Motorola tests 3G News in Spain

Motorola announced a successful 3G News trial with Spanish broadcaster, Radio Televisia Valenciana-RTVV, using 3G technology to allow broadcasters to seamlessly transmit real time video directly from the field to the television screen.

Television crews no longer need to lug around heavy camera equipment. They can use their Motorola E1000, V975 or V980 3G handsets to report “up-to-the-minute breaking news” with 3G News, which allows users to stream live footage back to the studio for real time live broadcast.

By simply doing a simultaneous voice and data call, users can connect to a designated TV station and deliver content directly onto live TV as a Picture In Picture (PIP) window. The window appears on the screen in various sizes and includes the ‘reporters’ commentary on the event.

“With Motorola and 3G News any user can become a field reporter by streaming real time video to a live TV broadcast” explained Maribel Ferrero, Director of Mobile Devices for Motorola Spain. “The successful trial with RTVV demonstrates that Motorola’s vision of Seamless Mobility is a reality today, 3G News marks a before and after in TV broadcast technology.”

The 3G News technology uses a voice call to transmit voice and a simultaneous data call to transmit live video-streaming using an UMTS link. This configuration maximizes the traditional bandwidth of 3G video-calling by sending the two signals separately.

Key to this technology is the 3G News Mobile Studio developed by the Spanish multimedia development company Createcna, the server which allows the reception of six simultaneous video streams into the broadcast station, recording all of them and converting the chosen one merged into the master TV signal (after converting to SDI signal).