However, the practice — particularly in live sports productions — is subject to criticism for the compromises in image quality, stability, and the detachment of commentators and producers operating sometimes thousands of miles from the events they're covering.
[4][5] Early REMI productions relied on high-bandwidth T1 lines and grew into higher-speed connections and IP routing capabilities as they became available, in order to accommodate increases in broadcast display resolution and the number of cameras in use.
[11] Isolation measures required to control the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 also led live television production companies to adopt REMI practices in sports and fields that previously had not deployed them.
A REMI workflow instead routes camera and audio feeds via dedicated fiber optic, communications satellite, or facility or cellular internet connections to a remote production center.
BT Sport engaged a test of such a cloud-based workflow for a UEFA Youth League match using aggregated cellular links and local broadband to also eliminate the need for dedicated transport connections.
Failures can result in compression artifacts or outages, which can affect the collection of sports analytics data and social media coverage of live events.
[23][18][24] Off-site commentators are limited to what cameras and microphones can record and can be tasked with calling several consecutive games per day, leading to facutal errors, omissions, and mischaracterizations of an event's atmosphere.