(Edited press release)
Mexico’s Caliente Group, a veteran player in the simulcast racing industry, has improved its simulcast system with major technical upgrades.
The new compressed video system features enhanced encrypted security and control design components and also expands the capacity of the system to capture and redistribute video signals from participating United States racetracks.
The system was deployed Aug. 16 in beta runs and has recently come online fully deployed.
Operating from its headquarters in Tijuana, Mexico, Caliente has been retransmitting signals from major U.S. Thoroughbred, harness, Quarter Horse, and greyhound tracks since 1987. These signals are rebroadcast to all of Mexico, Central and South America, and parts of Western Europe.
The new compressed video system moves video, audio, and data while freeing up considerable bandwidth. It features enhanced encryption signals to prevent piracy and grey market activity.
The new technology also provides better control tools, including the capability for third parties to remotely monitor where the downloaded signals are going, which decoders are receiving the signals, and their exact start time and end time.
Eric Cataño, information technology director at Caliente, remarked that the new system is a vast improvement. “Before this, the signals we carried consumed much of our bandwidth,” he said. “And, we had absolutely no security information available to us online. Not only is our system much more secure, but we are now saving 30% of our bandwidth which we can resell to third parties.”
Operating as GlobalSat, a certified satellite retransmission company owned by the Caliente Group, the new found bandwidth has already been sold to the Codere Panama racetrack and to Hippodromo Vela Americas in Mexico City. GlobalSat now supplies the Caliente branded signal to Caliente’s Race & Sports Books network, plus many other OTB’s throughout Latin America.
Simulcast director Santiago Gonzales de Cosio, Caliente’s U.S. representative, said a watermark logo will appear on every screen that Caliente rebroadcasts in the near future. “This gives us yet another valuable weapon against the piracy of signals,” he said.