Hearst Television, one of the largest station groups in the U.S., has adopted the Streambox Live broadband video contribution service for all of its 29 television stations. With Streambox Live, local news teams have a cost-effective alternative for field newsgathering that enables them to stream live or file-based video over low-bandwidth IP networks.
With Streambox Live, Hearst’s ENG crews can be more nimble and responsive in covering breaking news, wherever the location, according to Martin Faubell, vice president of engineering at Hearst Television. Streambox solutions are based on the ACT-L3 codec, facilitating the transmission of high-quality SD and HD video over low data-rate IP connections.
The station group has purchased a corporate license for Streambox Live as part of its “next-generation newsroom project,” a strategy designed to enhance its newscasts with more live reporting from the field. Rather than hold news for regularly scheduled newscasts, Hearst news teams augment station coverage by producing live streaming video for station websites as well as edited packages for broadcast. With the Streambox Live encoding software, field news teams can easily capture, encode and stream video from areas where it might be costly or impractical to deploy an SNG vehicle. Once the video is uploaded to the cloud-based Streambox Live server, local news producers can browse, download and decode selected video for broadcast.
The Streambox Live service supplements the Streambox platform with free encoding software and server-based services for scalable newsgathering and contribution.
