Host: Maria Kholodova. Experts: Philip Grossman and Mary Ann Seidler
LiveU: the massive growth in usage at Qatar
Over 1,000 LiveU field units were used by broadcasters and sports organizations from 60 countries in Qatar. The World Cup saw a 160% increase in live sessions, going up to 78,000, with 40% of them over 5G.
Maria Kholodova: Over 1000 LiveU field units were used by broadcasters and sports organizations from 60 countries in Qatar. The World Cup saw a 160% increase in live sessions going up to 78,000 with 40% of them over 5G. Philip, how did LiveU units play a critical role in the tournament coverage?
Philip Grossman: I was thinking about this last week when I had a talk with some friends about mobile units. One of the things that this is enabling is the democratization of anything— sports specifically. In the past, you’d require one big company to do everything and if you were lucky, you could buy into that stream. But now, because of the ability of anybody to basically become a high-quality broadcaster with these systems, it really is enabling a broader analysis overview coverage of events. Likewise in the game, instead of just covering the game itself and maybe one or two stars, it’s now a broader coverage involving talks with the coaches and basically anything you want because the units are so small. What I think is interesting is the sheer number that is doing 5G. And 5G technology, as much as it is about bandwidth, it’s really about latency, and latency has always been an issue with any type of coverage satellite. In 5G, the latencies are sub-framed latencies which allows storytelling to increase and become broader. I’m excited to see where this technology goes, especially as we start to look at the next generation of cell services that will be coming down the pipe in the next two to three years and the further exploitation of these types of devices.
Maria Kholodova: Mary, how did you feel about the World Cup coverage from the audio perspective?
Mary Seidler: I think it is interesting that LiveU is emphasizing better battery life and also, talking a lot about applications that are outside broadcasting. And Philip is absolutely right, these units are becoming smaller and more compact, everything’s together, and their latest unit is streaming directly and having different paths. It just makes things so much easier. Though you’ll see that some of the larger traditional broadcasts are not as spectacular, you’ll also see that the smaller broadcasts look every bit as professional and most importantly sound every bit as professional.
Clear-Com: the new intercom systems at ISE 2023
Visitors of ISE 2023 are invited to explore the Clear-Com’s portfolio of intercom systems, including the award-winning Arcadia Central Station with HelixNet Digital Network Partyline integration, the new V-Series IrisX IP Panel, and a range of virtual intercom clients including the Agent-IC mobile app and Station-IC desktop client.
Maria Kholodova: Moving on to Clear-Com, the visitors of ISE 2023 are invited to explore Clear-Com’s portfolio of intercom systems including the award-winning Arcadia Central Station with HelixNet Digital Network Partyline integration, the new V-Series IrisX IP Panel, and a range of virtual intercom clients including the Agent-IC mobile app and Station-IC desktop client. Mary, I know you feel strongly about intercom systems, can you tell me a little about that?
Mary Seidler: When you think of it, up until some ten years ago, there wasn’t much innovation with intercoms. These systems just work. And they are the backbone of any large video broadcast and radio production. I am thrilled that all of a sudden we are seeing a tremendous amount of innovation with the intercom. Clear-Com has implemented AES67 and Dante and has used a lot of voice-over IP technology to make new virtual products. Philip, are you seeing a lot of discussion around the newer innovations in the intercom?
Philip Grossman: Yeah. One of the big issues with intercoms in the past has been expandability and when everybody was centrally located in a production facility or a truck, it wasn’t as big of an issue. Now, with IP in general and the fact that you have productions happening across the world, and teams spread out to be able to do much more of this “virtualized production” for lack of a better term, intercom becomes very important and seeing the adoption of voice-over IP technology and in general, the advancement over the last three to five years is interesting. With the adoption of voice-over IP technology and AES67, I think we are going to see a larger integration. Intercom has always been somewhat separate from audio within the production world and I think we are going to see more integration of those two components because the technologies are aligning. In the past when I did a lot of Telecom IP telephoning, the expandability was unbelievable and we are seeing that now. I think it’s going to lend itself to larger virtualized productions making those things capable of things we haven’t seen in the last 15 years or so because of the limitations of SDI and the related technologies that this is now going to extend into, from a production standpoint.
Maria Kholodova: That’s all the time we have today. Many thanks to our experts Philip and Mary. Don’t forget to comment on the news we have discussed.
See you next week at the same time.
Hosts Philip Grossman, Mary Ann Seidler, Maria Kholodova.
The live broadcast took place on 16th of January, 2023. Production — TKT1957 LLC, Georgia.
