Functievergelijking
Castmux en Cesbo Astra naast elkaar.
Astra is de gevestigde naam in deze categorie en een goed product. Dit is de eerlijke versie van de tabel: waar zij voorlopen, staat dat er gewoon. Alles wat als Roadmap is aangemerkt, staat op onze gepubliceerde roadmap.
Kort samengevat
De beslissing hangt meestal af van vier of vijf regels.
Hebt u haast, dan is dit de hele pagina.
Kies Astra als
- U DVB-CI-descrambling of een CAM nodig hebt
- U volledige conditional access met Simulcrypt nodig hebt
- U DVB-T-modulatie nodig hebt
Kies Castmux als
- U het op arm64 wilt draaien, offline, in een ventilatorloze box
- U on-demand multicast wilt, zodat een klein apparaat meer zenders aankan
- U wilt dat het netwerk voor u wordt doorgemeten
- U de licentie gratis wilt bij een zenderpakket
Functie voor functie
Alle regels, ook die wij verliezen.
Zeven onderdelen: bronnen, levering, verwerking van de transportstream, betrouwbaarheid, beheer, contentdiensten, en platform en commerciële voorwaarden.
| Functie | Castmux | Cesbo Astra | Toelichting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sources | |||
| HLS | Yes | Yes | We select a ladder rung by resolution; Astra selects by bandwidth only. |
| SRT caller | Yes | Yes | We derive latency from measured round-trip time automatically. |
| SRT listener / rendezvous | Manual | Yes | Possible via engine parameters; first-class UI option is on the roadmap. |
| RTMP | Yes | No | Astra has no RTMP input at all. |
| UDP/RTP multicast input | UDP; RTP on roadmap | Yes | Plain MPEG-TS over UDP multicast ships, which covers sitting behind another headend. RTP framing is not read yet. |
| HTTP MPEG-TS input | Yes | Yes | |
| RTSP cameras | Roadmap | Yes | Garden and entrance cameras are a real request in care homes. |
| DVB-S/C/T tuner input | Roadmap | Yes | Castmux takes every source over IP today. Astra reads tuners directly, with DiSEqC, Unicable, T2-MI, SAT>IP and adapter scan. |
| Delivery | |||
| UDP/RTP multicast output | Yes | Yes | TTL, egress binding, full 1316-byte datagrams. |
| Constant bitrate / null padding | Mux only | Yes | Applied on the DVB-C multiplex today; per-channel CBR on UDP is roadmap. |
| DVB-C RF output | Yes | Yes | Both drive TBS modulators. We add drag-and-drop assignment and hot-swap. |
| DVB-T modulator output | No | Yes | Astra supports HiDes IT950x. Not planned unless customers ask. |
| HLS/HTTP output with auth | Roadmap | Yes | For guest phones and tablets. Preview only today. |
| SAP/SDP announcements | Roadmap | Yes | Set-top box auto-discovery. |
| Transport stream processing | |||
| Pass-through of original PIDs | Yes | Yes | |
| All audio tracks with language tags | Yes | Yes | On the pass-through engine. The remux engine carries one track. |
| Audio track ordering / language forcing | Roadmap | Yes | So the television's default track is the right language. |
| PID filtering and remapping | Mux only | Yes | Automatic inside the multiplex; not yet exposed per channel. |
| PAT/PMT/SDT generation | Yes | Yes | |
| NIT with cross-mux linking (fast scan) | Roadmap | Yes | We generate NIT today; automatic cross-linking is next. |
| Logical Channel Numbers (LCN) | Roadmap | Yes | The most requested DVB-C feature. Top of the list. |
| TDT/TOT clock | Roadmap | Yes | Sets the clock on every guest set. Cheap, disproportionately noticed. |
| Stable pinned service identity | Roadmap | Manual | Guarding it against accidental change is ours; Astra leaves it to you. |
| Reliability | |||
| Automatic restart with backoff | Yes | Yes | |
| Ordered backup sources with failover | Roadmap | Yes | Astra's is mature: active and passive modes, separate return delays. |
| Technical-difficulties slate fallback | Roadmap | Manual | Astra makes you hand-build a looping file. We intend to ship it working. |
| Dead multicast route detection | Yes | No | Sending to an unroutable group succeeds silently. We check from outside. |
| Duplicate sender detection | Yes | No | Two senders on one group present as pixelation and waste days of diagnosis. |
| Server-level high availability | Roadmap | Yes | Astra has a master/slave standby mode. |
| Operations | |||
| On-demand streaming (IGMP) | Yes | Partial | We watch real memberships with packet capture and actively query, because these segments have no querier. |
| Per-channel bitrate measured on the wire | Yes | Yes | Engine-agnostic, so it is true for both engines. |
| Live viewer count and client list | Yes | HTTP only | Astra counts HTTP sessions; multicast viewers are invisible to it. |
| Built-in transport stream analyser | Roadmap | Yes | CC errors, PES errors, scrambled counts, per PID. A support-cost killer. |
| Email / webhook alerting | Roadmap | No | Astra has no alerting engine at all — it expects you to run Zabbix. |
| Metrics export (Prometheus/Grafana) | OTLP | Yes | We ship OpenTelemetry; a Prometheus endpoint and dashboard are on the roadmap. |
| Config backup, restore and clone | File | Yes | Readable file with automatic pre-change backup; one-click export/import is next. |
| HTTP API | Yes | Yes | |
| Multi-site fleet management | Roadmap | Partial | |
| User roles | Single user | 3 roles | Neither is good enough. Reception-versus-engineer scoping is on our roadmap. |
| Content services | |||
| EPG from XMLTV into the multiplex | Roadmap | Separate tool | Astra ships this as a second binary with its own config file. We intend to build it into the same UI as the channel. |
| In-house information channel | Roadmap | No | Activities, menus, notices, services, camera. Nobody in this market ships it in the headend. |
| Radio channels as first-class services | Works | Yes | |
| Descrambling (DVB-CI/CAM) | No | Yes | Astra's external-CI design is genuinely strong. Not on our roadmap. |
| Scrambling (BISS) | Roadmap | Yes | |
| Scrambling (DVB Simulcrypt / full CAS) | No | Yes | If you need Conax and an ECMG, buy Astra. We will tell you that. |
| Transcoding | No | No | Neither product transcodes. Both pass video through untouched. |
| Platform and commercial | |||
| arm64 / low-power appliance | Yes | x86 only | Astra requires 64-bit x86. Structural difference, not a feature gap. |
| Runs with no internet access | Yes | No | Astra validates its licence against remote servers periodically. |
| Container deployment | Yes | Binary | |
| Price | €29/mo or €290/yr | €22/mo or €220/yr | |
| Free with a channel package | Yes | No | Take channels from tvheadend.io and the licence costs nothing. |
Deze tabel is samengesteld uit de openbare documentatie en prijspagina's van Cesbo Astra. Klopt er iets niet meer of vindt u iets oneerlijk, laat het ons dan weten via [email protected] en wij passen het aan. Een vergelijkingstabel die ons vleit, heeft voor u geen enkele waarde.
Zie het werken met uw eigen signalen.
Twintig minuten via schermdeling. Neem één stream-URL mee en wij zetten die live op een multicastgroep terwijl u kijkt. Past het niet, dan zeggen we dat tijdens het gesprek.
Of mail naar [email protected]