BT Media and Broadcast and LiveU team up to offer live capability for broadcasters

LiveU is working with BT Media and Broadcast to offer new live content sharing capability for broadcasters.

This brings together LiveU’s Reliable Transport (LRT) protocol with BT’s wider content and distribution network, covering IP and SDI, creating a “seamless” experience for customers, the firms said.

BT Media and Broadcast moves up to 24,000 hours a day of content through its International Media Centre at BT Tower in London. Its FacilityLine works in the uncompressed SDI domain – from SD to 4K – operating as the backbone for UK broadcast services, as well as linking broadcasters and the global production community.

BT has now installed LiveU receiving and decoding technology from LiveU to create direct receive and transmit capabilities.

The collaboration has identified multiple use cases from LiveU users being able to reach takers who don’t currently use its technology, to the ability to provide additional resiliency alongside traditional fixed links using LiveU.

Content takers, wherever they are in the world, can benefit from an ad-hoc service and still access the global hub of English language content.

BT Media and Broadcast is now able to provide a “simple” link to live content, SDI or LRT, to smaller broadcasters/channels that don’t have a master control room or live gallery but want live content to increase viewer engagement.

Matthew Stringer, UK Sales director, LiveU, said: “This is a milestone in the evolution of LiveU’s global reach and is great news for the global broadcast community.

“We very much see the ability to turn up, connect and capture content seamlessly, as the future, and with the reach BT Media and Broadcast has, there’s tremendous commercial benefits to us working together to offer this capability.”

Dom Wrona, head of portfolio & GTM, BT Media and Broadcast, added: “This collaboration opens up an exciting range of content sharing possibilities across sport, news and many other verticals.

“For ad hoc events, LiveU customers can easily send their feeds to BT Tower for secure, reliable sharing. Extremely reliable feeds can also be made available for remote production anywhere in the world.

By working together we will enable LiveU users to distribute their content to more customers through our network and people who want access to that content can get it via our connectivity.”

BT Media and Broadcast also has the ability to send/receive live feeds via LiveU Matrix, the company’s next-gen, IP cloud content sharing platform, and this will also be made available to customers in the future.

The company has also acquired multi-camera LU800 field units, expanding its in-the-field contribution options for customers.

These are available for hire from BT Media and Broadcast, facilitating production where it previously wasn’t possible or was financially unviable. This also extends coverage possibilities for large scale events via private and public 5G. The units can also be used to provide premium grade redundancy.