Tricaster 855 at MTV

Music history was created on June 27-28th, when the Flaming Lips broke Jay-Z’s record for most concert performances in different cities in a 24-hour period. The whole thing was live-streamed as part of the MTV OMAs using the NewTekTricaster 855.

Beginning June 27 at 7:30 p.m. ET, the O Music Awards played out across all Viacom Music & Logo Group screens and linear networks in the form of the world’s first 24-hour award show live-stream via a historic and hectic bus ride through the Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of rock ’n’ roll.

Two-time O Music Award nominee and multiple Grammy winners The Flaming Lips boarded a vintage tour bus named “Endeavor” and zigzagged across the region in a successful attempt to break the world record previously held by Jay-Z. Along the route and throughout the show, the O Music Awards featured a series of 8 concerts (one in each city) for fans to celebrate and cheer The Flaming Lips on as they attempted to break the record.

Through a series of mobile units, satellite uplink trucks, cell phone transmission devices and production equipment, the production workflow for the OMAs reached new heights in production innovation. MTV had two of their own 53-foot fully digital and high definition mobile units – Nereus and Barrie on the ground. In addition, the bus housed a NewTek TriCaster 855 to create a fully integrated feed and edit as needed.

To transmit while in the venues along the route as well as while driving, LiveU–the cellular-based technology that bonds together multiple 3G and 4G connections for mobile broadcast-quality audio and video uplink–supplied five LU70 transmission backpacks. The multiple OMA signals were fed from the individual concerts via satellites and broadband to the site of the finale concert in New Orleans for editorial integrations and on to Viacom’s Operation Center in New York for encoding to the web, wireless and mobile.