Designing a Flexible TV/Satellite Distribution System (Flexible IRS)

The Problem with IRS Designs

As designers, installers and maintainers of TV/Satellite systems in London, Able have an excellent understanding of the technology and the services that’s required by residents. We are therefore constantly frustrated by the inflexibility of the new-build designs that we are asked to price up.

The biggest challenge when designing an IRS (Integrated Reception System) for a new high-end London development, is deciding how many different satellites to provide through the communal system. Although many, if not most, residents will be happy with ‘Sky+ in every room’, there are also a significant number of wealthy international residents who require a variety of different satellite services. Popular international satellites include Hotbird, Arabsat, Astra 19.2E, Nilesat, Turksat, Digiturk, Hellas Sat, Hispasat, Thor and Eutlesat 16E. If these services are unavailable through the communal IRS, it is unlikely that they would be able to erect their own satellite dish.

In an attempt to satisfy this requirement, most new TV/Sat systems are specified with at least two satellites signals to each dwelling, normally Astra/Sky and Hotbird. Some go further and specify three or four. However, whichever services are chosen, many resident’s requirements will not be catered for. And using traditional IRS hardware and design techniques, it is not possible to design an IRS with more than four satellites. Further, whatever the original specification may say about ‘build a system which can be extended with additional satellites’, after a competitive tendering process this rarely translates into anything more than ‘leaving some spare space in the TV cabinet’. So adding a satellite post-build, which usually requires ‘ripping out the old kit and starting again’, is just never cost-effective.

So What is the Solution?

Thanks to recent technical developments with satellite transmission over fibre and the ‘plug & play’ Global Switchblade scalable multi-switches, it is now perfectly feasible to build a cost-effective IRS which provides any number of satellites.

The Flexible IRS

Able have developed the design for a completely Flexible IRS.

Key Features of the system:

Residents are provided with Terrestrial TV/Radio and Sky+HD. As standard, the system can serve up to 8 x dual feed TV/Sat outlets per dwelling

Residents can choose to receive up to three additional satellites from a menu of twelve (or even more) satellites. Satellite additions and changes, which can happen at any time, require no engineer involvement

Satellite signals can be allocated or re-allocated to apartments at any time. So as residents come and go, everyone can receive what they want

Chargeable connections. Which apartment receives which satellites is managed from a single site-wide secure location, typically in the central Comms room. So it would be very easy to charge residents a fee for receiving additional or specific satellite services

Scalable. The system is scalable to 500 dwellings and beyond

Satellite Farm

Fibre Multi-Switch in Apartment

Building and Managing a Flexible IRS

The Flexible is also a very easy system to build and maintain.

Key Features of the system:

Cost effective. Less expensive to build than a traditional 4-satellite IRS.

Energy efficient. Landlord power is only required at the head end cabinet. For a 400 x dwelling systems providing 12 x satellites, Landlord total system power requirements is less than 500W.

Small installation footprint:

Two cables from roof rig/satellite farm.
Small riser boxes and no power required in risers.
Just one cable required to each dwelling.
Single compact switching unit in the utility cupboard of each apartment.

Modular System. Additional satellite dishes can be cost effectively added as required, simply by installing the dishes and adding satellite modules to the headend. No disruption, extra cables or changes to the existing equipment are required. This is in contrast to traditional IRS's, where the cost and disruption of adding any new services is usually completely impractical.

Low cost of maintenance. The only active components are in the head end cabinet and in the apartment utility cupboards.

How does the Flexible IRS Work?

The Flexible IRS is a Fibre based system (FIRS), but also uses established structured cabling methods from the Data Cabling industry to build a robust but flexible system.

Fibre for transmitting TV/Sat confers two key advantages:

Because of the attenuation advantages, it is now routine for medium and large size IRS’s to be designed with a fibre backbone. However, Able have also utilised the high density properties of fibre to build in the required flexibility.

Why are Developers still Specifying and Installing Restrictive Systems which cannot be Changed or Extended?

Simply because most designs are copied from old ones, which were devised before the more powerful technologies became available.

How do I Learn More?

For more information about how Able can assist you to turn an inflexible IRS design into a modern and flexible one, whilst also reducing costs Able’s consultants will be delighted to assist, simply contact us using the form below and we’ll get back to you.

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