Hotel TV: an integrator’s guide¶
This section is for an integrator who builds TV for a hotel or a hotel chain on Perfect Streamer: how to prepare the network, how to size the server, how to provide redundancy and what typical setups look like.
In a hotel, Perfect Streamer works as the headend:
receives satellite, terrestrial and cable channels through DVB adapters, including scrambled ones — with a CI/CAM module or a BISS key (DVB receiver);
receives channels from the internet over SRT, RIST, PS1, HLS and other protocols (Peer protocols for reliable transmission);
shows the hotel’s welcome channel — a video file that plays in a loop (Files and devices);
inserts the programme guide into the stream (EIT) from the broadcast or from XMLTV, and the TVs show it in their own guide (EPG/EIT);
delivers each channel to the TVs and set-top boxes in the rooms as an SPTS stream over UDP multicast, and to guests’ phones and tablets over HLS or DASH (OTT and DVR);
monitors the channels and reports failures with alerts (Alerts (alerter)).
The guest portal, the TV menu, the link to the property management system (PMS) and the room logic are the job of the hotel TV platform or the set-top box middleware. Perfect Streamer works beneath them as a neutral headend: such platforms accept channels as UDP multicast MPEG-TS.
Before buying TVs or set-top boxes for the whole property, test channel reception on a sample of the same model and firmware: the TV needs a clean SPTS stream with correct PSI/SI tables. Channel numbers and their order are set on the TV or in the hotel TV platform.
