after the IF signal at 1 GHz is converted into the corresponding second IF signal at 300 MHz (35-335 MHz) is described. The differential gain and differential phase of the video signal are less than 2% and 3 degrees, respectively, and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is 45 dB. >

Towards all-european pollen reports

Abstract In the first European Pollenflight Symposium in Konigswinter, BRD, March 20–21, in 1987 the outlines for an European data bank were published. By that time Vienna, Austria was already in state of readiness. Since that, countries in Europe have an opportunity to send their prevailing pollen data to the data bank in Vienna, where a software server is ready to accept new data and to send reports day and night. The software of the data bank has been customed to facilitate calculations on PC level. The developing data bank gives a possibility e.g., (1) to compare pollen seasons in various parts of Europe, (2) to make pollen forecasts in different parts of Europe more accurately, (3) to find pollenfree sites in Europe for allergic people, (4) to find out long-time changings in regional and overregional flora as well as in the allergen-content of the air and (5) even to make all-European pollen reports. These could be broadcasted by common satellite TV channels and seen in most European countries. The a...

Method for the computation of interference and distortion levels in satellite FM-TV systems

A method for the prediction of interference and distortion levels in satellite FM-TV systems is proposed. The procedure, which is based on a statistical model of live video signals, makes it possible to predict the levels of both intersystem interference and intrasystem signal distortion. Statistical properties of video baseband spectra are investigated by evaluating the results of long-term measurements of live satellite TV channels. In particular the joint probability distribution for the random variables describing luminance and chrominance components of the video signal is derived from the measurements. The spectrum of the frequency-modulated signal is then analyzed, and the cumulative distribution of signal distortion due to bandlimiting is computed. Similarly, the distributions of adjacent and cochannel interference levels are calculated with examples illustrating the effects of subcarrier loading and energy dispersion. The procedure is particularly useful for the investigation of relative effects of system parameters on interference and distortion levels.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Don't forget Elsie in Gateshead!

With the advent of satellite TV channels, cable television and the likely mushrooming of local 'deregulated' radio, the opportunities for mass communication will escalate even further. Where does that leave the scientific community, particularly in terms of their perception of and by the general public?

Compatibility of Video and Data Signals on the Same Satellite Television Channel

Satellite television systems may employ subcarriers for additional transmission of data via the same channel thus utilizing satellite transponders more efficiently. Data-rate and bit-error-rate of such systems are ultimately limited by maximal-permissible subcarrier levels which would not degrade the picture quality significantly.

Wideband Recording Technology for High-Definition Baseband VCRs

High-definition TV (HDTV: 1125 lines, 60 fields) is expected to be the next generation TV system. Fig. 1 shows a block diagram of the HDTV system. In Japan, a HDTV broadcast service using a broadcasting satellite will start in the near future. The signal, transmitted through one satellite television channel, is a bandwidth-compressed HDTV signal, called a MUSE signal.(1) Bandwidth of the MUSE signal is 8.1MHz, i.e. about 2 times that of conventional TV signals. MUSE VCRs, which record this signal, have already been developed experimentally (Fig.1(a)).(2)~(4)

Simulation and Modelling of FM-Clicks

Satellite television channels often employ multiple subcarriers which are usually located above the main audio subcarrier thus utilizing higher baseband frequencies. At these frequencies conventional click models fail to describe the FM-threshold effect accurately.

Coordinateless method of measuring signal transmission time through satellite television channels

Coordinateless method of measuring signal transmission time through satellite television channels

Prediction error for the transmission time of signals via satellite television channels

Prediction error for the transmission time of signals via satellite television channels