After the success of the first series of The Heist, Sky has commissioned a second series from leading UK production company Shine TV, with this airing from February 6th on Sky One. Once again Shine turned to LiveU to create an innovative production gallery, as well capturing onscreen footage, with the company also deploying LiveU to create a flexible nationwide filming and comms system for its series, Hunted and Celebrity Hunted. LiveU's UK partner Garland Partners oversaw technology supply and provided support.
The filming of this year's series of The Heist, which took place in and around Alnwick, Northumberland, UK, differed in two main ways from the first: the use of HEVC via five LU600 units and five LU300s; and a significant increase in the use of LiveU's smartphone app LU-Smart with a 30 per cent growth in footage captured using this technology.
Filming The Heist has unique challenges as a group of thieves nine members of the public split into four teams of two and one operating alone takes part in a bank job to steal £1m. If they do this successfully and manage to keep the cash for 20 days, while being pursued by former real-world detectives, then it's theirs to keep. The challenge comes in having the producer/directors or storytellers be able to see what the main camera teams are shooting while also being able to see what the thieves are up to in order to tell the best story possible. As well as the low-res feeds from the main cameras, the thieves used mobile phones and the LU-Smart app to send footage back to the low-res production gallery with that footage also stored on the phones for use in the show.
Executive Producer Tom Hutchings at Shine TV, says, We were excited to see what difference HEVC made and it was simply brilliant. The images were crisp and clear even at 1Mbit/s; we were very impressed. Using LiveU to create a low-res production gallery to allow the storytellers to understand the action as it unfolds, and to be able to communicate easily with all parties, was essential to the filming of this second series and using HEVC was a significant benefit.
Increasing the number of phones used with the LU-Smart app also enhanced the storytelling. As Hutchings explains, it was easy for the thieves to open up the app and film and it meant that producer/directors could keep track of what they were filming and how they were filming it. The thieves could easily be communicated with, reducing the editorial risk while maximising the remote production elements and making sure that the most engaging and dramatic story could be told.
Shine TV also used LiveU very successfully in last year's series 3 of Celebrity Hunted by placing an LU600 HEVC in a helicopter alongside a Cineflex gimble on the front, with the feed from the former fed into the LU600. This was combined with the audio from the hunter's microphone in the helicopter and by using the full bandwidth possible, Shine achieved what Hutchings describes as amazing picture quality from the air with HEVC again bringing a real improvement. An audio feed was also sent back to the helicopter creating a nationwide comms system.
Hutchings says, Having used it like that four times, not once did it drop out, which is truly impressive given the use. As we predicted after using LiveU on the first series of The Heist, their technology has changed the way that we think about key aspects of productions. It really has benefited us in multiple ways and the way that their technology keeps evolving is highly encouraging too. We really believe that this is the future in many ways.
Paul Shepherd, Regional Sales Director with LiveU, said, It's great to see a customer expand its use of our technology after it has enabled them to work in different, innovative ways to create such ground-breaking programming. It's very pleasing that our implementation of HEVC encoding is also allowing Shine TV to reap such impressive real-world benefits alongside its expanded use of LU-Smart.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
David Dvir, 2D founder (left), Sundeep Reddy (center), and Jean-Marc Bouchut (right), both of Zeiss...
23/07/2026
Screen Australia announces new national documentary accelerator program 23 July 2026
Screen Australia has today announced the Above the Line Documentary Accel...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
22/07/2026
An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app
Marc Levoy July 22, 2026
0 Comments
At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...
22/07/2026
Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...
22/07/2026
Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Brie Clayton July 21, 2026
0 Comments
Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...
22/07/2026
AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back
Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026
0 Comments
A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...
22/07/2026
From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Thr...
22/07/2026
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang today visited the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, to commission an NVIDIA DGX GB300 system - bringing one...
22/07/2026
A poisoned spy, a secret war, and a small English city contaminated by a deadly chemical weapon. Available on Sky Documentaries from 4 AugustWednesday 22 July 2...
22/07/2026
Audio at Parity: Comscore Launches Transcript-Level Targeting and Measurement wi...
22/07/2026
Arvato Systems and Lobster Enter into a Partnership and Combine the Integration Platform and Managed Services
Flexible integration solutions for cloud, hybrid...
After the success of the first series of The Heist, Sky has commissioned a second series from leading UK production company Shine TV, with this airing from February 6th on Sky One. Once again Shine turned to LiveU to create an innovative production gallery, as well capturing onscreen footage, with the company also deploying LiveU to create a flexible nationwide filming and comms system for its series, Hunted and Celebrity Hunted. LiveU's UK partner Garland Partners oversaw technology supply and provided support.
