Vessel type
Working ships: coverage first, entertainment second
On a cargo ship or a workboat the television is a welfare item and the cameras are an operational one. That flips the specification: the camera layer gets the design attention, the antenna is sized for the crew's cabins, and the distribution layer has to reach spaces that were never designed for coax.
Camera coverage on a working deck
A cargo deck is long, and its hazards are at the ends: the manifold, the crane pedestal, the mooring winches. A wiper PTZ mounted high with 20× optical zoom covers a working area and follows a crane; fixed wiper bullets cover the positions that never change; a fisheye over a machinery space or a small hold shows the whole space from one mounting point instead of four.
The practical decision is per position, not per ship: PTZ where activity moves, bullet where it does not, fisheye where the space is enclosed. All three are IP68 or IP66 with the same published marking, so the choice follows the mounting point rather than the hazard.
Television to cabins that were not built for it
Where the ship already has coax, a CATV headend gets satellite television to the cabins with no new cable and no new televisions — up to 58 channels in the documented multi-room configuration. On a newer vessel with a LAN in the accommodation, the IPTV route adds channels without touching the RF network, and brings menus, CCTV channels and catch-up into the same list.
The mistake on both routes is specifying the distribution before the source. The antenna, the ACU and the receiver decide what is available; the headend only carries it. A ship that buys an IPTV system to fix a weak signal has bought the wrong layer.
Connectivity between shore and ocean
A workboat working a fixed field within 100 km of a shore station is a microwave case: up to 100 km, 200–300 Mbps, no airtime, point-to-point or mesh. A coaster trading along a coast is a cellular case inside 35 nautical miles. A ship on ocean passages is a VSAT case, in whichever band the operator sells on that route.
Most working ships end up with two of the three. The design work is the handover policy — which link has priority, and what the crew sees when it changes.
Specify against these points
- Which camera positions move and which never do
- Whether the cabins have coax, LAN, or neither
- Distance to the shore station, not just "near shore"
- Who is expected to change settings — on board or ashore
A typical configuration for this vessel
An example, not a quotation — the model follows the route and the footprint. Send the route and the numbers come back with the model.
Buyer questions
Cargo & workboats
How many cameras does a cargo deck need?+−
Cover the hazard positions, not the deck length: manifold, mooring stations, crane pedestal and access points. Four to six fixed units plus one PTZ is a common shape, but the count follows the deck plan rather than a rule.
CATV or IPTV on a working ship?+−
CATV if there is coax and plain televisions; IPTV if there is a LAN and the crew should also see CCTV channels and on-demand content. The two are specified against the cable that already exists.
Is a microwave link worth it?+−
When the vessel works a fixed area in line of sight of a shore station and the throughput requirement is high. 200–300 Mbps without airtime is a different economics from satellite; outside that geometry it is not applicable.
Can the TV system and the CCTV share a headend?+−
On the IPTV route, yes — the documented source list includes CCTV alongside satellite TV, VOD and in-house programming. On CATV the sources are broadcast television only.