Basic SIS & in-run betting info

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Analoguesat

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November 2014 - this is information I put together many years ago - the satellite names used are well out of date but the general info is still more or less valid. A/S


Ive been meaning to put this info up for a while, but an email to me has finally prompted me to put the info up for the benefit of all forum members. The info is a fairly typical sample of the questions we get asked about sports feeds and S~I~S. horse feeds in particular.

Are you aware of digital Sport Feeds which are available from various satellite, often the Eutelsat Satellites? If you are, is there ANY way that these can be accessed using analogue equipment? Most of them are broadcast in 4:2:2 format

Analogue sports feeds are exceedingly rare & so can be effectively discounted these days
4:2:2 is a digital format and thus needs digital equipment. There are various web sites that will give you feeds info :

http://www.satelliweb.com/index.php?section=livef

happens to be one Ive got bookmarked. Feeds come and go and tend to use the more obscure satellites (Eutelsat W2 at 16E is used for many feeds of all types, although its not unknown for them to appear on the main broadcast sats it is unusual).


If there isn't any way, is there a way of viewing them faster than using a normal 4:2:2 receiver (I'm viewing them in 4:2:2 at the moment, but the pictures are still 2.5 seconds behind live).?

If you are getting the 4:2:2 feeds at the moment then thats the best you will get - a dedicated receiver wont make any difference to how you see it. The delays from live will be caused by the lag from the round trip to 1 or possibly 2 or more satellites in multiple hops plus lags introduced by the equipment, compression, decompression, trips through digital frame stores, etc All the delays add up


I need these pictures as fast as possible, in a situation where half a second can make a colossal difference, let alone a 2 second advantage. I'm convinced there must be a way to get them, I just can't work it out. I've heard people talking about viewing the "uplink". Would that be possible?

Ah yet another in-run betting person desperate for that extra few tenths of a second advantage The uplink is the feed from the outside broadcast truck, and isnt actually visible unless you are sitting on the target satellite! The retransmitted downlink (which is the one going to the broadcaster TV centre) is the one you want - and its this which is the holy grail of all feed hunters especially the betting fraternity feed chasers.


Or is there any way to view pictures which are shown at an event. For example, at a tennis tournament, there are tv screens which are showing the pictures "live" and they are fully live. Yet when I get them on my screen off the "live feed" I'm 2.5 seconds behind

Those pictures at the event will be basically closed circuit tv, and are probably just the pictures from the host broadcaster. As soon as the pictures leave the sports complex the delays begin building up.

Look at it like this. An outside broadcast truck at a horse race uplinks onto say Eutel W2 16E (for the sake of argument) The feed is downlinked to BBC TV centre for retransmission on Grandstand. They bounce it back up to Astra 2D at 28E for transmission to Joe Public. The 2 satellite hops is around a second delay already just from the round trip BEFORE all the digital processing is done at the OB truck, BBC TV Centre, and the final digital decompression in your sat receiver. Things get worse where encrypted services are involved as there is an encryption & decryption delay added in too.

Now its obvious from this that if you can knock out that second hop and just watch the broadcast feed rather than Grandstand you will have at least half a second advantage over Joe Public watching Grandstand at home.

There is an additional problem of course - the betting industry has cottoned onto the fact that they are losing their advantage over the punter if the punter can see their feeds. Ive heard that many of the horse racing feeds have been encrypted for around 12 months using an encryption called BISS. Now, BISS is not the most secure encryption in the world, and many keys for BISS are public. However, I have seen a recent report the keys are changed daily.

From what Ive been told recently the keys are available, from whom I have no idea, but getting that information costs a lot of money

At the end of the day the best way to get the horse racing feeds is to pay for an S~I~S subscription. Initial cost is somewhere between 6 and 10 thousand pounds from my (rather limited) information with a similar amount needed for the subscription in later years. Im hazy on the exact details simply as my interest in horse racing doesnt go much further than the Grand National - and wondering if my nag in the work sweepstake will get onto the second circuit this year.
 
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Analoguesat

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Now to the question of equipment.

First of all you need a satellite dish of appropriate size for your location for the satellite(s) you are interested in. Dedicated feed hunters often use a dish at least 1.2m in diameter, and have it motorised, although IF the feeds happen to be on the main broadcast satellites (unusual) then a 60-80cm dish will do fine.

Ok the dish is sorted, now reception equipment is needed. Analogue feeds are a thing of the past, so digital equipment is the order of the day. Ideally you want something with a fast blind scan for finding the feeds in the first place. If you want to watch 4:2:2 feeds then you need something that will handle this format - normal hobby equipment wont. The cheapest way to get 4:2:2 transmissions is to buy a Skystar2 pc card

The SIS channels are transmitted on Sirius 4 at 5E, and are transmitted in an ultra secure encryption called PowerVu. Theres no way whatsoever to hack this open so dont bother asking!

DONT pm or email me asking for extra info - I WILL ignore it as I have totally lost faith in promises of money for help. Over the years Ive been approached a couple of dozen times being offered huge amounts of money for the inside info. Im still waiting for a first cheque to appear through the letterbox....

Over the years we have had numerous cases of folk offering info and hinting they want money for whatever info they might have available. We do not permit this and anyone looking for payment for their info will be banned.

If you wont give your information freely dont bother posting.
 

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Update August 2009:

A reasonable number of UK & American horse racing feeds have been transmitted in the clear on 10E in recent weeks.

Details of what we have found can be found here in the sports feeds section

These have been in the clear and available to anyone with an 80-100cm dish and a basic fta digital receiver.

Its unknown if this will continue in the future, but make use of the coverage whilst its there!
 

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Its been 5 years since I posted in this thread but as things have moved on a bit its time for a bit of an update.

The SIS feeds can now be found on Eutelsat 31A at 31E, encrypted in BISS.

Eute 31A is an elderly satellite & is running inclined. ATM shes just about in range of reasonable sized dishes all the time but as the north south drift increases then inclined orbit tracking facilities will be required to keep the pictures in lock.
 
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