At the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas, LiveU will mark the U.S. debut of its new LU900Q, encoding platform. Powered by native LiveU IQ (LIQ), advanced eSIM technology, optimized 5G modems and a MIMO antenna array, LU900Q offers reliability and future-ready live transmission from virtually any location.
As a smart multi-tool, the compact platform offers advanced capabilities, such as 4:2:2 encoding and dual-camera support that enable high-quality production of news and sports applications ranging from field reporting and live events to drones and emerging workflows.
In a recent interview with TV Tech, Gideon Gilboa, LiveU’s chief product officer and general manager for Americas, discussed the new features of the LU900Q and the impetus behind its development.
Founded 20 years ago, LiveU started out as a company focused primarily on live contribution technology, particularly via bonded-cellular field units that were revolutionary for their time. But Gilboa said the company soon expanded its outlook to cover content workflows.
“There are more and more content sources coming into broadcast today; there are more and more content distribution pipelines going out, more workflows and 24x7 digital distribution,” he said. “And of course, there's less budget and less people to do all of that, so our customers are looking for workflows to handle all of that complexity.”
Intelligence driven by advances in artificial intelligence are helping to quickly evolve those workflows, Gilboa added.
“We believe the next few years are all about automating those workflows, and this has been and will be our focus from this NAB and onwards into the next few years,” he said. “So what does it mean for us? It means that we are taking this ecosystem that spans contribution, ingestion, production, distribution, and evolving it further in order to support these automated workflows.”
Although LiveU started out as a “closed ecosystem,” according to Gilboa, the company has opened up its platforms to encourage more integration.
“LiveU has evolved from a product company to more of a workflow company,” Gilboa said, adding that in the past few years the company has focused more on integration of third parties.
The LU900Q is the first intelligent production unit that we're putting out on the market.
Gideon Gilboa
The LU900Q represents the next stage of LiveU’s workflow solutions, bringing a new focus on AI to help improve connectivity and workflows, especially in congested RF environments.
“The LU900Q is the first intelligent production unit that we're putting out on the market,” Gilboa said, adding that the product marks the first time that LiveU’s IQ intelligent cellular bonding technology is being integrated natively.
“The LU900Q has native eSIM, which means that you never have to worry about configuring your mobile data,” Gilboa said. “It's all built inside and we can change the profile of the eSIM and the operator that is on that eSIM, depending on where you are located and it supports two cameras.”
LiveU IQ uses AI to analyze all the historical data that LiveU has on cellular usage and the real time analytics from the encoder, and makes decisions on which models should be in which cellular network. It does not exist in any other mobile encoder, according to Gilboa.
“It basically looks at all the cellular networks that are available in your location, and knows how to move modems from one cellular network to another and manage them in a smart way to get the most out of it," he said. “In the Milan Winter Olympics, we saw units with LiveU LIQ delivering maybe 30% more bit rate, more bandwidth than standard units, because they know how to choose smartly in real time and move between the most robust seller network of those at that particular moment.”
That’s not the only area where LIQ is taking advantage of advances in AI, according to Gilboa.
“This unit has edge AI setting capabilities, and we'll show a few simple scenarios of how you could start transmitting with just clapping your hands and how you can recognize more objects to create more metadata,” he said. “But we have further plans to enhance the use of that edge AI, to make the lives of our photographers easier, and also to reduce costs of cloud processing, for AI, for object detection and metadata creation.”
Gilboa says he’s heard from numerous LiveU costumers who are looking forward to getting their hands on the LU900Q.
“[We’ve packed] the experience of the last 15-20 years into this product that we've been working hard on for awhile,” he said. “So we have customers who are very excited to receive the first units."
LiveU will be in Booth N1740 in the North Hall of the LVCC.
