Rio 2016: Hungary’s Magyar Televízió Provides Live Coverage With TVU Networks

After a complete evaluation of available cellular portable transmission solutions, the largest Hungarian media organization, Magyar Televízió (Hungarian Television, aka MTVA), selected the TVU One portable mobile newsgathering transmitter and deployed four of them for its location reporting from the Rio Summer Games earlier this month. The national public broadcaster used the lightweight TVU One units for live transmission from various world-renowned Rio locations for in-venue stand-up interviews and other broadcast activities.

The government-owned broadcaster MTVA has been a TVU Networks’ customer for several years and have been using its video broadcast solutions since TVU’s earliest backpack transmitter — the TVUPack TM8100. Currently, they own multiple TVU IP live video products, which are used by the news and sports departments for daily on location broadcast coverage.

“We’ve been very happy with the performance of our new TVU One units,” says Zoltán Sinkovics, Head of Information Technology, MTVA. “And based on our comparisons with all other available systems, we’re confident we made the right choice. The mobility of TVU One has improved our live coverage considerably, but it’s the reliability and excellent picture quality that set it apart.  We’ve grown to rely on it quite a bit. Our sports and news departments take our TVU equipment out on location multiple times every day.”

TVU One is the company’s fifth-generation live mobile IP newsgathering transmitter. It delivers the same transmission resiliency, performance, picture quality and sub-second latency of a full-size backpack transmitter in a substantially smaller and lighter form factor. TVU One features TVU Networks’ patented Inverse Statmux Plus (IS+) transmission algorithm, Smart VBR technology, and the TVU.264 video codec. It’s available with embedded modems and can transmit simultaneously over multiple mediums, including cellular, microwave, MIMO microwave mesh, Ka-band and Ku-band satellite, BGAN, WiFi, and Ethernet.

Headquartered in Budapest, MTVA operates six television stations, nine radio stations, a news agency, and a number of new media outlets. Since its formation in 2011, MTVA has streamlined all content production and asset management activities for the entire Hungarian public service media. MTVA provides roughly 40,000 hours of television and 52,000 hours of radio programming each year. Programs are transmitted beyond Hungary – to Europe, America, and Australia. MTVA’s content is broadcast daily to an estimated 99 percent of Hungarian homes.

Already in use by hundreds of leading broadcast organizations around the world, the TVU Networks family of IP transmission solutions gives broadcasters and organizations a powerful and reliable tool to distribute live video content to broadcast, online and mobile platforms. The TVU Networks suite of solutions has been used to deliver professional-quality live HD footage of a number of important events around the world including the World Cup, both Summer and Winter Olympic Games, U.S. presidential elections, natural disasters, the 2013 Papal conclave, the Super Bowl, the 2015 Papal visit to the United States and several international sporting events.