Season Two Research Files
Episode Seventeen
12:00am-1:00am
VIDEOPHONE
Covering the 2003 War in Iraq, individual reporters rely on videophones to send pixelated video from the some of the planet's furthest reaches. The suitcases holding the equipment weighs about 10 pounds, and when a portable digital camera is attached, it can transmit real-time data through two satellite phones. The phones relay the signal via a communications satellite parked in geostationary orbit at 22,300 miles above the earth. Since the signal travels at the speed of light, the broadcast is actually delayed by a half-second. The setup also requires installation of a receiving device at news headquarters that decodes and decompresses the signal for television.
The device is considered of little use inside the United States, where most areas are within reach of satellite or microwave transmission facilities. However, live video from a remote place like Iraq would normally require a satellite uplink facility with a ton of recording and broadcast gear stored inside a van and a crew of three to four to work it. One or two people can operate the small videophones effectively.
Transmissions over such a setup average 128 kilobits per second (64 KBPS per satellite phone), which makes for jittery streaming images that could fritz out whenever the camera shifts too much. A company in Sweden has created a larger, 70-pound device that can transmit real-time images at upwards of 2 megabits per second and allow for better capture of motion with few interruptions in the streaming.
The device first grabbed attention in April 2001 when a CNN reporter connected one to a car battery and broadcast live images of a U.S. spy plane crew departing China's Hainan island. The videophone allowed CNN to broadcast its footage almost a half-hour earlier than rival broadcasters, who had to drive to an uplink facility to transmit their video. The pictures riled competing journalists as well as Chinese authorities, which detained the reporter and confiscated the videophone.
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