COMPANY REPORT

HDMI Distributor SATSON, Belgium

Stefaan Cornelis with

one of SATSONs super products: a splitter that distributes HDMI signals to up to eight Ethernet cables.

Didier Debey is happy: he

conceived one of SATSONs success products the Dual Viewer DSB-0200, a product for digital signage.

The HDMI Professionals from SATSON

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Conquers the new HDMI distribution niche with their specialized products Conceives their own HDMI products Distribution of HDTV signals in private homes with HDMI Extenders Compatible with coaxial cable as well as with Ethernet cables
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COMPANY REPORT

HDMI Distributor SATSON, Belgium

A look into SATSONs

warehouse. Boxes of various HDMI products are stacked on top of each other.

The HDMI splitters

can be cascaded together such that a maximum of 448 monitors can be connected. But these splitters are not just for professionals; more and more households have more than one HDTV monitor and use these splitters to connect them all via HDMI to a single receiver.

Halle, Belgium

The Ideal HD Solution for the Connection of Multiple TV Monitors to a Single Signal Source
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Whats the future for digital TV? Is it with reception or with further distribution? For the Stefaan Cornelis/Didier Debey team the future lies clearly with the further distribution of HDMI signals. With their company SATSON, they have focused themselves in this area. Stefaan Cornelis is the head of the commercial division and Didier Debey is responsible for the technical development. We met

up with both of these company heads in Halle, a city south of Brussels to find out more about SATSON. The company has been around for some time already. TELE-satellite reported on this company back in the 04-05/2007 issue. Back then SATSON was involved primarily in receiver sales. Stefaan Cornelis explains to us, Ive been involved with satellite reception since 1992. In

2000 he founded SATSON together with his friend from school, Didier Debey, who studied electronics. Back then the company was called Sat & Sound. They successfully marketed satellite receivers along with the associated accessories. When HDTV channels started appearing in 2005, they both recognized a new gap in the market: the distribution of HD signals in HDMI. As the years went by, 193

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SATSON continued to focus more and more on HDMI so that Stefaan Cornelis can say today: Our satellite products today make up only about 10% of our sales; our remaining sales are all HDMI products. What does SATSONs product assortment look like? We have products for the end user as well as for professional installations, we learn from Didier Debey, the man responsible for technical development and who just happens to have a wonderful example of a product that is only available from SATSON: We developed the concept ourselves but actual production has been outsourced. It has to do with a video processor that can insert a secondary video source on top of a live video signal. In this way, for example, a sports bar can show a live football match while at the same time adding their own ads or announcements. The DSB0200 named device consists in principle of a video generator and an HDMI distributor that takes the combined picture and feeds it to multiple monitors in parallel. Another application area could be hotels that, in addition to live TV, could blend in their own offerings or add advertisement pages for any operational purpose, that is, Digital Signage at affordable prices. Another product for use in professional applications is the HDMI splitter with Ethernet connection. Using a master device and as many as eight 8-way splitters, up to 448 (!) monitors could be connected in parallel with one HD signal. Didier Debey describes one of these applications: Electronics stores that have many dif-

ferent TVs on display want to provide each TV with the same signal. We have the right splitter just for that purpose. Not only that: Stefaan Cornelis expands on this by highlighting that SATSON has already had great success with these HDMI splitters in Belgium: many of the countrys top electronics supermarkets already use SATSONs products. But SATSON believes that the future is not just in the professional sector. The distribution of HDMI signals is becoming more and more important for private users as well; many private users dont have just one TV, they already have several scattered around the house. As long as the receiver and the TV are close enough together, a simple HDMI cable would be good enough. But as soon as some distance is introduced between the two devices, the problems begin to appear. And we have two excellent solutions for this, reveals Stefaan Cornelis to us, And the first would be HDMI via coaxial cable and the other is HDMI via Ethernet. SATSON has numerous products for both methods. Our best seller is this HDMI extender, says Stefaan Cornelis as he shows us two small boxes, One is the transmitter and the other is the receiver. They can be used to span distances of up to 40 meters (about 130 feet) with either coaxial cable or with Ethernet. The great thing about this is the return-channel capability: The remote control commands are routed back to the receiver via an IR return channel. Quite often there are two TV monitors connected to one re-

ceiver, for example, there might be one TV in the living room and the other in the bedroom. You can see where this is going: youre sitting in the evening in your living room watching TV. When you go to the bedroom, you simply take the remote control with you and continue to watch there what you were watching in the living room using the same receiver. Or, to put it another way, instead of having two separate receivers one for each monitor, the HDMI extender lets you use just one receiver and its remote control. Its a very clever solution! Before we finish here, we want to know where you can find SATSON products. Distribution in Belgium and Switzerland has thus far been very successful and were in the process of expanding distribution to other European countries. For dealers who, just like SATSON, see the distribution of HDMI signals as the future of digital TV, SATSON has the ideal products that are perfectly suited for this future. SATSON even has one more advantage: We naturally repair all of our products ourselves, comments Didier Debey, who also happens to be in charge of repairs and technical service, and we also provide extensive technical support such as the technical planning of larger projects. SATSON also provides technical training courses as well. And this is how a small satellite company managed to convert themselves into a highly specialized distributor of HDMI distribution products of the future. Satellite professionals became HDMI professionals for the future of HDTV.

This is SATSONs absolute best seller: the HDMI extender kit with transmitter and receiver. It takes HDMI signals and distributes
them via Ethernet. The same set is also available for signal distribution via coaxial cable.

194 TELE-audiovision International The Worlds Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine 01-02/2013 www.TELE-audiovision.com