The concept of remote tuner in digital television software

Tuners are physical devices that allow television systems to lock to the desired frequency and receive the modulated television signal. The appearance of Internet television has enabled the development of remotely controlled virtual tuners. That concept has provided grounds for the realization of more flexible television distribution architectures. In the paper, the concept is analyzed and emerging technology (SAT>IP) that makes use of the concept is presented. The overhead introduced with the use of remote tuner is estimated for the case of two typical operations: channel zapping and frequency scanning. In the case of channel zapping, the overhead can be neglected.