ENG and SNG crews in the field may one day soon use emerging wireless technologies from the telecommunications and Internet worlds to establish video links, move edited stories and send B-roll files. But such links don’t only have to move material to the newsroom. They also can be used to feed material to crews in the field and provide confidence monitoring off-air.
At the WiMAX Forum Plenary July 12-13 in Vancouver, British Columbia, a technology demonstration put on by PanAmSat, KenCast and Trinity Workplace Learning provided a glimpse of what’s to come in the station-to-field scenario.
The companies demonstrated satellite-delivered live video to a handheld device. A live video stream from Trinity's facilities in Dallas was uplinked to PanAmSat's Galaxy 11, then encoded and transcoded by Kencast to handheld devices at the Vancouver trade show.
Among the goals for satellite-delivered WiMAX technology:
- Delivery of content to handheld devices, such as smartphones and laptop computers
- Delivery of IPTV in the United States
- Integration into satellite newsgathering services
At the WiMAX Forum Plenary, which was sponsored by Intel, the satellite-delivered WiMAX demonstration streamed video channels.
WiMAX is a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last-mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL. It provides fixed, nomadic, portable and eventually mobile wireless broadband connectivity without the need for direct line-of-sight with a base station.
WiMAX technology may begin showing up in laptops and smartphones next year.
