eli5: In a world of instant communication via satellite, why does news anchors connecting with field reporters live still involve a 3 second silent pause?
In: Physics
I think the better question is how do satellites actually handle every human on earth at once
I worked at a local TV news station. We used live trucks with the microwave gear and portable microwave gear as well. Those have minimal delay. The technology that causes the most delay are the cellular technology known as LiveU or TVU.
Depending on the quality of compression (balancing quality and delay reduction), the delay can range from 3-10 seconds.
The cell technology is great for getting up and ready for breaking news and where live trucks can’t get a good line of sight of the microwave tower or not running cable.
Other than that, microwave is the way to go for now for quality and minimizing delay.
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