Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Beyond The Cell -- Journalists' Video Phone

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the gargoyle-gear dept.

dimitri_k writes: "This article from poynter.org gives some information about the video phone that has become standard in reporting recently. It uses H.263 for compression, and a satellite phone to call into ISDN lines. Maybe people on Slashdot can brainstorm ways to increase the bandwidth of these things in the short term (i.e. cost-ineffective combination of lines) so that the cable news networks can turn the grainy, live, night-vision shots in Afghanistan clear." This setup looks a little chunky, but when you consider the capability to beam video information from anywhere in the world, it's very impressive.

3 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. I'm talking at YOU Muslim boy. Yeah YOU asswipe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    If you re Muslim, you re dead meat. We are gong to hunt you down, and exterminate you.
    No cave is too deep, no desert too far. Your time is up.

    Check list for Muslims:

    1. Bend over.
    2. Put your head between your legs.
    3. Kiss your sorry asshole^h^h^h^h^h^h Mohammed goodbye.
    We will wrap you in pig skin and stuff your sorry shit faced Muslim corpses with pork lard.
  2. Re:Partial media by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    They're not gonna show us fleeing starving people being bombed to pieces anyway.

    It would be awesome if they did. A bunch of starving people, running down the road with their skin on fire, wishing all that had to worry about was just starving to death. It is all for my entertainment.

  3. codecs and plastic instead of glass by johnjones · · Score: 1, Troll

    the problem is that most reporters use combi sat /POTS/ISDN and they hate technology

    because it has to work anywhere say even on a rock outside kabul (sat)

    that limits the bandwidth to 33.6 now you can do really well with open source codecs on 33.6

    just recently :
    On2 open source the VP3 video codec

    On2 technologies have released their VP3 video codec to the open source
    community. This provides the open source community with a high quality CPU
    intensive codec to go with the real time CU30
    codec which Cornell made available.

    so it looks up its just putting a box togther that runs them which would not be all that hard if your box ran uclinux or plain linux (no porting involved yey)

    so that what I think you should use

    regards

    john jones