BCA Show Preview - 80

80

SUNTEC SINGAPORE

A part of

SHOW PREVIEW | 26-28 June 2018

MARINA BAY SANDS * SUNTEC SINGAPORE

LiveU Enhances LU600
Product Suite
Ronen Artman, VP of Marketing, LiveU, discusses how the
adoption of HEVC will be a key highlight at the company's stand
throughout BroadcastAsia 2018...
BroadcastAsia: Can you give us a brief
overview of what we can expect in the next
six to 12 months within your sector?
Ronen Artman: There are two key things,
and these are reflected in overall industry
changes.
The first is the move to IP across the whole
broadcast industry. We are really only at the
tip of the iceberg.
IP is of course fundamental to cellular
bonding and cellular bonding itself has been
a game-changer around the world, allowing
coverage of events where it was previously
impossible, either technically or financially,
particularly, though far from exclusively,
in the news space. If you look at what a
broadcaster like Sky News has achieved
with our technology, particularly on General
Election night last year, with up to 150
streams from declaration stations around the
country at any one time, then you can see

LiveU LU600
with the HEVC Pro Card

LiveU Matrix platform
for live contribution
over IP

how transformative it is. Without the stability
of our technology and its ease-of-use in the
field, and a full IP set-up to feed into, this
simply wouldn't have been possible.
As mentioned, IP is of course gradually
being rolled out far more widely and is the
protocol of the future.
The second is our adoption of HEVC
encoding in our LU600 product. With 4K now
possible with our technology, we are seeing
ever greater use for live coverage beyond
news, particularly in the sports sector and we
expect that to grow significantly.
InB: Can you explain the
benefits in regard to the latest
product announcement?
RA: Picking up on the HEVC
theme above, at this year's
BroadcastAsia 2018, we'll
be showcasing the newly
enhanced LU600 4K HEVC
portable transmission product
suite. This includes 4K SDI
offerings in the form of LiveU's
professional HEVC 4K-SDI card.
This is an additional 4K product
offering within the LU600 suite,
offering the ultimate video
performance in live streaming
for live sports and events, as
well as global newsgathering.
The LU600 4K-SDI solution
facilitates professional 4Kp50/60
streaming for top-quality production,
supporting VR and 360 applications.

Secondly,
built-in
global
roaming
capabilities. The LU600 solution now offers
a fully integrated hybrid roaming option for
hassle-free local and global operation. With
the new dual-SIM modem configured with
roaming SIMs, every LU600 can be a local
and global unit without needing to replace
or obtain local SIMs in over 100 countries
worldwide. Combining three key elements
- dual-SIMs, global modems and roaming
software - the LiveU units are ready to roam
instantly. We believe that this is vital for both
news and sports operations.
Finally, LiveU will be showing LiveU
Matrix, its next generation platform for live
contribution over IP, enabling broadcasters
to view, manage and distribute live content
quickly and efficiently. Designed by
broadcasters for broadcasters, the dynamic
cloud platform makes it simple to curate
content through one interface.
InB: What challenges did you face when
designing the product?
RA: There are two main challenges; firstly,
using the most advanced technology in the
market, while ensuring stability, and secondly
developing a solution which meets the needs
of all our global customers with their different
requirements and different use cases.
InB: Which territories do you think will
show particular interest?
RA: In terms of HEVC, we think it's more
a question of how this truly opens up the
sports sector to cellular bonding, particularly

with the exceptional quality of our encoding.
This is on a global basis. Of course, HEVC
encoding offers not only ultimate quality
4K, but it also provides the option of
massively reducing bandwidth usage at lower
resolutions.
We are already seeing major take-up
in the sports market. Two key recent
examples: we provided 4K HEVC live video
coverage for the first time at a major event
at the Winter Games in PyeongChang,
South Korea. Broadcasters were able to use
our flagship LU600 portable transmission
solution with the 4K HEVC Pro card to create
premium quality content. We supported 72
broadcasters from over 40 countries with a
record number of bonded cellular units for
the winter games - 190 in total - and had a
dedicated team on the ground throughout the
duration of the games. During the games,
we recorded 2,037 hours of continuous live
broadcast with 6TB of data transmitted and
7,100 live sessions. The top countries using
our equipment were Korea, UK, Norway,
Germany and Japan.
The second was coverage of the world's
most televised mountain bike race, The Absa
Cape Epic in South Africa's Western Cape.
Our LU600 HEVC portable transmission
solution was chosen by the organisers due
to its superior video quality and reliability.
The LU600 HEVC units were used on e-bikes
(electric bikes) connected to GoPro cameras
along the route, motorbikes and in helicopters
together with LiveU's Xtender remote
transmission device. Dynamic coverage of
the eight-day mountain bike stage race was
successfully achieved
InB: Can you advise on your ideal market
for these products?
RA: As mentioned, the key growth market
we are seeing with HEVC is the sports
market, though of course it's also being used
across news and entertainment as well. The
other is the ongoing growth in use of our
direct-to-online wireless encoder Solo. We're
now offering a suite of cloud-based graphics
capabilities for Solo too, which we expect to
be very popular.
InB: Any future product innovations ahead
that you can discuss?
RA: We have been testing a wide range of
VR streaming cameras with our units, serving
the growing needs of broadcasters. Our 4K
HEVC unit is an enabler of VR streaming for
broadcasters who wish to take advantage
of this capability for their live coverage.
We're also looking at AI capabilities and 8K
streaming. www.liveu.tv
https://www.liveu.tv/solutions https://www.liveu.tv/lu600 http://www.liveu.tv
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