BBC News (UK) presentation - Reith launch onwards

Terrestrial links are virtually gone now, replaced by satellite and nowadays IP via mobile networks. I can think of one BBC region who occasionally use theirs (though only a few regions and the 'nations' have a traditional SNG now)


That's not to say that sat trucks don't have masts, they're used for high shot cameras*, radio camera receives, off air reception etc*. However I suspect that it's only the older SNG trucks that have them, I doubt that new ones are fitted with them.


Local radio 'radio cars' are also now all low powered automatic KA band satellite uplinks, but some stations still have terrestrial recieves, but these days they'll be COFDM or similar


What's CNG?

Yep - Digital microwave terrestrial is still in use for non-news contribution circuits in certain situations (it can be more reliable for high profile events, and higher bitrate, than satellite - where you have potential dual illumination issues still)

However for News it's been replaced pretty much entirely by DSNG, VSat and LiveU/WMT bonded IP (mainly cellular)

Back in the early 90s - analogue PAL composite microwave gear was in widespread use for contributions into network and local news, and there were FRVs and Links trucks that were microwave only. Digital DVB SNG trucks, then Bonded IP, combined with the move to component digital, and now HD, have all but ended the microwave newsgathering gear in the UK. I don't know of any UK News organisation that upgraded all their legacy analogue microwave gear to digital (BT may have upgraded some though?)



I'm guessing Cellular News Gathering (i.e. LiveU and WMT)

In the UK we also have a hybrid that uses VSat IP satellite connectivity (not just cellular) with LiveU/WMT gear to improve bitrate/robustness. The live links on This Morning and other ITV Daytime shows often use this hybrid approach.

I was at a music festival last summer. Jazz FM were broadcasting live from the event, using what looked like a V-Sat uplink. 4G IP wouldn't have worked there, in fact once the venue filled up, nothing that was 4G linked worked very well, including credit card terminals, and a mobile Cashpoint trailer. Doh !

Cellular News Gathering.



Yeah some stations here use Dejero’s CellSat:

https://go.dejero.com/cellsat

Yep - here Ka-band rather than Ku-band is used for our VSAT IP solutions. They also allow you to get a decent IP connection to your newsroom computer for script editing / running order checking etc.

Yep - though for audio you will also see BGAN in use. The BBC routinely do radio lives using a BGAN terminal at ISDN bit rates or a bit higher. The small BGAN modems look like laptops (the lid is the aerial)

Do any of the DTL facilities at local radio stations etc feed the main regional centre through terrestrial links? I believe it was common for there to be a dish on the roof working into the same receiver as the FRV.

It certainly was a common way of linking the TV contribution studios at local radio premises back to the main centres.
I have somewhere a diagram of the BBC Midlands set up which was very well done.
It used existing mast head receivers controlled from Pebble Mill Comms Centre.
But that was then. Now it is all old hat, and I would assume IP links have taken over that function.

In the days of analogue microwave PAL composite circuits - yes, it was common for local radio facilities to use the same technology (and often the same infrastructure) as terrestrial FRV trucks. (So the receiver dishes at receive sites - often the main TV transmitters - would need to be remotely panned between the local radio site and the FRV location if both were in the same show, and if you wanted to do a DTL from a local radio station 'out of hours' you'd need to ensure someone came in to remotely pan the dish, as well as routing the circuits out)

Very little, if any, of this infrastructure was upgraded to SD component digital microwave, or HD, and fibre connectivity along with IP (some fibre is pre-IP) means there is no major reason to use microwave solutions these days.

There MAY be a few analogue microwave PAL composite circuits still in use - but I certainly hope not...

The only SD digital microwave kit (other than radio cameras or helicopter links) was more likely in OBs rather than news.
It has been superseded now by links which carry multiple feeds coded by other kit which means you can send many HD or 4K circuits over one link rather than one SD-SDI circuit.
There cannot be any analogue microwave links left running in 2019 - surely not, the kit would be well over 20 years old!

Up as far as the last decade, I know that some BBC LR sites were using CCTV grade PAL composite
circuits to the 'parent' regional TV centre. BT2000 rings a bell ? Brighton and Reading into So'ton, and Glos and Taunton into Bristol ?

I remember the East region having a lot of that to link all their local stations including Cambridge to Norwich. This meant that trying to book down the lines or tape feeds from some after about 18:15 wasn't possibly as they had to swing the dishes round to get the Cambridge opt out.


Guildford was another oddity, that was microwave into the news OB recieve at Crystal Palace so had to fit in with any terrestrial links in London.

These days it's a combination of IP codecs and digital vision circuits to the regional centres.