Oireachtas TV available on the Internet (MPEG2 IPTV)
Posted by bollinsl on 11 August 2008
Oireachtas TV is available on the Internet and on educational networks as MPEG2 IPTV.
The television service is available as IPTV MPEG2 at 4 MBit/sec per channel, which gives a very good quality 16:9 wide screen feed.
The SDI feed from the Broadcasting Unit is encoded as MPEG2. The following live feeds are available on the Internet (instructions for a VLC media player):
- Dáil Éireann (House) feed:
- select “UDP/RTP Multicast”
- enter 233.4.189.33 as the IP address
- enter 1234 as the port number
- Click “OK”.
- Seanad (Senate) feed:
- select “UDP/RTP Multicast”
- enter 233.4.189.34 as the IP address
- enter 1234 as the port number
- Click “OK”.
Users may receive these channels free of charge once they are connected to a network which is peered with HEAnet, and has a 10 MBit/sec or faster connection, provided by a carrier which is capable to carrying multicast traffic. In Ireland, one commercial Internet service provider, Magnet Networks, is peered with HEAnet, and access to the Oireachtas multicast IPTV service was successfully implemented in a Government Department using a connection to Magnet Networks.
Multicasting IP is used, so there is no impact on the bandwidth of users networks or Internet connections no matter how many users are watching the channels.
The office may supply the proposed parliamentary channel, a playback channel, and a multiscreen channel showing the Dáil, Seanad and four committee rooms on one screen, as additional channels.
Users can watch the television feeds using a standard television via a set top box and a SCART cable, or on a PC.
The Oireachtas Live Webcasting service is provided in association with HEAnet, Ireland’s Educational are Research Network.
The MPEG2 Streams are provided to several networks including the following:
- Educational and Research Networks
- Internet
- INEX (Internet Neutral Exchange) in Ireland 2 * 10 GBit/sec
- General Internet 2 * 10 GBit/sec
I would be interested to hear from users who are able to watch the Oireachtas TV service as a Webcasting feed or as an IPTV feed. I would also like to know the quality of the stream, e.g. bandwidth used by the stream that you are receiving.
