Following a rapidly emerging trend among local news stations, LiveU is supplying Gannett Broadcasting’s 23 independent stations with its LU60 wireless backpack technology for the group’s local electronic newsgathering operations. The technology allows news crews to get closer to the action as it happens and saves on transmission costs when sending footage back to the station.
Jeff Johnson, Gannett’s vice president of technology, said that after testing LiveU’s backpack technology over the past few months at select stations, including three of Gannett’s largest markets, and using them for a variety of news and weather events, they’ve received great feedback from news teams on the quality, ease of use and flexibility of the LU60 system.
Gannett’s goal in using the LiveU technology is to make everyone “live on his or her shift,” Johnson added.
The LU60 system is housed in a bonded 3G/4G LTE backpack with proprietary RF technology for sending video at up to 1080 HD resolution (and sub-second latency) for a satellite-like experience. It includes multiple 4G LTE/3G, HSPA+, WiMAX and Wi-Fi cellular links, which are optimized for maximum video quality based on the available network conditions.
