CBS News relies on VBrick to Broadcast, Share, Monitor, and React to breaking news around the world.

BROADCAST / SHARE
Broadcast live news reports from remote locations

MONITOR / REACT
Monitor live remotes for television news network

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> VBCast VBxStream
> MPEG-4 Decoder

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Challenge
Broadcast live remotes, quickly and easily, from anywhere in the world.

"In this 24/7 news gathering market, the faster you get on the air, the more trusted your news organization."

Rich Mavrogeanes
VBrick, Founder and CTO

CBS News uses a variety of methods to gather video from the field. Traditionally, a satellite truck, a camera crew, and a reporter arrive on location, set-up, and begin broadcasting.

In many locales, satellite trucks or satellite uplinks are hard to locate or rent. In these remote locations, network news organizations have turned to satellite videophones in lieu of the satellite truck, but the video quality and call-reliability has been low quality and unreliable.

During the Anna Nicole Smith tragedy, CBS News needed a way to broadcast live from the Bahamas without a satellite truck. It needed to be portable, reliable and as high-quality as possible.

Solution
Fast, easy to set-up and reliable, VBxStream takes satellite newsgathering to new levels.

"VBxStream’s all-in-one package makes reporting from remote locations much more reliable and higher-quality than videophones."

Rich Mavrogeanes
VBrick, Founder and CTO

CBS News used VBxStream to broadcast live from the Bahamas for their morning news program, The Early Show during the Anna Nicole Smith tragedy.

With the reporter in the field, a camera man and an audio technician, they simply boarded a plane with the VBxStream case. As soon as they arrived, they set up the camera, and microphone, powered up the VBxStream and began broadcasting live to New York.

"In minutes they were up and running. What used to take thirty to forty-five minutes for a satellite truck, now takes minutes, if not seconds," said Rich Mavrogeanes.

Benefit
A rolling case, no bigger than a carry-on bag, that transmits video over a digital satellite connection to the CBS IP network.

"VBxStream is so small, so easy to use and so fast to set up that it really makes remote newsgathering much easier."

Rich Mavrogeanes
VBrick, Founder and CTO

VBrick's founder and CTO, Rich Mavrogeanes immediately came to the rescue.

Using a very small Inmarsat® BGAN satellite internet connection, a VBrick MPEG-4 Encoding Appliance connected to a video camera and audio mixer, CBS could now stream live video over the internet directly to the CBS News Satellite Operations Center.

At Sat Ops, the engineers installed a VBrick MPEG-4 decoder that automatically begins receiving the video and audio as soon as the VBxStream package is turned on.

The automatically configured VBrick encoder needs no configuration on location minimizing the time it takes for the crew to set up.

As soon as the live feed passes the engineering check, the video feed is patched into the CBS news control room where they can now interact with the news anchor, live.