Humberside upgrades IPTV system for helicopter

Humberside Police has upgraded its current IPTV system with Optibase’s carrier-grade, MPEG-4 H.264 solution.

Together with local partner, Cotswold Communications, Optibase’s delivered a system that includes MediaGateway encoding platforms, which will be streaming feeds coming from the police helicopter to multiple PC workstations across the force’s network.

For Humberside, the idea of officers watching video footage in their fight against crime is not a new one, in fact they have been using the IPTV system since 2003. With this system Humberside are able to effectively deal with the challenge of having the right decision making resources at the site of a crime or an accident.

The force transmits live video feeds from a helicopter, thus providing coverage across an area of 1,365 square miles around the city of Kingston Upon Hull and the Humber estuary. The feeds are distributed across the force’s LAN (Local Area Network) and can be monitored on multiple PC workstations by any authorized personnel in real-time.

“One of the major drawbacks of our current solution is the quality of the MPEG-1 video. When filming footage from a helicopter, the picture quality is a key factor in being able to pick up on the on-goings on the ground,” said Graham Dawson, head of Information Services at Humberside.

“By using MPEG-4 compression we are able to provide much better picture quality, without compromising the low bit rates required for us to distribute the feeds across our network.

“Optibase was the obvious choice for us since their encoding technology was used in the Cisco IPTV system that we had. When we decided to upgrade our system, we went directly to the source of the video technology.

“We are very pleased to be working directly with Humberside Police to upgrade their IPTV system,” said Udi Shani, executive VP, International Sales at Optibase. “This is not the first time that we have been approached to upgrade an existing IPTV system with our advanced video technology. Optibase has a solution that includes streaming platforms as well as interactive PC clients, which is specifically designed for this market.”

Optibase’s selection by the Humberside is part of the new direction of expansion for the company focusing complete video solutions for law-enforcement, government and enterprise organizations. Optibase is able to use its expertise in order to create cost effective systems with the latest compression technology.