Tech Talk: Portable Television | Video

Jerame Novak | 2/20/2013

Broadcasting on location has changed a lot over the years.

"Our first live show was done with a transmitter on a tripod. And a horn that was attached to it. And we had to have line of sight, we physically had to see the tower," said KFYR-TV Chief Photographer Dwayne Walker.

The addition of a live truck made us more mobile, but it was still difficult to get a signal out in some areas. Not to mention, a lot of work involved in setting things up.

"Run cable to an appropriate place, set up the mast, get proper line of sight with the tower..." said KFYR-TV Photographer Matt Foster.

An upgrade in technology, the TV U backpack, is changing the way we broadcast. Starting with a faster set up time.

"Pros are definitely the set up time, especially in the cold weather. Keeps me out a little less, which is always nice," Foster said.

And when you combine the backpack with the live truck, that means we can bring you closer to the events that are happening.

"With these, we can go anywhere we can get a cell phone signal and it also allows us to go to more than one place at a time," said KFYR-TV News Director Monica Hannan.

But the transition hasn`t been flawless...

"The biggest challenge is the delay that we have to work around, I guess," Foster said.

"We have had some problems with the timing, we`ve gotten a lot of advice from a lot of different stations. We`ve tried some different things. We think we got it worked out, but essentially, like anything that`s new, there a few little wrinkles that you have to iron out," Hannan said.

The backpacks also let us go live in High Definition.

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