LiveU launches multi-camera production unit for transmission over 5G

LiveU has unveiled the LU800, which combines multi-camera production with native 5G transmission. Designed from the ground up to unlock 5G potential, the LU800 supports up to four fully frame-synced feeds in high resolution from a single unit, using IP bonding of up to 14 connections. The unit also offers up to 4Kp60 10-bit HDR transmission for optimal colour depth, as well as up to 16 audio channels.

LiveU’s Christopher Perry, senior director product management (left) and Mike Savello, VP sales Americas, on the live virtual press conference Tuesday afternoon

On a LiveU YouTube virtual press conference Brad Cheney, VP field operations & engineering for Fox Sports said, “the more we can provide easy ways to encode and distribute video in production, the better off we will be as sports broadcasters.” LiveU VP sales for the Americas Mike Savello said, “the LU800 is the world’s first production-level multi-camera field unit.” LiveU VP of engineering for the Americas Daniel Pisarski added, “the beauty of 5G is latency. We’ve been preparing for 5G for a long time. This is custom-built for 5G – we decided we had to custom-build a 5G unit. It allows lower latency and higher throughput.”

The LU800 provides up to eight 5G internal, dual-SIM modems, supported by high-efficiency internal antennas. The unit has been optimized for 5G operations, addressing unique 5G requirements with full support for 5G network evolution.

With the LU800, LiveU now offers a full contribution, production and distribution solution. The unit’s multi-camera production streams are fully managed by the LiveU Central cloud-based management platform and automatically fed into the LiveU Matrix IP content management and distribution workflow.