‘Live Rescue’ Leverages VidOvation’s AVIWEST Bonded-Cellular System for Live Multi-site Production

Big Fish Entertainment, an MGM Company and the creators of and production company behind groundbreaking A&E docuseries ‘Live PD,’ has deployed VidOvation’s AVIWEST bonded cellular system for use in the new docuseries, ‘Live Rescue,’ also on A&E. The AVIWEST system, which includes PRO180 transmitters and StreamHub transceivers, gives Big Fish the ability to transmit reliable, synchronous, and low-latency broadcast-quality video and audio from multiple cameras and multiple locations.

‘Live PD’ was the first show of its kind to capture and stream live video of police officers on patrol, and now ‘Live Rescue’ takes the same concept and applies it to paramedics and first responders, immersing the viewer in the challenges and dangers faced by these professionals on a daily basis.

“Using bonded cellular technology allowed us to bring ‘Live PD’ to fruition at the scale we always envisioned to deliver premium live television,” says Dan Cesareo, founder and president of Big Fish Entertainment. “It laid the groundwork for our second major live launch of ‘Live Rescue,’ where again, we need to capture a large number of live HD video feeds from multiple cameras and locations to transport via cellular back to A&E headquarters and broadcast live to air. The VidOvation and AVIWEST system has allowed us to deliver a truly singular viewing experience for the audience, and we’re thrilled to be using it once again for a brand new perspective on the daily experiences of the country’s brave first responders.”

The PRO180 transmitters are deployed in the field with HD cameras, and once images are captured, the units’ bonded cellular technology combines any available network interfaces (including as many as eight cellular, Wi-Fi, two Ethernet, and satellite) to create high-quality and reliable video-transmission links. Throughout the show, each PRO feeds live high-quality video back to the control room in New York. In the control room, the AVIWEST StreamHub transceiver, decoder, and distribution platforms receives the live video feeds and delivers them to air for the live broadcast.

“It’s been quite exiting to be working with Big Fish Entertainment on projects like ‘Live Rescue’ that are really on the cutting edge of what can be done with live TV today,” says Jim Jachetta, EVP and CTO, VidOvation. “There is still no other bonded cellular solution out there that can handle projects like this. Multicamera, multilocation, the ability to transmit from up to four close-proximity cameras with perfect lip sync and video synchronization: the AVIWEST technology is really groundbreaking and in a class of its own.”

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