Intelsat to beam show to world
The Live Earth events — headlined by Madonna, The Police, Shakira, Genesis, Bon Jovi and the Black Eyed Peas — are designed to raise awareness about climate change. More than 150 acts will be on stage during 24 hours of music in eight cities, with Joss Stone and UB40 topping the bill in Johannesburg.
Intelsat will use its network of satellites and earth stations to distribute the concerts in standard and high definition video formats for viewing on televisions or over the internet.
“Our production standard requirements are obviously going to be complex and widespread,” said Live Earth producer Kevin Wall. “Intelsat’s transmission services provide us with the capacity we need to successfully broadcast this event around the world.”
Intelsat CEO David McGlade said his company’s mission was to connect the planet and its role in this event would showcase high definition broadcasting.
Intelsat will transmit the programme feeds from the eight venues to a production centre in London, using 10 satellites.
From London, the post-production feed will be transmitted to four of Intelsat’s seven terrestrial teleports. A teleport is the earth station that houses the dishes, receivers and transmitters needed to route data and voice traffic from the satellites to the public telephone networks and to internet backbones.
The teleports will distribute the standard and high definition formats to cable and broadcast companies. The feed will also be beamed back up to Intelsat’s satellites to provide high-quality standard video transmissions over Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, for broadcasters to incorporate the content into their programme schedules.
As well as live broadcasting for the entire 24-hour event, Intelsat will run a three-hour highlights package when the concerts end.
Intelsat says Live Earth will be the most ambitious high definition televised event to date.
Loading ...