Georgian Public Broadcaster chooses Omnistream for election programming

Prior to the recent election in the country, Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB) showed interest in testing and evaluating the performance of small form factor GSM (3G/4G) mobile video wireless transmission systems as an alternative to larger and more expensive solutions.

The broadcaster ultimately made a decision in favour of the Omnistream system due to its portability and low power consumption. Omnistream was used used for live production of Georgia’s parliamentary election coverage, which took place on October 31, 2020.

The system consisted of one mobile encoder, equipped with two SIM cards and a mobile Android smartphone. The bonded video stream (HD, 1080, 50i) was decoded on the Omnistream Recipient dedicated PC. The Omnistream development team also made an extended functionality for video support in line with GPB’s request, which sees SD video playout in 16:9 ratio.

The channel’s news reporter team appreciated the portability (due to the small form-factor), ease-of-use and fast system startup, facilitating almost immediate live event coverage.

GPB’s chief technical director, George Kumsiashvili, remarked: “We were very happy with the stability of the stream and the ease of use, and we clearly see strong potential of such a compact solution, especially with the deployment of 5G networks.”

The complete system was delivered in partnership with Georgian systems integrator Qualitron Ltd (Sergei Kazaryants), which ensured comprehensive system commissioning, training and local support.