Wave of the Future (or present!)

Last night, I brought you Katherine Lane's report from Brownwood at 6PM via an IPhone. Those of us in the business are well aware that this is the direction our business is heading in. As a viewer, you are probably aware of it too, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention just in case you aren't. Why are we heading this way? Because it's cheap and easy. To get video back from a remote location (what we call "feeding") requires a signal between the station and the remote location. Locally, we do this with our live trucks, which operate using microwave signals. The trouble with this is range is limited. We can feed you video or a live report using one of our 3 microwave trucks (which have been referred to as ENG-9, ENG-32, and the Chase Lab in previous blog posts by Andrew) from about 20-30 miles away from the station. It all depends on where the hills, trees and buildings are. All of those things will block a signal. When you are in an area where no signal is possible, in the past, the only way to get a signal would be to use a satellite truck. We do not have one readily available in Abilene. If a big story breaks, we have access to one at our Lubbock sister station. Satellite time is VERY expensive. It costs $5 to $10 a minute depending on whose satellite you buy the time on. The average story requires at least 10 minutes...5 to feed video and 5 for a live shot. That's $100! It adds up fast. The advantage to satellite is you can get a signal from anywhere in the country, provided you have a view of the southern sky, which is where all the satellites are. And, any station in the country can pick up your signal if they need your video. In the age of new technologies, we have found ways to feed cheaper. The first way is via FTP over the Internet. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Basically, we create a video file using a laptop and send it over the Internet. The drawback to this is it takes time. The file has to upload on the remote end, then download on the station end and be imported into our video system. The speed varies. The whole process generally takes at least 30-45 minutes. You need an Internet connection on both ends of at least 12-15Mbps to make it efficient. The average cable connection? 6-8Mbps. DSL is even slower. At about 20Mbs it becomes as efficient as feeding over microwave or satellite (which happens in real time). Connections that fast are far and few between. Oh...by the way...you have to be in a remote location with Internet access to make this happen...an air card, even at 3G speed, is WAY too slow. The quality of video sent via FTP on the air is generally the same as what I shoot in the field. Sometimes it degrades a bit depending on the type of compression used. Using FTP is free. So, while all this technology is being perfected, along comes the I-Phone and other "smart" phones. It works on the same principle...We shot the video using the phone's camera and sent it over the Internet using the phone's 3G network. This is MUCH faster, except the quality is not near as good. (the phone shoots low resolution video). The point of all this? You will be seeing a lot of lower quality video, not just on our station, but on stations across the country. News is becoming more and more URGENT and about what's happening RIGHT NOW. It is also more competitive. Technology gives us the tools to bring you the news faster and as it's happening. The technology will improve. Someday, you will not know the difference between cell phone video and that shot by a $3,000 camera. Until then, enjoy live news from places we couldn't have even dreamed of 10 years ago. If it hadn't been for the IPhone, you would not have seen any video from Brownwood until 10PM. And by the way, you can help us cover the news using this technology. See the "SHARE IT" section on bigcountryhompage.com to send us your pictures.