BARCELONA, SPAIN – July 23, 2019 – TVU Networks, the global technology and innovation leader in live IP solutions, will showcase 4K, HDR, 5G and AI advances for live video acquisition, cloud and remote production at its stand at the IBC (International Broadcasting Convention) this fall. TVU Networks will exhibit in Hall 2, Stand B28 during the show.

“We are excited to introduce at IBC our latest solutions and product updates designed to help our customers cover live events faster, easier and more reliably regardless of location,” said David Jorba, Executive Vice President, Managing Director Europe, TVU Networks. “As an industry leader, we are constantly talking with our customers and developing technology for the next breakthrough in a live IP video workflow, such as the latest advances in the application of AI. Our media supply chain from acquisition through distribution guarantees our customers have the highest resolution at the fastest speeds with easily implemented search and viewer engagement tools.”

Live Transmission

Featuring a newly developed H.265 hardware encoding chip, TVU One 4K delivers full broadcast quality 4K, 10-bit true 60 fps HDR video at as low as 3mbps with proven patented Inverse StatMux Plus technology, IS+. TVU One 4K is able to transmit 4K P60 HDR video reliably over mobile infrastructure at merely 0.5 second latency. Designed for broadcasters requiring mobility, TVU One 4K delivers speed, reliability and picture quality in a compact unit using technology that’s been proven in the most demanding cellular environments. As an example, TVU One 4K will be critically important for upcoming high-profile sporting events like next year’s European football championships, the Summer and Winter Games as well as this year’s Rugby World Cup.

TVU will also display its newest IP based rack-mount point-to-point contribution encoder, the TVU G-Link 4K. Combining one of the most advanced HEVC contribution encoders with the proven technology of IS+, TVU G-Link is able to transmit a 4K P60 4:2:2 HDR video signal over a normal Internet connection at as high as 50mbps. TVU G-Link is designed to meet the most demanding requirements for the highest picture quality available.

TVU MediaMind is central to a story-centric workflow and ensuring an efficient and integrated media supply chain. MediaMind helps to make video content visible throughout the supply chain process, allowing all media to become enabled.

CNN Newsource has successfully used TVU Grid to distribute live HD feeds to affiliate stations globally. CNN Newsource is also taking advantage of a part of the MediaMind workflow with the use of metadata descriptions tagged to each of the feeds. As a result, Newsource affiliates will be able to use TVU’s AI based speech and facial recognition to quickly search and find practically any live or archived media content.

The increasing need for more variety and volume of content requires new cost-effective ways to produce from the field. TVU Remote Production System (RPS) enables synchronized multi-camera remote production using a broadcaster’s existing studio control room and a public Internet connection from the field. Camera feeds are transmitted from a remote location back to the studio over IP, reducing the need for extensive on-site production trucks or large crews.

Al Kamel Systems, a leading motor sports live stats broadcast production specialist, uses TVU RPS to add racing graphics from remote sites, and the TVU Nano for video transmitter for real-time transmission of video from the cockpit of cars participating in the Credit Andorrà G-Series electric car Snow Rally Championships.

Transmissions can be sent straight to the cloud. Events can be produced using cloud-based TVU Producer, a solution whose user-friendly web interface allows producers to make quick cuts, insert graphic overlays from Singular.live’s library, switch between multiple sources, manage audio, compile highlights and instant replays, capture slow-motion clips, and push finalized content to TV and the Internet - all over IP.

To maximize quality and reliability of live video transmission despite less-than-ideal environmental circumstances, Spanish public broadcaster RTVE deployed TVU Networks’ TVU Nano Router and TVU Anywhere to send live video from the Paris-Dakar Rally, held in the Peruvian desert, to the RTVE studio in Barcelona. The live IP streaming videos were shot on smartphones and the content aired live over on RTVE flagship channels La 1 and Teledeporte in broadcast quality. 

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – April 17, 2019 – TVU Networks, the global technology and innovation leader in live IP solutions, today announced industry-wide recognition of the new 4K version of its TVU One mobile IP transmitter, the TVU MediaMind Appliance AI-based metadata generation and search engine, and its IS+ proprietary transmission algorithm during last week’s 2019 NAB Show held in Las Vegas. TVU also provided mobile cellular transmitter equipment to producers of “NAB Show LIVE,” the official broadcast of the NAB. The live transmissions went flawlessly, and Broadcast Beat, producers of “NAB Show LIVE”, will continue to use TVU equipment at future events and venues.

“We’re thrilled to have these different organizations recognize different sectors of our work,” said Eric Chang, Vice President of Marketing, TVU Networks. “This really points to the depth of our company and to the IP-based solutions we provide to a range of applications occurring in diverse locations. The products and technologies selected are all next-generation improvements and essential in the creation of a story-centric workflow. We’re focused on pushing the limits of what’s possible to meet our customers’ live content production challenges today and in the future. I believe our run of award wins during the past 10 years as an NAB exhibitor is a direct reflection of our continued commitment to live production innovation.”

In the first NAB Show 2019 Product of the Year Awards, TVU Networks won in the AI/Machine Learning category for its TVU MediaMind Appliance - an AI-based metadata generation and search engine that speeds production performance and content reuse. This is an independently judged awards program that recognizes the most significant and promising new products and technologies exhibited during NAB.

TVU MediaMind, is a metadata generation and search engine that speeds production performance and content reuse within an existing broadcast media supply chain. The system uses a combination of time-code and AI-based facial and speech recognition to generate metadata. And an open API lets users connect directly with MAM and NLE systems. Because the MediaMind appliance utilizes both AI and time code to generate search results, it can convert audio and video into structured data in real-time. It’s capable of searching a raw asset at any stage of production – from assignment through to on-air. With the help of TVU’s AI engine, real-time speech recognition lets users find text results even faster than they would searching for images alone. Users simply type in what they’re looking for and the appropriate section of a time code appears. The real-time content search engine uses time code to identify each asset with a unique ID.

TV Technology magazine presented TVU Networks with a Best of Show Award for the TVU One 4K cellular mobile transmitter during the 2019 NAB Show. The awards are judged by a panel of industry experts on the criteria of innovation, feature set, cost efficiency and performance in serving the industry. All nominated products are featured in a special Best of Show Awards Program Guide, which will be distributed in digital edition form to more than 100,000 readers of seven Future publications.

Also introduced during the 2019 NAB Show, the 4K version of the TVU One mobile transmitter, a cellular mobile unit with the ability to transmit Ultra-HD/4Kp60 HEVC content. The TVU One TM1000 is TVU’s flag-ship HEVC cellular 4G/LTE mobile transmitter. “UHD/4Kp60 is a much more technically challenging resolution to achieve in a cellular mobile unit,” explained Chang. “However, we are able to overcome these challenges and encode video in full UHD/4K at 60 frames per second.”

The TVU One offers a robust set of functions to meet the needs of any live video broadcaster. It delivers industry-leading video transmission resiliency and HD picture quality from an ultra-compact and rugged hardware chassis. With TVU One, users can fully leverage the versatility of a lightweight IP-based video transmitter in the field as a part of an end-to-end workflow without sacrificing performance, features, or picture quality.

PRODU presented TVU Networks with a NAB 2019 Tech Award for its IS+ technology. TVU’s proprietary transmission algorithm, IS+ enables users to simultaneously transmit over multiple mediums with sub-second latency. Thanks to IS+, TVU transmitters can simultaneously aggregate any combination of bandwidth mediums including cellular 3G/4G LTE, WiFi, Ethernet, Ka-band and Ku-band satellite, microwave, microwave mesh and BGAN to deliver a reliable and dependable broadcast picture with latency as low as 0.5 seconds. IS+ uses advanced Forward Error Correction technology to produce superior transmission performance. When compared to traditional FEC/ARQ methods, IS+ uses minimal data overhead without latency introduced by packet retransmission. The result is a reliable transmission with high-quality images and ultra-low latency even in a moving vehicle.

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About TVU Networks®
TVU Networks® is the global technology and innovation leader in IP-based live video solutions. With over 2,500 customers in more than 85 countries, TVU Networks family of IP transmission and live production solutions gives broadcasters and organizations a powerful and reliable workflow to distribute live video content to broadcast, online and mobile platforms. The TVU Networks suite of solutions has been used to acquire, transmit, produce, manage and distribute professional-quality live IP HD footage as an integral part of news, sports and major global events. For more information about TVU Networks solutions, please visit www.tvunetworks.com

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – April 2, 2019 – At NAB 2019 TVU Networks, the global technology and innovation leader in live IP solutions, will introduce TVU G-Link, an Internet-based solution for live point-to-point transmission. TVU G-Link provides an affordable and reliable way to achieve high-quality transmission using only the public Internet to deliver HD video from one location to another with half-second latency. G-Link is ideal for applications such as news and sports broadcast as well as houses of worship looking to send live HD video from point to point. TVU Networks will show G-Link for the first time in Booth #C1707 during the NAB Show in Las Vegas.

“For broadcasters, video producers, and organizations looking to easily and affordably transmit high-quality, live video from a single point to another, TVU G-Link addresses that need,” said Paul Shen, CEO, TVU Networks. “Dedicated fiber, satellite and microwaves lines are ultimately much more expensive than implementing an IP-based solution like G-Link for high-quality, live video transmission. We’re eager to show how this simple and inexpensive set up can help our current and prospective customers during the NAB show.”

G-Link runs on TVU MediaMind servers, with two servers paired together to form a link. The MediaMind servers are professional video hardware decoders designed for the centralized viewing, control and distribution of live video content. Within G-Link, one server acts as the transmitter/encoder and the other as the receiver/decoder. The servers support a range of input and output source types and remain securely connected regardless of the distance between them, making them ultra-reliable and deployable wherever necessary throughout the world.

The G-Link “transmitter” server takes incoming transmissions from any TVU Networks’ transmission device, as well as SDI video input, or external IP video and sends footage to the receiving server, which then outputs in SDI and IP formats in high resolution. The receiver can also output directly to social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.

- Enables configuration of encoding (source name, type, bit-rate, delay) and decoding

- Ability to view encoding/transmission status of each link

- Local control: query, fast search, start/stop transmission

- Central control: management of multiple G-Link devices

G-Link can be deployed anywhere in the world as a centralized management platform, serving as the management hub of all connected devices from one location to another, no matter where in the world each of the two sites are located. In so doing, transmission costs incurred between countries can be greatly reduced with the use of public internet. 

TVU Networks, the global technology and innovation leader in live IP solutions, will demonstrate the newest product updates for TVU MediaMind, its media supply chain platform, in the company’s booth (#C1707) at the annual NAB Show in April. TVU MediaMind’s story-centric workflow approach simplifies content creation, production and distribution while incorporating the latest integration and support for automation, AI, streaming, 4K and 5G.

“With the many, different ways media content is consumed today by viewers, broadcasters can no longer acquire, produce and distribute media for just TV. In fact, the way programs are created must completely change,” said Paul Shen, CEO, TVU Networks. “By automating and optimizing the media supply chain process, broadcasters can realize the benefits of taking raw content and re-using it across many platforms, programs and even organizations. TVU MediaMind allows anyone to create stories, wherever and however they want efficiently, effectively and without limits.”

For example, within content acquisition, the company will showcase a new 4K version of its TVU One mobile transmitter, which is the first cellular mobile unit with the ability to transmit Ultra-HD/4Kp60 HEVC content. “UHD/4Kp60 is a much more technically challenging resolution to achieve in a cellular mobile unit,” explained Shen. “However, using our patented IS+ transmission algorithm and advanced FEC technology, we were able to overcome these challenges and transmit video in full UHD/4K at 60 frames per second.”

Added Shen, “The TVU One 4K and our entire family of portable and rack-mount transmitters are also now 5G ready.”

Other TVU solutions receiving enhancements and updates that will be demonstrated at NAB include:

- TVU One TM1000, TVU’s flag-ship HEVC cellular 4G/LTE mobile transmitter

- TVU Anywhere, an app for capturing and streaming live video from anywhere

- TVU CAS (Contribution Automation Solution) with new automated workflow integration

- TVU Command Center for cloud-based centralized management of TVU devices and services

- TVU Grid, an IP-based video switching, routing and distribution solution

- TVU Producer for full-featured cloud-based live video production

- TVU Receivers and Transceivers for video decoding, distribution and management of TVU and IP video sources

- TVU Remote Production System, a cost-effective solution for live remote synchronized multi-camera production for news and sports

- TVU Router, a portable broadband Internet access point providing up to 200Mbps of untethered Internet connectivity

DENVER — The city and county of Denver know good entertainment when they see it. Whether it’s the Colorado Symphony or the 30th anniversary celebration of the ’80s pop band The Posies, the Levitt Pavilion in Denver has made it a priority to build community through music, one concert at a time.

That may explain why the municipal access television station for the local government, Denver 8, was moved to find a way to resume broadcasting and live streaming of the concert series Live@Levitt — even though Levitt Pavilion itself is in the midst of a sort of topography minefield.

Levitt Pavilion lies within a natural bowl in the middle of Denver’s Ruby Hill Park, which ironically also has one of the highest elevation points in Denver. That means that while the park offers 360-degree views of the Mile High City, it lacks total internet connectivity.

Even the city and county of Denver’s own network that connects other outlying facilities doesn’t run close enough to provide a short extension to the venue.

In addition to the park’s lack of connectivity, a section of it lies in a river valley. Denver’s city hall, the site of Denver 8 TV’s master control operation, is in the middle of the city, surrounded by tall buildings, and without line of sight, renting a microwave hop to broadcast these concerts has not proven feasible. For a public organization, renting a satellite uplink has been cost prohibitive. And the installation and monthly contract charges offered by the local high-speed internet provider — who could connect the production to a network for a wired feed — has also proven too costly for Denver TV 8, the organization said.

As a result, the city turned to another technology — mobile IP transmission — to send live feeds from the Levitt Pavilion Denver to master control in Denver’s city hall.

Using the TVU One (shown) mobile IP transmitter from TVU Networks, the city government production team is able to distribute signals for live streaming and broadcast. A remote production control room at the back of the amphitheater switches the program, which is then fed into the TVU One and sent to TVU video receivers at city hall for live broadcast on the Denver TV 8 Comcast channel and streamed to the website Denver8.tv.

The city says it turned to the TVU One because it offered a one-step solution for this particularly tricky remote transmission situation. The TVU One is available with HEVC video compression and the company’s Inverse Statmux Plus (IS+) transmission algorithm; the combination allows the system to transmit HD-quality video with half-second latency at 3 Mbps. According to TVU, the system is available with embedded modems and can transmit simultaneously over multiple connections including cellular, microwave, satellite, Wi-Fi and Ethernet.

Despite the park’s less-than-optimal transmission location and the stormy Denver summer evenings, there city has not reported any transmission service interruptions. “We had a lot of rain storms last summer and never experienced one interruption in our transmission,” said Alan DeLollis, TV communications and video operations manager for Marketing and Media Services for the city and county of Denver. “Weather destroyed two audio boards and front-of-house tents were torn down by the wind and rain, but the TVU unit kept on working.”

DeLollis said the unit brings more potential for collaboration between city agencies and as a pool feed shared to commercial networks and social media.

“We see our TVU One unit offering us the option to change the dynamic of how we deliver our production services to other city agencies and create a platform where community engagement in public outreach is much more possible,” he said. “The next step is using TVU One as an engagement and a sharing tool.”

The organization is discussing increasing coverage of live city events that can be distributed to others. That includes potentially creating a pool-feed dedicated to city-related press conferences and ribbon-cutting ceremonies that can be shared with commercial media or live to social media.

“If they have a news hole, they could look to our feed and immediately have something to fill it,” DeLollis said. “If something comes up that they’re modestly interested in, they’ll have our pool-feed to use. It would also help them contain remote production costs. Our feed would show up on their TVU system, and they can choose to use it or not. It could provide the city a lot more exposure.”

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