100 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
100 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
Historians and politicians continue to debate who
|
|
won the Gulf War, but anyone glued round-the-
|
|
clock to their TV set will tell you the v-inner vvas
|
|
CNN. With its live, raw, and riveting coverage, Ted
|
|
Turner's 24-hour Cable News Network became the
|
|
information source for an international audience that
|
|
included everyone from competing news organizations
|
|
to Saddam Hussein.
|
|
For many of its live visual reports, CNN relied on on~
|
|
of its four mobile satellite communications systems,
|
|
also called transportable earth stations, or "flyaways."
|
|
The flyaways accept signals from standard video cam-
|
|
eras and include video and audio processing equip-
|
|
ment, a dish antenna for transmitting the signals via
|
|
satellite, alld amplifiers for powering the system.
|
|
~lobile satellite technology has been in use at CNN
|
|
|
|
since 1984, according to Dick Tauber,
|
|
director of satellites and circuits for
|
|
CNN. But the recent de~Telopment of
|
|
more compact earth stations, with
|
|
smaller antennas that broadcast on th~
|
|
higher-frequency Ku-band rather than
|
|
C-band, has increased the systems'
|
|
mobility and has cut the amount of
|
|
time it takes news crews to set up and
|
|
link up with a satellite. What once too]
|
|
nearly a day now takes a few hours,
|
|
he said.
|
|
"The C-band transportable earth sta-
|
|
tions took up a lot of cargo space - you
|
|
needed a large truck, an 18-wheeler,
|
|
|
|
because of the great big antenna," Tauber said.
|
|
With Ku-band flyaway systems, antenna sizes have
|
|
shrunk to about six to eight feet, compared with the
|
|
more than 100 feet needed for C-band communications.
|
|
The 13 components of the S-l Flyaway weigh less than
|
|
100 pounds each and fit into crates approved by the
|
|
Federal Aviation Administration.
|
|
FAA approval is a major selling point for the technol-
|
|
ogy - instead of sending the flyaways as freight using
|
|
cargo services, "we can ship the vv-hole thing as excess
|
|
baggage on a commercial flight," Tauber said. "NOVV
|
|
everything hits the ground at the same time: crew,
|
|
reporters and a dozen or two boxes."
|
|
The flyaways sell for between $200,000 to $340,000
|
|
and are approved by the Washington, D.C.-based
|
|
International Telecommunications Organization
|
|
|
|
(Intelsat), a 25-year-old cooperative of more than 120
|
|
member countries who ovvn and operate a global com-
|
|
munications satellite system. "It's the concept of the
|
|
global village," said Arnold .~leyers, manager of broad-
|
|
cast services for Intelsat. "If anything happens in a
|
|
country, there's more interest in seeing pictures live. "
|
|
During the Gulf War and the tense period preceding
|
|
it, CNN found itself competing with news organizations
|
|
that also had deployed earth stations for live broadcasts.
|
|
It had to move quickly to contract for satellite access
|
|
time with the Iraqi, E~uwaiti and Saudi Arabian govern-
|
|
ment ministries responsible for handling Intelsat com-
|
|
munications services - a logistical nightmare Tauber
|
|
described in one word: "Maalox."
|
|
Today, three of CNN's flyaways are based in Atlanta
|
|
and a fourth is stationed in London. "Before the war,
|
|
|
|
there vvere 30 to 40 licensed transportable flyaways
|
|
around the world," Tauber said. "But by the time the
|
|
vvar was over, there were 130."
|
|
Along with the flyaways, CNN has been issuing
|
|
portable satellite phones to its news teams, Tauber said.
|
|
With these phones, CNN reporters and crews in the
|
|
field are virtually guaranteed an open channel of com-
|
|
munication with more than l 5 foreign bureaus and
|
|
CNN's Atlanta headquarters.
|
|
But no matter how successful its satellite communi-
|
|
cations solutions have been, CNN continues to explore
|
|
even better ways to provide live coverage from news
|
|
scenes around the vvorld. Tauber's group is watching
|
|
the development of new digital video technologies,
|
|
including video compression, that will make it possible
|
|
to send live video over the telephone.
|
|
One of the most promising of these technologies is
|
|
Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG), a video and
|
|
audio compression standard expected to be finalized
|
|
later this year. C-Cube Microsystems, a San Jose, Calif.-
|
|
based compression systems developer, and Bell Atlantic
|
|
have already demonstrated a prototype MPEG-based
|
|
system capable of transmitting high-quality video from
|
|
a central video file server to subscriber homes via stan-
|
|
dard copper telephone lines.
|
|
Tauber believes it will be three to five years before
|
|
digital video technology will be cost-effective and
|
|
capable of handling the netv--ork's broadcast-quality
|
|
requirements. But he's not worried about the wait.
|
|
"Time flies when you're doing bench tests," he
|
|
said with a laugh. - - -
|