In Broadcast - November 2013 - 48

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 25 - NOVEMBER 2013

N E W S

InTECH

Uplink Technology On The Move
Alternative ENG uplink systems are increasingly taking the hybrid route that can take advantage of
multiple paths - Satellite, Ethernet, WiFi, 3G/4G, Cellular - to get the story back to base quickly...

By Kieron Seth
Contributing Editor

hat a year for OB and
broadcast satellite providers.
It started with Arqiva announcing
the sale of its Scanner OB ﬂeet and
its decision to withdraw from the
market. Then came the news that
SIS Live had failed to regain its BBC
license with BBC Sport. Now, in
September, the SIS collaboration
with Sk y Spor ts bore fruit
spectacularly. Its 4K tests saw four
carriers multiplexed into a single
transport stream and transmitted at
140MB of data per second to deliver
live football in UltraHD by satellite.
As with every aspect
of the HD broadcast
chain, 1080 OB
and delivery
mechanisms
are under
s e v e r e
analysis, while
next generation
transmission seems
t o b e re c e i v i n g
copious research and
development funding.
One reason for the
pressure on HD uplink
services is the rise of
alternative, low cost
technologies, such
as media delivery over
cellular/LTE.
Today, audience
expectations demand
that there is a camera
crew beaming live
footage from every

event, every pre-event brieﬁng and
every post event press conference.
Economic realities mean, however,
that constantly deploying a satellite
truck to send footage is not always
a viable option.
Ian Brash, Technical Manager with
Sky Sports News, observes: "On the
recent Lions rugby tour, we wanted
to give our viewers regular updates
from every location. As the trip lasted
35 days and spanned thousands
of miles across Australia, hiring
SNG trucks to cover the periods
in-between matches was out of
the question. We needed a costeffective and
reliable solution,
which is
where bonded
cellular systems
came in."
Sky Sports
News' recent testing
programme saw it trial
products from multiple
vendors, including LiveU,
Dejero and Teradek.
"Cost-wise, these
devices don't compare
with SNG van hire. And
for lots of applications,
they're very effective.
Taking the Teradek Bond
as an example, we were
able to use multiple
3G and 4G dongles
Teradek's Bond Pro
integrated camera-back
offers an HD H.264 bonded
cellular solution for Goldmount or V-mount

LiveU's Xtender boosts coverage of the Open Waters Marathon in Argentina

from various networks to allow
for ﬂuctuations in signal strength
and guarantee a live link. We were
astonished by the picture quality -
we were hard pressed to tell them
apart from SNG images."
Brash points out that bonded
solutions have their limitations,
such as the 3G blackspot the crew
encountered near to the Hull City
football club training ground. He
is equally cautious about going
live during matches as cellular
congestion can potentially degrade
network performance.
He notes: "There are some clever
workarounds being tested at the
moment to overcome network
overload and we're sure that the
roll-out of 4G will also make a big
difference. However, even now there
are ways of getting images back to
base even in difﬁcult conditions: like
most products Teradek's Bond has
an Ethernet connection meaning that
we can simply stream video over the
venue's Internet connection. Another

great application is to integrate the
bonding device into a store and
forward workﬂow, enabling the team
to transmit recorded data as soon as
there's network availability."
Equipped with a cellular system,
Sky crews can now travel from
location to location without being
dependent on an SNG van or a
portable satellite kit.
"With Bond," concludes Brash,
"we could use locally purchased
mobile dongles for low transmission
costs and high network availability.
Getting off a plane or the team bus
and instantly going live without
having to wait for a truck to arrive
is very liberating for the crew. And
for our audiences, it means more
live and near live coverage with no
compromise in video quality."
Teradek is not alone in delivering
alternatives for broadcasters.
The LiveU Smart Mobile app
was deployed to cover Mainz
CONTINUED ON PAGE 50

http://WWW.INBROADCAST.COM http://www.liveu.tv/LiveU_Xtender.html http://www.teradek.com/pages/bond http://www.globecomm.com

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