Internet streaming on the move is viable, says Reed Bunzel, based on a test drive he did with an engineer recently.
The president/CEO of American Media Services-Internet drove from San Jose to San Francisco and back recently with VP of Engineering Laramie Guest, using a rental car, a Dell laptop and a built-in wireless “Air Card.”
The Webcasting demo, the company says, shows that streaming is a viable “portable” medium. They did the test streaming one of the company’s formats via the laptop connected wireless to Verizon’s cellular phone system.
“The objective of the test was to monitor how much drop-out occurred along the 100-mile test route, how quickly the signal would re-buffer when that drop-out occurred, how easily the cellular system handed off the signal from one tower to the next, and whether the listening experience was one that the average driver would accept on his/her commute between these two major California markets,” they wrote.
“The near-flawless signal we experienced all along this 100-mile round-trip clearly demonstrates that we are witnessing a huge shift in technological capability and the true emergence of a new digital medium.”
Guest said in the announcement he was pleased by “the improvements the cellular networks have made to their infrastructure since I attempted a similar test two years ago. This experiment illustrates some of the exciting possibilities available to broadcasters.”
The company said it will do similar tests in other areas of the country.
