Bonded Cellular = Live TV Anywhere, Anytime With No News Van?
Bonded Cellular = Live TV Anywhere, Anytime With No News Van?
This is just amazing. It may be old hat to a lot of you, but I’m just learning about this and thought I’d pass this along. This video is a demonstration of how the top of the line, LiveU LU 70 backpack mobile unit works.
To explain just what Bonded Cellular is, here is how LiveU describes it at their website. http://www.liveu.tv/
“The LiveU solution bonds up to 14 cellular (3G/4G – LTE/WiMAX) modems over multiple carriers, as well as multiple LAN and even BGAN satellite connections. This creates a reliable, broadband video uplink pipe over multiple narrow-band pipes. Using any camera, the fully-integrated self-powered compact unit provides video resolution ranging from CIF through D1 (SD) and up to 1080i HD. The bonded 3G/4G solution aggregates all data connections simultaneously to achieve high bandwidth and smooth transmission, even as bandwidth and signal levels change across the different connections.”
We learn something new everyday don’t we? Thanks to CNN’s Andy Rose for bringing this to my attention. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfPn8rgeaKQ
LiveU is the live unit that allows you to Go Live Anywhere, Anytime. www.LiveU.com. LiveU is the Live Unit we all have dreamed of, and Ari Epstein of LiveU I…
Mess. Sound drops at the same time…..might be good in small markets or for spot news…..lousy for news conferences or rallies of any kind
The thing is a piece of crap in a metropolitan area. …Any cell phones near will turn the pictures into a horrible pixilated
We use them a lot here in Norway.
Even the PEG channel I volunteer at is getting on the LiveU bandwagon. I want to say that they’ll be running “installed” systems at government meeting venues….I’ll have to ask them. That said, I don’t think they’ve got it all running yet.
We have two at WREX in Rockford. We were live at *both* governor candidates’ rallies from Chicago on election night. That would have been impossible without two sat trucks last election, and the company only has three — and we were using one to go live to Scott Walker’s rally in Milwaukee!
When we first got them, we were going on a 7-second buffer, so there couldn’t be any studio-reporter crosstalk, but we got it under 2s for the election which is good enough for talkbacks. That said, it does need a strong, steady signal. Hell, I’ll take a weak steady signal over one that peaks and troughs constantly. We did live shots from high schools during football season, and the ones in the boonies had the weakest signal and the worst resolution, but it’s much easier to watch than a signal that’s constantly fluctuating in resolution like we have in some spotty coverage areas in the suburbs.
Shown in the photos below is not a ‘LiveU’ system. Instead, this is a high-quality transmission system that feeds excellent picture and sound from a SteadiCam camera directly to multiple receivers located in various locations, allowing wireless operation of a video camera at the same high quality as if it was a wired camera. Since it offers low latency, this is the type of system commonly used at sports events:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisdegan/15815188322/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisdegan/15193682584/
TV Network vans are much safer because they got satellite antennas which send signals with lower frequencies, but consume more power..
Walk around 5 years with this backpack and you’ll get brain cancer guaranteed.. 4G generates 2.6 GHz frequency..
I’m old enough to remember how spotty and unreliable ENG was in the early days of transition between film and live. Give it time and as someone else here said, “it is the future of the TV industry.”
Except when 80,000 football fans are texting, tweeting, Instagramming, Facebooking. That’s what they don’t talk about.
A bean counters dream. Sell the satellite and live trucks. Get rid of engineers. TV in a backpack what could possibly go wrong?
Maybe when there is 6G or 8G it may work. I hope not. It’s sad that mother TV has let her quality go right down the s*ithole.
We currently employ two TVU units at my station. One backpack model and a camera mounted “brick” unit. When they work as designed, they can be a useful tool in the Newsroom’s arsenal. Recently we covered a building collapse in a location that would have all but prohibited live truck access. We had a crew with a backpack on the scene in less than 10 minutes and went live 5 minutes after that when you would otherwise be circling the block endlessly looking for a parking spot. Other times, we’ve used them to cover press conferences and you may as well have been watching a slide show. Couple that with the minimum 5 second delay on lowest quality and you have something that while useful, is not an item you want to bet the house on.
I had to work with several of these units that my last station has. The 2 problems I had as a director was the unreliability of the signal (especially in situations of high cellular use) and the delay. Cueing the live reporter in the middle of the anchor lead-in was quite stressful. The best uses we found was in breaking news situations as a “b-roll” camera used in conjunction with the live shot camera and to cover news conference solely for our website.
Sheese… imagine management buying this and blaming you for it not working… This is still early technology and I am sure the bugs will get worked out eventually… trying to get a 4:2:2 signal @ 50 Mbs out is some feat! The urban legend of course… “A NABET Engineer” can get a signal out from any where with just a nine volt battery and a piece of tin foil!” … I heard it on NBC Nightly News… it has to be true!!!
They’re a lot better for spot news and “we’re here long after the event” remotes than sporting events, per the cell-overload issues mentioned earlier in the thread. Various designs fail variously when they run out of bandwidth Dejeros tend to fade away, HD to SD to voice-over-freeze-frame. But this stuff is the future of remotes.
Wait ’til you see a Teradek: it’s a camera-back bonded cellular unit. Comrex had something similar but early ones had teething issues.
We’ve got 2 at wlne. The 150k live trucks spend more time in the station parking lot these days!
You can’t do 2 way conversations live due to the 5 to 10 sec delay.
We now have two here at KAAL, but seeing them on air the video is impressive but the audio leaves a bit to be desired. It sounds very compressed.
Very unreliable. Not quite soup yet.
We have one at work. Rarely use it. Its availability is unreliable. At the very moment you need it, is the moment everybody and their brother is sending their own video and the cell network is overloaded. If you remember the first court appearance of the Denver movie shooter (bonded cellular was the only thing allowed inside the courtroom), that was bonded cellular. At the moment the suspect was brought into the courtroom, the picture broke up and went away. That is when everyone got on the cell network. That is typical with bonded cellular. To get a decent picture, you need at least three cell connections but five is what you need for HD quality. It is great on paper, but unless you are in a market where the cell network is overbuilt (NYC, LA works pretty good there), the only time you can reliably count on it is 3am in the morning with no one on the cell network.
Maxheadroom is here!
This works ONLY when the cellular connection is good. Watch it fall apart when your at a live sporting event when the cellular networks are jammed with people. The picture quality can go from great to microblock hell in seconds over a congested network. You have to keep that in mind and plan appropriately. I know of many stations who use this, and have returned to using a live truck due to network unreliability even on a bonded connection.
These are a great piece of kit, and with the Linux software it can be fired up and streaming in under a minute of arriving at the scene!
That is seriously impressive 🙂