Rod Hewitt - TELE-satellite International Magazine

Those were the best of times for thecomputer business. “This company hadas many as 400 employees”, remembersRod, “and one of their many customerswas a company in Maryland onthe east coast of the USA.”As business started to slowly fall offfor the California company, a job offercame from the company in Maryland.Should Rod move to the east coast ofthe USA? “There was one importantfactor in making this decision: backthen the BBC World Service could befound at 58W and in Maryland it waseasy to receive this signal.”Rod moved to Annapolis and erectedhis first satellite dish: “It was a twometerantenna. BBC transmitted thesignal in the clear so that it could beaccessed by Canadian PayTV providers.”BBC didn’t count on private satelliteenthusiasts receiving their channel,so not long after that, BBC encryptedthe signal.But by the time that happened,Rod had already become more involvedwith satellite reception. He acquiredthe Nokia D-Box and installedthe DVB98 software and later on theDVB2000 software: “It allowed you todo blind scans.” Rod became a regularfeed hunter.At the same time he developed hisfirst software application for his employer;it was a terminal program forWindows that he offered on his newwebsite www.coolstf.com.“In 1997 I got a little nosy andopened up my D-Box.” To his surprisehe recognized all of the installed chipsand knew exactly how each of themfunctioned. He got in touch with thedeveloper of DVB98 and DVB2000 andproposed an improvement. Rod thenwrote the program DVBEdit himself.In the meantime Rod worked himselfso deep into digital TV that he wrote apaper on the operation of MPEG2 (stillworth reading today at www.tsreader.com/legacy). In 1999 coincidence onceagain stepped into Rod’s life: an employeeat the non-profit organization‘Internet Archive’ in Los Angeles contactedRod. The goal of this organization,founded in 1996, is to build acomplete Internet archive which wouldalso include the archiving of TV channels.They stumbled onto Rod throughis MPEG2 paper: anyone who was sofamiliar with modern TV technologywould undoubtedly know how to recordTV channels.As it turned out, they found the rightperson: “I worked up a strategy on howyou would record and archive channelsand made a proposal to ‘Internet Archive’.”It involved the sum of a quartermillion US dollars recalls Rod. “It includedthe complete infrastructure andtechnological design.”Rod won the contract! He constructeda reception station for 20 TV channelsas well as the technology for recordingthese channels. “We record the channelsin their entirety, 24 hours a day,seven days a week, 365 days a year.”That was not as easy to do in 2000 asit is today. “The cost effective method■Isn’t one iPhone enough for Rod? Why does he havetwo? A closer look at the display shows that one iPhone isused with US provider AT&T while the other is used withthe British provider Vodafone UK. Wait a second… howdoes that work? “Very simple: I have a VPN connection(Virtual Private Network) to my family in London andfrom there I have access to the British mobile telephonenetwork.” This lets Rod call anyone in Great Britain atlocal British rates - and all this from the other side of theAtlantic!206 TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 06-07-08/2012 — www.TELE-satellite.com

1Rod would gladly record more TVchannels: “The goal is to record at aminimum of one TV channel from everycountry.”But there are limits to what the ‘InternetArchive’ organization can do: “Theamount of data involved is absolutelygigantic and every additional channelthat we continuously record each timemeans a high investment.” Even if thefoundation that supports ‘Internet Archive’has a lot of money behind it, theresources are still limited. “Any expansionis done with great care.”It’s interesting to note that RodHewitt also records the EPG data for‘Internet Archive’. “Here by the windowI have a small antenna pointedto DishNetwork at 72W. Once a day Iautomatically record all the EPG data.It takes about 20 minutes before allthe data has been received and itamounts to about 300MB.” The EPGdata contains programming informationfor the next nine days. Rod recordsthe data daily on a rolling basisand sends the data on a hard drive tothe ‘Internet Archive’ headquarters inSan Francisco.Rod is also planning to record the EPGdata from BBC. “But they’re not makingit easy for me: the BBC sends theEPG data as a bitmap and not in textformat. I would first need to write aprogram that could read the bitmaps inOCR.” Rod is always getting new challengesplaced in front of him. And whatdoes he have planned for TSReader?“Last year I made TSReader compatiblewith ISDB-T and also adaptedit to AIT. Aside from that, TSReaderis now also compatible with many differenttypesets so that, for example,Greek and Cyrillic can be properly displayed.”But it doesn’t stop there: “Ijust received an e-mail that says thereare still problems with the display ofSlovakian characters.” It’s actually notreally a problem; Rod just needs a correspondingdata stream so that he canadapt TSReader with it.Rod is currently working on a projectfor IPTV: “I’m in the process of writingsoftware that would let you displayvarious IPTV channels in mosaicform.” This is an especially interestingpiece of software for IPTV operatorsto control their programming. Rodhas even more ideas: “You could builda small adapter and connect it to anLNB and transmit reception data to aniPhone or iPad via Bluetooth. In thisway you wouldn’t need your own signalanalyzer; you could use the display andprocessor power in the iPhone or iPadfor the measurements.” Wow, what afantastic idea! “Or you could use WiFiinstead of Bluetooth”, continues Rodregarding his ideas on the possibilitieswith today’s technology. “I’m not sureyet if I’ll get involved with that”, grinsRod.Rod clearly isn’t short on ideas. Hisexamples only prove that there’s stillmore to be discovered and developed.Innovations today are much more thanjust possible, you just have to come upwith the right ideas.1. Rod’s current project: the mosaic displayof live video from IPTV channels.2. Many satellite enthusiasts as well asdigital TV professionals use Rod Hewitt’sTSReader software. It displays all ofthe available PIDs in a data stream plusadditional details such as bit rate. FTAchannels are displayed in a window. TheLite version can be downloaded free ofcharge from Rod Hewitt’s web site at www.coolstf.com or www.tsreader.com .2to record such large amounts of datawas through ‘Digital Live Tape DLT’. Butsince at that time is was not yet possibleto record the stream directly, weused MPEG encoders to take the digitallyreceived signals that were outputedin analog by the receiver and reconvertthem back into an MPEG stream.”In just one year this method filled up9000 DLT tapes. In 2002 the prices forhard drives fell so far that it becamemore cost effective to start using themand stop using DLT technology. Sincethen, Rod has been busy copying the9000 DLT tapes onto hard drives. “Thisjob will keep me busy for quite sometime yet”, sighs Rod.During the course of recording theTV channels, it became evident thatthere were blackouts in the recordings.What was causing this? Rod was gettingmore and more nervous; sometimeshe had to search for a long time.“I never knew if my reception systemwas the cause or if there was an issuewith the uplink or downlink or if it wasthe channel itself.” He had to find a solution- he had to be able to read thestream directly to find out what wascausing the blackouts. “There wereprofessional solutions but they werejust too expensive.”Rod sat down and began programmingthe first version of his TSReader.“I used a commercial satellite receiverwith ASI output and a professional PCcard with ASI input; this let me startreading and analyzing the stream.”He soon adapted his software to anotherPC card that also happened tobe popular with private users and thusTSReader 1.0 was born. He made thesoftware available as a free download.As a result, many DXers could now easilyanalyze the PIDs directly. He realizedthat professional users were alsousing his software and one day it wassuggested by one of these professionalusers to expand his software to, for example,include the playback of video.“Since then TSReader is available inthree versions: a Lite version for everyone,a standard version and a professionalversion with all the bells andwhistles.”In 2004 Rod took it all online. “Inmy first year sales were a little slow ataround 300 licenses.” In 2011 TSReaderwas accepted: “In this year 6000software licenses were purchased.”Since some of these licenses werevalid for more than one PC, the totalusers added up to over 10,000.” Itwas quite a success for Rod consideringthat TSReader was originally writtenas a way for Rod to better handlethe TV channel stream recordings hewas undertaking for ‘Internet Archive’.But there was another side effect toTSReader: “Since I was always gettingbetter at working with the streams, theopportunity arose to also use TSReaderto record the TV channels and thistime using the original stream for theserecordings.”Rod took some time to test andperfect his software. Finally, in 2008it was time: ‘Internet Archive’ completelyconverted to recording usingTSReader. “Since then we’ve beenusing my software to record the TVchannels directly to hard drives.” Rodcontinues, “At ‘Internet Archive’s’headquarters in San Francisco is areception and recording station forcurrently 70 channels. Some of thesechannels come from the local cablenetwork there and some via satellite.I record 22 TV channels here in Marylandincluding PBS Annapolis as well asWBAL, WJZ, WNUV, WUTB and WPBX.”Rod simply uses his cable TV connectionin his apartment. “Not only that,we have another reception station inLondon from which we record another15 channels from Europe.208 TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 06-07-08/2012 — www.TELE-satellite.comwww.TELE-satellite.com — 06-07-08/2012 — TELE-satellite International — 全 球 发 行 量 最 大 的 数 字 电 视 杂 志 209