The service, Macworld Streaming.net, began its live webcasting from the expo on Thursday morning with coverage of Steve Jobs’ keynote, accompanied by commentary in Japanese from a team member to enable domestic Mac users who do not speak English to get a better grip on what the Apple CEO was saying, explained Ryo Fukutani, a member of the team running the service.
As part of the service, the team has constructed a portable live broadcasting platform that really has to be seen to be believed.
Built around a portable luggage trolley which is worn on the cameraman’s back, the trolley contains a video camera looking ahead of the cameraman, a screen hanging around his neck that points forward to show interviewees what is being seen by the camera and a second screen on the rear. The signal from the video camera also becomes the operator’s eyes as he wears a head mounted display that displays this image.
The video is also passed to a PowerBook notebook computer from where it is transmitted via Wireless LAN back to stand 204, the temporary home of Macworld Streaming.net. The wireless LAN link gives the roaming cameraman a range of around 100 meters.
These live broadcasts happen three times a day, at 12pm, 2pm and 4pm Japan time (03:00, 05:00 and 07:00 GMT) and the site is also offering on-demand video consisting of show reports and interviews.
“We did some live broadcasting last year and this year we wanted to concentrate on on-demand video,” said Fukutani.