NewsMover: A Broadcasting Game Changer?
Posted on 05/03/09 by Steve Fiore | Filed under Weblog
NewsMover
Recently, at the NAB conference in Las Vegas, I had the wonderful opportunity to walk the halls and see first hand the latest and greatest technologies the broadcasting industry has to offer. Although the show in general seemed a bit on the slow side reinforced by my trusty and very scientific analysis of cab lines (i.e. no cab lines equal slow show) there were some bright spots – one of which was a joint demonstration by Mushroom Networks and HD Wireless called “NewsMover.”
You may be thinking – “of course you think it’s cool, you represent Mushroom Networks – they pay you”. Maybe I do harbor some sort of biasness – but after a description of what I saw you may also think this partnership has all the makings of an industry game changer.
NewsMover takes an entire satellite news truck (you know those trucks you see at sporting or news events with the huge dishes on top) and compacts down to a turnkey unit the size of a carry-on bag. The small form factor however was not the breakthrough – it is the way the companies figured out how transmit the audio and video streams using simple cellular broadband data cards (the same cards used for laptops) bonded together into a single high-speed connection. Instead of paying $1,000 per day for notoriously expensive satellite uplinks, newsrooms will pay a mere fraction of that cost for near real-time video and audio transmission over cellular frequencies. Just imagine arming multiple news teams with these units over a given geographical area like a city with the ability of being able to cover the news almost as it happens.
