After watching the telly entirely too long waiting for Dubya to do something Jacksonian (Jesse) and set our people free, we saw "Breaking News" break in and down the runway on the distant tarmac was a 727 and it was - streaming! There was no doubt about it. Cutting away from the usual hi-res TV pictures was a ragged but moving image, certainly no more than 15fps, that looked to us very much indeed as if it should have had a RealPlayer frame around it.

You probably saw it, too, as it not only scooped the other networks on the spy plane crew release but made the front pages of the N.Y. Times and Washington Post in still form. You probably were equally as puzzled as we were when during the entire coverage the word "streaming" was never once uttured. Only "videophone." It was all done with a $20,000 "videophone" setup, one that, by the way, is now more or less permanently in Chinese custody. Small price to pay for that kind of scoop, we suppose.

How'd we get the price, and the inside story? From the horse's mouth, thoroughbred CNN News itself, to be sure. But before we get up close and technical, let us reprise how it all happened, in case you missed some of it...according to the Associated Press, writing Friday, April 13, 2001 8:03 AM EDT:

"CNN's aggressive efforts to cover the release of the U.S. spy plane's crew led to a reporter being detained by Chinese authorities and some bad blood with other networks. CNN used new videophone technology to get exclusive live pictures Wednesday of the 24 American crew members leaving Hainan, China, on a chartered flight to Guam. Front-page photos in The New York Times and The Washington Post both credited the cable network. CNN reporter Lisa Rose Weaver and a two-person crew transmitted the pictures after rigging their videophone to a car battery for power, said Eason Jordan, CNN's president of newsgathering. During a live transmission, the videophone showed a carload of Chinese authorities pulling up and stopping the crew from taking pictures. Jordan said the authorities accused CNN of reporting in an illegal manner and using unauthorized equipment. Weaver and her crew were held for questioning for four hours and the videophone was confiscated, he said."