A recent sports remote is the focus for codec maker Tieline Technology.
Calling it a “world sports first,” the manufacturer said it helped broadcast live audio over WiMax IP of a match between Premier League soccer team Manchester City and the Kaiser Chiefs in Durban, South Africa.
“The broadcast was initiated by Siemens and the South African Broadcasting Corp. and conducted with Broadcast and Installation Engineering and Multisource Telecoms, who are trialing the technology in the lead up to the FIFA World Cup in South Africa next year,” Tieline stated.
According to the project summary, engineers connected a Tieline Commander G3 IP codec to an Airspan MicroMAXd ProST WiMax (wireless Ethernet) standalone base station and broadcast between ABSA Stadium in Durban and the SABC Broadcast Center. The Tieline gear facilitated sending 20 kHz stereo audio to the Broadcast Center via the WiMax link at 256 kbps and received a return feed of the same quality that hosts used as foldback/IFB.
The company quoted Russel Jones of Broadcast and Installation Engineering saying the connection sounded much clearer than SABC’s regular ISDN connections and that audio latency was “barely noticeable.”
Tieline’s Darren Levy said in the statement, “The potential for using WiMax technology in broadcast applications is only just being recognized,” not only for remotes but also permanent STLs and network audio distributions.
WiMax provides broadband IP wireless transmission. As Tieline put it, “These links act as an outdoor 802.11b/g wireless Ethernet bridge, effectively creating a reliable, high-speed, long-range (2 km–100 km) private LAN connection between two points or multiple points.”
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WiMax About to Expand to Las Vegas (July 13)
