Customer Success Stories

Broadcast Television: Live Remote Audio & Video Broadcast

WHIZ-TV, WHIZ Media Group

www.whizmediagroup.com

"As the chief engineer of WHIZ TV, being able to provide live news coverage from the field (called ENG or Electronic News Coverage) was a goal of mine from the day I started. Unfortunately, traditional remote ENG microwave system pricing quotes were coming in from $37,000 to $43,000 and they provide only two channels of audio and one channel of video unidirectionally. Instead, I now use the TrangoLINK-10™ for streaming wireless IP video to the station in conjunction with a Slingmedia Slingbox to convert the analog A/V to a data stream. We can now provide live remote news coverage from the field for under $3,000. The new Trango system saves us tens of thousands of dollars and it gives us excellent broadcast-quality video."

"It also gives us several added benefits and capabilities for our remote broadcasts that we have never had before. The major difference is that the TrangoLINK-10 is a bi-directional wireless data transmission system. Instead of a single-direction system, I can give our remote news staff a live network connection back to our electronic newsroom system; a connection to the Internet; return audio to the talent (IFB) and even a full duplex intercom system for the production staff-all over one wireless link. For a fraction of the price, I can accomplish much, much more than any tradition ENG system has ever allowed. In my opinion, ENG microwave systems are a thing of the past. Using the TrangoLINK-10 and the new TrangoLINK-45 will allow future growth ability since bandwidth needed for HD broadcasting is even greater. The Trango gear is future proof and cost effective!"

Dan Slentz
Chief Engineer
WHIZ AM/FM/TV
Zanesville, Ohio

"At WHIZ TV we began using the TrangoLINK-10™ (in conjunction with a Slingmedia Slingbox) for live remote TV event and news coverage. It has proven itself to be extremely reliable and cost effective. But our hilly terrain in southern Ohio can be problematic with sometimes shooting the TrangoLINK-10 signal. One unit is on the mast of our 42' pneumatic mast, while the master unit is on our TV tower at the 300-foot level. When we hit a "line-of-site snag," I found that using the Trango Falcon PLUS to shoot the audio/video signal from our EFP (Electronic Field Production) van to our ENG (Electronic News Gathering) van can get us out of valleys. To cite the best example, our Muskingum County fairgrounds actually sits in a valley about four miles from our TV tower. Normally the distance would not pose a problem for the TrangoLINK-10, but we would need about an 80-foot tower to get out of the fairgrounds to our tower. Instead we utilized the Falcon PLUS to shoot the audio and video from the fairground's lower level to the hillside where our second van was located. We then took the audio/video and fed it into the Slingbox, converted it to a 5.3 Mbps data stream, and returned that to the station where it hit a computer and was converted to baseband audio and video and put into our master switcher. In this case, our total equipment cost was under $6,000. Utilizing a double-shot like this with traditional broadcast gear would have cost over $60,000 in equipment! The quality of the audio and video was excellent, and delay was minimized at only 3 to 4 seconds (latency)."

Dan Slentz
Chief Engineer
WHIZ AM/FM/TV
Zanesville, Ohio