Expensive News Vans Give Way To The Slingbox

from the in-with-the-small dept

Wed, May 9th 2007 8:45am — Joseph Weisenthal

A San Francisco news station has devised a clever way of reducing the cost of broadcasting video live from a news scene. Instead of using expensive cameras, and vans filled with gear, the station is using cheap cameras, EV-DO cards and Slingboxes, to transmit video footage back to the newsroom. It's hard to imagine that the quality of the footage is quite as good, but the setup makes a lot of sense for things like weather and traffic cameras, which don't require particularly high resolution. It's also safe to assume that the quality will improve over time. The story is also a good example of how we continue to benefit from Moore's law. Not only is cheap technology driving down the cost of computers, but computers themselves (repackaged in various forms like digital cameras and Slingboxes) are replacing traditional equipment that is much more expensive. In fact, television is one of the industries that's most affected by this phenomenon, as video production can increasingly be done on a laptop without needing an expensive studio. In addition to the cost savings, there's also an environmental angle, as all of this equipment that gets replaced requires a lot of power to run (particularly the news vans), further driving home the point that IT is itself green tech.

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14 Comments

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Anonymous Jerk, 9 May 2007 @ 9:24am

Patents
Wonder how long it'll be until someone files a lawsuit because they 'patented the concept of using portable video for news broadcasts'

Hehe
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nunya_bidness, 9 May 2007 @ 9:39am

laughs at own jokes
wonder how long it will be before someone makes a lame patent joke about this article, just to sell spam...

oops
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Anonymous Poster (profile), 9 May 2007 @ 9:49am

Re: Patents
Just what we need, more Spinning Sign Patents.
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nunya_bidnass, 9 May 2007 @ 9:49am

idiot
Wonder how it could be spam if he didn't put a link in?

Oh, wait, maybe he uses those cookies to keep his info pre-entered.
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Charlie, 9 May 2007 @ 9:53am

How long until their EV-DO provider notifies them that streaming video is against their terms of service? The article mentioned $60/mo for the EVDO card, which implies they didn't work out a special contract (which would likely have had higher rates for an exception).
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nunya_badass, 9 May 2007 @ 9:59am

Re: idiot
the link in the name is some advertising site, you retard.
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Shaggz, 9 May 2007 @ 10:03am

Amiga
The Commodore Amiga provided high-end video editing, in the mid 80's. They used it for those crazy wipes on Home improvement. This is old news. Please move on. Nothing to see here.
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nunya_bitchass, 9 May 2007 @ 10:08am

Huh, he must really have done something to p_i_ss YOU off...

My name isn't advertising, but I stand by what it IS for...
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nunya_bidness, 9 May 2007 @ 10:12am

idiots
I was referring to the link in the Anonymous Jerk reply.
You guys need to chill out.
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Ajax 4Hire, 9 May 2007 @ 11:10am

You are right, hotlink on "Anonymous Jerk"
how clever.
See if this works.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 May 2007 @ 11:54am

Re: Re: idiot
HA HA
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ranon, 9 May 2007 @ 1:19pm

Mike,
Just wanted to raise an issue about the reduction in power. Agreed that there is a large decrease in power per camera unit required. But with the units becoming cheaper there are more of them. So saying that it reduces power overall is not true. Actually given the way that digital gadgets spread, I would say that there is an increase in power.
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ehrichweiss, 9 May 2007 @ 2:38pm

Re: Amiga
I'm an old Amiga fan(well I used to be till used Amiga's cost more than a used SGI with 10 times the processing/video power) and while the Video Toaster, etc. did high end video editing, that's not the point here. The point is that what used to take up a huge portion of your computer desk(or in my case about 1/2 of my studio) can fit in a small section of your kid's backpack and leave them room for books.
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ehrichweiss, 9 May 2007 @ 2:47pm

Re:
The power required for a single broadcast quality camera is enough to put 10 standard cameras on the street and still have energy to power your cell phone for a month.

A broadcast camera in a news van will also require a mixer, possibly a non-linear editor(NLE), possibly lights, and definitely a transmitter, which will in turn require a controlled climate to keep the frequency stable. That will be significantly more power consumed compared to the setup being discussed and that is NOT including the energy required for the van.
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