At the recent SMPTE Annual Tech Conference and Expo, Bitcentral CEO Fred Fourcher presented a paper on what stations must consider if they wish to submit HD news stories from the field via available broadband networks.
According to Fourcher, the rubber meets the road with end-to-end transfer times. Fourcher presented some ideas about how stations can keep those times down to an acceptable eight to 10 minutes per minute of submitted stories.
As Fourcher sees it, reliance on broadband for news contribution will continue to grow, perhaps doubling in the next five years. While there will always be a role for ENG microwave trucks, Fourcher says he believes broadband, WiFi hotspots, small professional camcorders and laptop computers are the enabling technologies that will allow stations to get their journalists out of the newsroom and into the field to dig up and report fresh content.
In this the second part of my conversation with Fourcher, the BitCentral CEO discusses what’s necessary to keep end-to-end HD transfer times in line with what’s acceptable as well as what’s doable and what isn’t.
Editor’s note:Part I of this podcast interview is available on the Broadcast Engineering Web site. Fourcher’s SMPTE presentation on HD news contribution via broadband also is available on the Web.
