General28.03.2014

Instantly share live video between multiple broadcast facilities with the TVU Grid from GIT

As the world becomes increasingly globalised, the broadcast environment has become more complex. The need to distribute live footage across widely geographically spread environments and across both national and international borders, requires cost effective switching and distribution technology to route footage to multiple locations across countries and even the world. The TVU Grid, now available from Graphic Image Technologies (GIT), is the ideal solution to this challenge, simplifying workflows and processes and offering an easy to use, scalable technology ideal for network affiliates and station groups.

This scalable IP-video distribution and switching solution enables users to seamlessly share live video between multiple locations using existing network infrastructure, delivering low-latency and efficient bandwidth utilisation.

“Live video distribution can be a costly and complex exercise, and is heavily reliant on the ability to deliver footage in a timely fashion. IP networks have in the past been considered too unstable for this process, as latency has always been an issue. However, with the TVU Grid technology IP networks can effectively be used for broadcast quality video distribution. With just the click of a mouse, users can share their live footage as it happens, using IP networks, to one or more locations anywhere in the world,” says Mark Chertkow, Managing Director at GIT.

The TVU Grid is based on the same technology as the award-winning TVUPack portable cellular uplink transmitter and the TVU Transceiver and uses existing TVUPack and network infrastructure for maximum cost effectiveness. With Point-to-Point and Point-to-Multiple-Point functionality, TVU Grid gives stations the ability to take in video from the field via TVUPack or local live studio feeds, and simultaneously distribute the feed to other transceivers on the grid. The TVU Grid decodes video streams and then encodes the signal for distribution to one or more TVU Transceivers with no latency.

A user-friendly interface simplifies this distribution within the grid, with no additional network configuration required. A web-based Graphic User Interface (GUI) and thumbnail previews enable users to distribute video to the location of their choice on the fly, and a web-based administrator console allows for adjustments to access rights and preferences to be easily updated. Frame Accurate Switching functionality provides additional value, allowing users to instantly switch from one live transmission to another with no disruption or delay, providing seamless transition between multiple scenes originating from any location.

“The TVU Grid works within the broadcast organisation’s existing network infrastructure, using a combination of proprietary software and custom TVU Transceiver hardware to optimise video transmission for the highest quality on available bandwidth. The solution also offers low-cost scalability, enabling broadcast organisations to rapidly expand video distribution capabilities to multiple geographical locations. It is a powerful tool for sharing live video on the fly while maintaining low operational costs,” Chertkow concludes.

The TVU Grid solution is available immediately from GIT.

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