Hosted & Virtual SAT>IP — What the Category Is, Who Provides It, and How to Choose
Short answer: A provider operates the dish and tuner; your software receives an MPEG transport stream over IP. The important choice is whether you want to own hardware, rent a whole server, or rent only tuner capacity. First check that the receiving site can see your satellite position.
This is the quick version of the full, vendor-neutral category reference. SATLINE.TV sells hosted reception, but self-hosting and other providers are valid choices.
What SAT>IP means
SAT>IP is a published protocol that lets client software request a satellite transponder from a networked tuner and receive its MPEG transport stream. It was published in 2012 by an SES-led consortium; the full reference identifies the current published revision as 1.2.2. It is not ETSI TS 103 205—that document concerns CI Plus extensions.
Satellite-over-IP is broader: delivery may also use HTTP, multicast, SRT or other transports. Ask for the actual protocol and output, not just a product label such as “cloud tuner”.
Four ways to get satellite reception
| Model | What you control | Usually best when |
|---|---|---|
| Self-build | Your dish, tuner hardware, server and software | The beam reaches you and you want maximum control |
| Colocation | Your hardware and software at a facility with dish access | You own equipment but need a different receiving site |
| Dedicated hosted server | A whole rented server with DVB cards and your software stack | You need a CAM in a tuner slot, GPU, disks or custom processing |
| Virtual / hosted tuner | A tuner endpoint; your client software consumes the stream | You need reception without administering a remote machine |
Fast test: Need a machine or equipment physically beside the tuner? Choose your own hardware or a dedicated server. Need only the stream? A virtual tuner may be enough.
Shared vs private virtual tuners
Shared: frequency-locked
Fixed to a position and transponder, already tuned when you connect. Good for a stable lineup and quick reconnects. It cannot scan the rest of the position while holding that lock.
Private: position-locked
Assigned to one position but free to retune among its transponders. Good for scanning, position-wide EPG collection and changing requirements. A new tune must acquire lock.
Do not confuse sharing with filtering: ask whether you can request the full multiplex using pids=all or select an explicit PID list. That affects both visibility of services and bandwidth.
Who provides which part?
- Satellite operators such as SES and Eutelsat provide the signal and footprint; hosted tuner companies do not replace them.
- Hardware vendors such as Digital Devices and TBS supply tuners for a self-build or hosted server. HDHomeRun is mainly a home-oriented terrestrial/cable option.
- Software includes TVHeadend, Cesbo Astra, Flussonic, VLC and Kodi. These have different roles: headend, streaming server or client/player.
- Hosting options in the full reference include SATLINE.TV, XSServer, Skyhosting, managed TVHeadend services and general hosts with satellite feeds. SATLINE.TV also publishes SAT>IP Servers Pro; this page is not an endorsement ranking.
Buying cards and running your own software is a legitimate architecture when the beam reaches your site and you have the team to operate it. Check each provider's current positions, features and terms directly.
Nine questions before you choose
- Coverage: which orbital positions and receiving sites are available?
- Tuner: shared or private, and can you retune it yourself?
- Output: full multiplex or selected PIDs; who chooses?
- Special feeds: is multistream and T2-MI reception demonstrated for your carrier?
- Transport: RTSP, HTTP, multicast or SRT—and which works over your path?
- Conditional access: where does licensed descrambling happen?
- Resilience: what happens in rain fade or a receiving-site outage?
- Software: will your existing client connect without a proprietary dependency?
- Terms: what are setup charges, commitments and monthly billing units?
Most easily missed: a listed frequency does not prove that a provider can recover a multistream or T2-MI service from it. Ask for a working sample of the exact carrier.
When hosted reception is the wrong tool
- You have good local coverage and in-house DVB/Linux skills: self-build may offer more control at lower long-term cost.
- You need a legacy CAM physically in the tuner's CI slot, a GPU or substantial storage: use your own hardware or a dedicated server.
- You must scan many frequencies continuously: a single shared, frequency-locked tuner cannot do that.
- You need only a few free-to-air channels at home: a consumer tuner and dish may be proportionate.
- You want to broadcast on a satellite rather than receive one: buy satellite capacity, not a hosted tuner.
About the author
Gleb Sazanov
CTO and Project Leader at SATLINE.TV, with more than 20 years of experience in software, systems architecture and cloud infrastructure. SATLINE.TV is a provider in the category described here.