Where you don't expect a Windows

When we are in our living room, lying down or sitting on the sofa watching, alone or with others, our favorite TV shows or series, you wouldn't imagine the trip around the world that is performing the signal you are seeing.

The technology and budgets involved in distributing the hundreds of free-to-air or encrypted television channels throughout the world are impressive both in terms of quantity and scientific level.

And, for the most part, are orchestrated and directed by Windows systems.

The control center that receives and distributes the signal

Radiation map of a television satellite over Europe

It all starts with the recording, whether live or deferred, of the clapperboard of content that makes up a television channel. Which is sent to a control and distribution center that launches through a forest of large antennas, the signal to the satellites that are located in geocentric orbit around from the earth.

The satellite, which receives this stream of channels, forwards it (like an umbrella) to the entire terrestrial surface under its feet, distributing the signal in a way that, not even in its most advanced imaginations , could our ancestors of barely a century ago.

And one of the receivers of said broadcast television signals is the control center itself, being able to know in the event of an incident, if the problem comes from the source, from the satellite or from the distribution center.

The safe and tested, legacy systems that have to work

These control centers are made up of large racks full of all kinds of devices, antenna trees, amplifiers and a lot of technology to sustain the high levels of quality, stability and availability that customers require.

But the most striking are the large rooms where the signals emitted and received are constantly monitored, where dozens of monitors offer the retransmitted images.

And here, on the long tables, there is a plethora of computer equipment, laptops, desktops, embedded desktops, portables, etc., all with some version of Windows , as the operating system on which hardware management and control applications work.

The most curious thing is to find that most of the systems, in the control room that I describe and that I was able to visit firsthand, use Windows XP. But I can also see several Windows 98, and they told me that some Windows 3.11 was still running somewhere .

This is basically because the programs that support these old operating systems have not been migrated to more modern versions for different reasons. And that they have, as the only short-term solution, the virtualization of the platforms.

I hope that you were as curious as I was.