TEST REPORT IPTV Receiver

Jiuzhou DTP8300
Receiver Jiuz hou DTP830 0
IPT V receiver equippe
12-01/2011

for Internet Television

d with top- notch
technology

At first sight the DTP8300 If you turn around the there is of course the usual
receiver and look at the con- range of sockets for HDMI
from Jiuzhou looks just like nection options on the back out, three RCA jacks for
panel it becomes perfectly YUV, three more RCA jacks
your average set-top box for clear that this is a set-top box for stereo audio and CVBS,
satellite, cable or terrestrial that does not receive signals an optical S/PDIF output,
from satellite, cable or ter- S-video socket and a second
reception. It only measures restrial antenna. USB interface. There is
even the added benefit of a
230x160x39 mm, which makes All we find is an RJ45 Eth- mechanical power switch,
it a neat little addition to ernet port when it comes which is a valuable feature in
to signal input. In addition, this time and age.
the living room cabinet. The
box comes in stylish black
and sports two LEDs on the
front panel to indicate the
current operating mode. The
manufacturer has chosen to
do without an LCD or segment
display, but has instead opted
for an on/off switch in the left
corner and a USB 2.0 interface
in the right corner.

30 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 12-01/2011 — www.TELE-satellite.com

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If we have to think of and finally output of signals Available online starting from 3 December 2010
something worth improv- received with the DVB data
ing it’s the IR receiver in the stream, but also channel Its main task is to display tent and of creating the IPTV
set-top box, which requires management, processing of on the TV content which is receiver’s complete user
users to point the remote EPG data and creating OSD delivered as pre-packaged interface.
to a very small area on the messages for user interac- data. All technology required
box – otherwise you’ll have to tion. for receiving and processing When turned on, the IPTV
press the desired key several channels, for creating the receiver connects to the mid-
times before your command By contrast, an IPTV OSD and for managing con- dleware via the Ethernet port
is actually received at the receiver is a different story tent is located at the provider and displays content received
other end. altogether. Put simply, it is end of the IPTV system. from the middleware.
a kind of web browser being
We’ll focus on the pecu- able to put out audio and There, so-called middle- By the way, the middle-
liarities and features of the video. It doesn’t have to do ware (put simply again, a ware is also responsible for
DTP8300 in a moment – but a channel search, it has no kind of web server) takes establishing a connection to
first it’s worth looking at the (or only a very basic) OSD care of setting up channels the DVB-IP gateway for TV
decisive differences between system and there is no need lists using provider-specific reception. Providers store
TV reception via antenna, to manage, process, save, design elements, of providing the IP addresses and ports
cable or satellite and IPTV. and organise channels. video-on-demand (VOD) con- of individual channels within

0.57

www.TELE-satellite.com — 12-01/2011 — TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine 31

the IPTV network in the mid- for his network, as well as
dleware. the multicasts used for TV
and radio distribution and the
If a user now selects a spe- ports.
cific channel on the channel
list that is created and pro- This means in turn that set-
vided by the middleware, the top boxes for end users need
IPTV receiver obtains the to be just as flexible in order
exact IP address and port to fit into existing IPTV net-
of the selected channel and works. To this end – and to
starts displaying the corre- this end only – the DTP8300
sponding video stream. is equipped with a dedicated The DTP8300 starts up with its own boot screen
setup menu which can be
Now the second major dif- called up with a small button
ference between satellite on the remote control. By
and IPTV reception becomes default it is PIN-protected
evident. If you receive your and we suggest that end
channels directly via satellite users in general keep their
this means that all content is fingers off all of these set-
available at the receiving end tings.
(hence the term broadcast-
ing), while IPTV reception The menu is divided into
means that only the content six items, with Basic Settings
(channel) that was specifi- and Extended Settings being
cally requested is available of most interest. In Basic
at any one time. Settings you need to tell your
box how it should connect
Of course all available con- to your IPTV provider’s net-
tent is sitting at the provider, work.
Main menu as generated by the Jiuzhou middleware
waiting to be requested, but
still data only starts to flow The receiver can either
once the user calls up spe- request an IP address from
cific content. Each customer the DHCP server or you can
is served individually, so to assign a static IP address to
speak, which is also why – your box. If you subscribe to
apart from standard radio an IPTV provider that uses
and TV channels – video-on- DSL for distributing their
demand, time shift or PVR content you may also set up
can be offered by the pro- a connection to the IPTV net-
vider without the customer work via PPPoE.
having to purchase new
hardware. Once additional network
parameters such as gate-
Metaphorically speaking, way and DNS server are set
broadcast reception via sat- or received from the DHCP
ellite, cable or terrestrial server the IPTV receiver
transmission is like a giant also needs to know the exact In our test setup the channel list contains five entries
wave of content extending address of the middleware.
to all receivers at the same
time, while an IPTV network For our test purposes we
targets each subscriber sep- chose to use the default mid-
arately, providing only spe- dleware provided by Jiuzhou,
cifically requested content in which we had installed in our
a customised way. test centre on a standard
Windows PC using Microsoft
Not only is each IPTV cus- IIS.
tomer served individually,
each IPTV network is also While configuring the
characterised by an individ- network connection of the
ual set-up, depending on the set-top box it came as an
provider’s requirements. unexpected but very nice
surprise that not only a con-
In theory, an IPTV pro- nection via Ethernet was
vider can freely select the IP possible, but also via WLAN.
addresses he wants to use If you prefer to go wireless MBC Action on NILESAT 7° West via IPTV

32 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 12-01/2011 — www.TELE-satellite.com

 available to the provider it is
possible to offer tailor-made
customer service if need be.

Complementing the con-

figuration options of the Set-
tings menu there is system
overview, a self-test feature
and an option to restore fac-
all you need is an RT73 com- tory settings.
patible WLAN USB adapter
to plug into one of the USB Using a web browser or
ports – once it is detected USB memory stick it is also
by the system it can easily possible to upgrade the
be configured directly in the receiver’s operating system
– a dedicated menu item is
box.
available to facilitate that
procedure.
Now that all settings are
completed the IPTV receiver
Once all settings are
saves all data and re-boots
selected the box needs to
in order to establish a direct
be rebooted so that it con-
connection to the middle-
nects to the middleware over
ware.
the network and displays the
main menu generated by the
While average users should
provider’s middleware.
be all set now we of course
Watching an IPTV channel – the info bar on the bottom of the screen also could not do without having
Using its own middleware
displays EPG information if provided by the middleware. a look at the Extended Set-
Jiuzhou impressively demon-
tings in order to adjust them
strates some of the features
for our test setup.
an IPTV provider is able to
implement with its in-house
Currently the only menu
middleware and in combina-
languages available are Eng-
tion with the DTP8300.
lish and Chinese, but this
refers only to the Main Menu
As you can see in the
and a couple of OSD inserts
screenshots the main menu is
of the receiver. During day-
divided into four major areas:
to-day use the IPTV provid- The top bar corresponds to
er’s middleware generates all the colour-coded function
OSD items anyway and can keys on the remote and thus
be designed according to the is perfectly suited for direct
provider’s specifications. access to live TV, video-on-
demand or timeshift viewing.
In Video Settings users
can select the format of the The left area holds features
signal output to the TV, with that are used a little less fre-
Settings menu of the DTP8300 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p quently, such as games or
and 1080i being available in additional VOD content.
4:3 und 16:9 aspect ratios, as
well as PAL, NTSC or SECAM. In the window to the right
of that section the live video
Finally, the Extended Set- of the currently selected
tings menu can be used to channel is inserted, while
change the PIN code that in the bottom section of the
restricts access to the Set- screen there is room for ban-
tings menu and to activate a ners advertising new VOD
log protocol that is sent to an content or other provider-
FTP server. This way provid- based information for sub-
ers can permanently check scribers.
whether any error messages
have been created by the In our test scenario we
IPTV receiver or any prob- hooked up Jiuzhou’s own
lems have occurred. middleware with the DVB-IP
gateway we had installed in
Access to the network is via cable or WLAN Thanks to these data being our test lab and then entered

34 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 12-01/2011 — www.TELE-satellite.com

the corresponding multicast MPEG-4/H264 as well as
addresses as required. This Windows Media 9 video. The
left us with one of our feed built-in browser handles
channels – the MBC tran- HTML 4.0, Javascript 1.5 and
sponder from NILESAT 7° Java Virtual Machine.
West – being available on the
IPTV box in next to no time Data delivered from the
at all. middleware is displayed with
a 32bit True Colour User
We were rather impressed Interface. The audio decoder
with the zapping speed of is capable of processing
this neat little box, which WMA-9, MPEG Layer 1, 2 and
took just under one second 3 (MP3), AAC LC, AAC LC+ IP settings
to switch between individual SBR Level 2 as well as AAC+
streams of the TV channels Level 2. Sampling rates of
requested. 22500, 44100 and 48000Hz
are supported and the
Whenever a new channels receiver has a built-in 128
is called up the DTP8300 dis- MB flash memory, 192 MB
plays EPG information of the SDRAM and an 8K EEPROM.
selected event, if this feature
is provided by the middle- In a word, we were
ware. impressed with the Jiuzhou
DTP8300 during our test.
How certain additional
keys on the remote control In the IPTV market it’s usu-
are used and which features ally not up to the end user to
they access largely depends pick a set-top box, which is
on the provider’s middleware why the DTP8300 will mainly
again. If timeshift viewing be chosen by IPTV providers.
is available, then it can be They would end up with a Always required: the middleware address
controlled just like with any box that is able to implement
other receiver and there’s no all middleware features and
need to get used to a new therefore is a perfect tool
user concept. for offering programming to
subscribers.
IPTV compatible added fea-
tures such as news, weather Even end users looking to
updates or current offers for stay independent from pro-
subscribers can be assigned vider-supplied hardware will
to different function keys on like the Jiuzhou DTP8300 as
the remote. There is even it offers all necessary func-
an option to change from tions, is easy to use, and
number to character input so doesn’t take much space in
that you can use the numeric the living room cabinet.
keypad for texting – just like
you would with your mobile
phone.
Extended settings
As far as technical com-
patibility is concerned, the
Jiuzhou DTP8300 supports

36 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 12-01/2011 — www.TELE-satellite.com

Video output in various formats Updating the operating software of the DTP8300 via server of USB stick

Expert Opinion
+
Small IPTV receiver that is perfectly suited
for use in the living room. Excellent video qual-
ity, quick execution of commands sent from the
remote control and good build quality are the key
characteristics of this set-top box.
Thomas Haring
TELE-satellite

- Test Center
Austria
The IR receiver of the box could be a little
more forgiving

ENERGY
DIAGRAM

EPG, clock and update settings

Apparent Power

Mode Apparent Active Factor

Reception 17.5 W 10 W 0.57

Active Power

TECHNICAL
DATA
Manufacturer Sichuan Jiuzhou Electric Group Co., Ltd.
#16 Yuejin Road, Mianyang 621000, Sichuan, China
DTP8300 system information Fax +86-816-2468903/2469241

EMail overseas@jiuzhou.com.cn

Model DTP8300

Function IPTV Set-Top-Box

Stream Protocol UDP

Menu Standards HTML4, Javascript 1.5, Java Virtual Machine

HDMI connector yes

Scart connector no

Audio/Video output 3 x RCA

YUV output 3 x RCA

S-Video output yes

Digital audio output yes (optical)

Ethernet yes

WLAN yes (via USB stick)

USB connector yes

Input Voltage 9V

Dimensions 230x160x39mm

www.TELE-satellite.com — 12-01/2011 — TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine 37