24 Mar, 10
Livelinx brings expert commentary straight to the newsroom
|
Enrique Curran of Merrion Stockbrokers is interviewed by RTE over Livelinx - click to view clip.
|
Irish organisations have a new opportunity to deliver live expert commentary to media outlets following the launch of Livelinx, a broadcasting joint venture between AirSpeed Telecom and Digital Space.
The Livelinx service was launched in March, initially targeting Irish stockbroker firms NCB Stockbrokers, Davy and Merrion Stockbrokers. A broadcasting set-up -- including camera, audio feed and dedicated connectivity into the RTE newsroom -- was established inside each participating firm, allowing studio-based presenters to remotely interview the financial experts on the day's markets news.
The captured audio and video from the remote site is encoded as MPEG-4 and carried on a high-capacity licensed wireless link using the IP protocol. Each stockbroker location has its own dedicated connection into the AirSpeed Telecom network, where QoS is used to protect the broadcast quality of the stream. The content is transmitted to RTE and decoded at the broadcaster's site, where it is fed directly into the newsroom.
Livelinx content is currently being delivered to RTE but AirSpeed Telecom and Digital Space have received inquiries from UK broadcasters about the service.
Reducing costs for broadcasters
AirSpeed Telecom and Digital Space expect Livelinx to become a popular alternative for broadcasters looking to reduce satellite uplink fees and the cost of sending camera and sound teams to interviews.
"We're short-circuiting the traditional process and its costs for travel and uplink by putting a remote camera into business locations, fully automated with a pre-set shot and audio," said Liam O'Kelly, Managing Director, AirSpeed Telecom. "The remote camera acts exactly as if it's a studio camera -- the talent just clips on the mic to begin the interview."
Broadcast content has been carried on IP before, Liam said, but it's only now that all the tools, including less bandwidth-hungry encoding technologies, have allowed a service like Livelinx to be made available as an affordable monthly service. Originally a broadcast engineer by profession, Liam directed AirSpeed's development of the service and oversaw extensive trials of IP-carried feeds over licensed wireless, including streams from the Global Irish Economic Forum in October 2009.
"Broadcasters will not use a service like this unless there are cast iron protections against jitter and latency on the network," he said. "The Livelinx service has been engineered to keep the streams continuously protected, with uncontended point-to-point licensed wireless links as the carrier network. The broadcasters are very impressed with what this technology has proven it can do. The applications now are exciting -- Irish organisations really do have the chance to make their expertise available to broadcasters anywhere."
|
