Television is relying on live broadcasts more than ever before but the good old TV set is not the only target, with PCs, phones and tablets now all practical outlets. Kevin Hilton looks at what this means for audio
many means
grounds in the division fully cabled up. A major consideration in this is 5.1 audio, which was pioneered by Sky Sports when it began high- definition broadcasts of games back in 2006. Initially feeds were in the compressed Dolby E format but in the past few years Sky, like other broadcasters, has moved to discrete surround sound for much of the chain. While high bandwidth fibre connections are able to accommodate this there is still not full implementation of the technology in most countries. Satellite is still placed to step in and provide connectivity in locations and situations where there is no permanently installed infrastructure. But, as Mark Shadbolt, sales director of satellite uplink and outside broadcast operator SIS LIVE, observes, this has brought its
SIS LIVE’s uLink on location in Libya
The streaming area used for the Channel 4 wildlife showFoxes Live: Wild in the City
TODAY’S MEDIA is shot through with jargon – uplink, satellite phone, voice-over-IP, 3D, HD, webcasting, surround sound, 7.1, 5.1 – but none of these has the power and impact of one of the most used terms in the business, ‘live’. Because it’s been used for so long and so widely, we don’t necessarily think of live in the same way as other tech-speak but there it is on the news – “We go to our reporter live at the scene...” – and on all kinds of entertainment TV, from reality shows – the ‘live eviction’ on Big Brother – to concerts: ‘live from the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury...’. ‘Live’ has always been part of
the broadcast vocabulary but now it is in constant use. While its
general meaning is still the same the technological reality behind the word has changed considerably in recent years and continues to develop. A significant period in the past development of live broadcasting was the 1990s, now regarded as the “era of the dish” because satellite technology was more affordable and portable. It was used for breaking news and the big music concerts that started to become the norm from the 1980s onwards: the World Cup, Three Tenors, Live Aid, U2’s ever more bombastic touring circuses. This technology gave considerable bandwidth for both pictures and sound, which was a major consideration as surround sound for the burgeoning home cinema audience became a
A STEP ABOVE A new viable option is the recently introduced breed of Ka (K above) band satellites, which operate in the high 26.5-40GHz frequencies above the core K band microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Shadbolt remarks that Ka band has given satellite a “new lease of life”. The problem is, however, keeping up with ever growing demands from broadcasters as they squeeze more audio and video into finite spaces. As David Furstenberg, chairman of the board of satellite modulator, demodulator and modem manufacturer NovelSat, observes, new technology formats are beginning to stretch carriers of all descriptions: “Video consumption increases with the different standards. HD 720 requires five times more capacity than SD and 1080 needs 10 times. When it comes to 3D that’s two channels of Full HD, so it’s 20 times, and the jury is still out on how much Super High Definition will need. So the requirement for television bandwidth is not going to subside, it is going to grow and grow.” Furstenberg comments that
priority. But satellite uplinks are not cheap. Fibre seemed to be the logical alternative, if not a complete replacement, particularly as space segments for new satellites are in short supply and the birds that are already up there are nearing full capacity. Fibre is now used widely for
TV coverage of English Premier League football, with all the
own problems: “As modem technology has improved so the broadcasters’ appetite for bandwidth has increased. What broadcasters were happy with five to 10 years ago is now not good enough, especially with the coming of HD. These connections are very bandwidth hungry, even with the latest algorithms.”
new processes can have a “quite significant” impact on both sound and video, delivering better utilisation. “These transmissions, including sound, are enabling service providers to keep a better margin,” he says. “But it is taking some time for them to implement and have better efficiency.” Miranda Technologies
produces a range of switching, monitoring and play-out systems used in live TV. Product manager Scott Rose observes that audio shouldn’t be the “poor cousin” of video in all this, as it has been in the past, but should be completely