Citizen TV airs Kenyan Elections using Kiloview P1 with JVC GY-HC500

Kenya has 47 provinces throughout Kenya with some areas extremely remote with very little infrastructure. Elections were around the corner for the Kenyan people and Citizen TV were faced with the challenge to try and report the elections from all these regions. The challenge was therefore complicated, difficult, needed to be cost effective and to be implemented as seamlessly as possible. 

Citizen TV is a privately owned TV station which is a national channel whilst they also manage 2 smaller community TV stations, iNooro TV station which broadcasts for the central region of Kenya and Ramogi TV station which broadcasts in the western lake side region of Kenya. Included with all this, they also own 14 radio stations throughout Kenya with a total of 41 broadcast sites and they own 3 outside broadcast vans. As part of their remote production kits, Citizen TV had 22 existing remote kits to help with remote broadcasting however this was simply not enough to cover each area. The budget was not large enough to increase their existing equipment to cater for their remote production.

Streamport Media had some discussions with Moses Waweru, Chief engineer for Citizen TV. These discussions led to the Kiloview P1 bonding video encoder as a possible solution to help with the current challenges Citizen TV were facing. The Kiloview P series video encoder is a professional high-end encoding device specially designed for mobile applications. It adopts KiloLink – Kiloview’s patented algorithm to solve the problem of poor connectivity. It perfectly suits outdoor live streaming and transmission in such scenarios as live events, concerts, sports, field broadcast, emergency spots and more, anytime, anywhere. Kiloview P series features ultra-low end-to-end latency (<1s) , meanwhile, it supports voice intercom with Kiloview KIS, it’s also perfect for remote program production or group interaction.

A demo unit was provided to Citizen TV via Streamport Media and Moses arranged a P1 unit to be sent to a remote area which had mobile networks, however the challenge they faced was the networks were unstable in certain areas. In the past, Citizen TV were not too convinced based on current existing equipment and the complexities they faced.  As time was of the essence, Citizen TV decided to try the solution and Moses was completely taken by surprise. The Kiloview P1 has 2x Internal 4G Cellular + 2x USB 4G Cellular (LAN)+ 1x Wi-Fi (+1*RJ45) supported and it’s free configurable of any desired network. With the patented bonding algorithm with KiloLink, P series encoders can automatically balance the data of all connections and adjust the bitrate accordingly to make sure the reliable streaming. The P series can support Wi-Fi hotspot for data and file transmission. Citizen TV used 3 different networks, Safaricom, Airtel and Telkom and they mapped out the mobile networks to indicate which network was strong and weak in each area. On the receiving end, they have 2 servers for the video streaming feeds to ingest into the existing system. Despite the bandwidth from these networks been weak at times, Moses could see this the video weakening however the Kiloview P1 held out and there was constant video with no drops or blackout and worked seamlessly.

Asked Moses if Citizen TV were satisfied with the Kiloview P1, Moses was pleasantly surprised how well the Kilowview P1 worked in the field. What amazed Moses more, was the consistency when they connected the video to the Kiloview P1, the video was almost instant on the receiving end. The cameramen constantly prefer the Kiloview P1 because they know it works with little to hardly no fuss. Citizen TV seamlessly covered the elections for the Kenyan election held on 9 August 22 in Kenya and the solution was cost effective and extremely simple to use.