Insta360 8K Live Software, Verizon 5G Live Streams Orlando NFL Game To Miami

The global situation today is stress-testing our technologies for a world where almost everything has to be done remotely. This mostly involves streaming high-quality content at real-time speeds, something that the much-touted 5G is supposed to deliver. A few months ago, however, that system was already being put to the test in one of the most ambitious ways yet, live streaming an NFL Pro Bowl game in glorious 8K stitched together thanks to Insta360's new 8K Live software.

360-degree cameras are nothing new, of course, but the higher their capabilities, the bigger their images and videos get. And the bigger the data, the harder it is to combine images and video from multiple cameras to form a seamless and immersive experience.

Insta360's Pro 2 360-degree cameras already have the hardware to record in 8K but doing the processing in real-time adds another level of complexity. Just in time for this year's NFL game in Orlando, the company launched its new 8K Live software. More than just stitching and broadcasting immersive 8K video directly, the software can also insert its output as a high-resolution reframed video into a traditional SDI broadcast. Again, all of this happens in real-time.

Insta360 doesn't take all the credit, however. To enable that live broadcast to travel all the way from Orlando and be projected onto a dome in Miami, the data has to travel quickly, much more quickly than what normal cellular networks could offer. Verizon's 5G router and 5G network added that missing piece, giving the project the bandwidth it needed to make that magic happen.

The Insta360 8K Live software is launching for the company's enterprise customers. This could help pave the way for more 8K live broadcasts, using Insta360's pro cameras, of course. Although today's situation makes it less conducive to stream such high-res videos, it will inevitably become a more common way for people to view live events in the future.