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Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 6:41 pm
by Linden deCarmo
We need to occasionally hook up a guest laptop to our ATEM via HDMI and it has to be done wirelessly or the guest could potentially get entangled up in HDMI/SDI cables.

There are quite a few threads on wireless HDMI solutions in the Black Magic Forums but many are older. Does anyone have a current recommendation and/or comparison of the preferred wireless HDMI solutions? Is the Nyrius Aries Pro the currently favored solution? How is the reliability of the Nyrius Aries Pro? Looking at several reviews of the unit, there are complaints of hardware quality control issues but I can't see if these are common or rare.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 10:04 pm
by Xtreemtec
Wireless for a guest laptop.. Dont.. It will give you more headaches then solutions. ;)

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 10:09 pm
by Linden deCarmo
It will give you more headaches then solutions.


Do you have an alternative wired or even remote desktop suggestion?

The HDMI will plug into a Decimator which will scale the resolution to an ATEM friendly resolution? We've tried multiple wired options and they all have issues with the HDMI connector or ethernet connectors coming loose from the laptop.

Tried NDI wireless. Too much of a lag and dropped packets.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 10:30 pm
by Daniel Binder
HDMI out + Decimator (or alternatively a Gefen VGA/HDMI to SDI scaler, for the legacy laptops) is what we use, never had a problem of dislocating cables.
There are all kinds of HDMI cables out there with various kinds of locking mechanisms that should keep cables in place. I never tried any of them, but it might be worth a try. Just google "locking HDMI cable"...

Any wireless HDMI solution would probably include some kind of HDMI-stick to be plugged into the laptop that would probably be more likely to dislodge than a cable.

cheers,

Daniel

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 10:55 pm
by alexlindsay
We've had success with HDMI to Decimator. We've also done HDMI to Decimator to Teradek with success. Decimators, for 1080p signals, have been the most successful computer converter we've used.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:00 pm
by Linden deCarmo
Hi Daniel,

never had a problem of dislocating cables.


Let me describe our use case better. This is for a church and the laptop would be in the center of the platform. The concern is no matter what we do, at least a few feet of the cable will be exposed and the guest speaker could trip over it or accidentally hit it and knock it lose. Not to mention that the visible cables look sloppy in the middle platform where everyone will see them.

I will check out the locking HDMI cables, but I don't think they will solve issue #1 (tripping) and they can't solve issue #2 (sloppy look). This is what's pushing us to a wireless solution.

We tried wired for two guests and weren't happy with the results.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 2:57 pm
by Xtreemtec
We always use a decimator-hx or cross when we need to plug in a foreign laptop. Never failed us to get it right the first time. As the decimator will handle the laptop resolutions. And send a clean SDI to the Atem in the right resolution.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 3:21 pm
by Linden deCarmo
Xtreemtec wrote:We always use a decimator-hx or cross when we need to plug in a foreign laptop. Never failed us to get it right the first time. As the decimator will handle the laptop resolutions. And send a clean SDI to the Atem in the right resolution.


Yes, we're very pleased with the Decimators. Works seamlessly with Windows laptops and Macbooks. Are you then advocating a wired HDMI run to the Decimator rather than wireless? If so, how can I solve the two issues with cables I described in my use case (looks sloppy and potential for tripping)?

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 4:27 pm
by dpictMEDIA
Depending on how much futzing "dorking around" you are prepared to deal with, I've use teradek units even old ones to send signals from a laptop before. ( laptop to TX to RX to decimator to ATEM ) No matter what, everytime you do something with wireless you will have signal loss some glitch or something just had a battery die. In minor league sports every team wants wireless cameras roaming around but they have less that 10% of the budget to pull it off properly. If your wireless system in the the 5.8 Ghz and it is less than a few thousand bucks, forget it. Maybe a custom docking station or make some prop or flower arrangement to hide wires etc.
With cheap wireless technology you will wind up saying words that are best kept out of a church environment. I've tried.

On a side note www.nofilmschool.com is having a group buy on teradek bolt's just saw that 2min ago.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 4:30 pm
by Frank Engel
Presumably the laptop won't be floating in mid-air.

If whatever stand/table it is sitting on happens to have a concealed area underneath, consider bringing the cable up through the stand and out a hole near the laptop, if that is something you can do - it probably won't be however...

If it has a tube structure of some sort, consider using cable ties or similar to tie the cable to the stand, which should help to keep it a bit more tidy.

If you can make a hole in the floor close to the table and run the cable underneath the floor, bring the cable up as close as possible to the stand to help remove the tripping hazard; you can get . If you can't do that and need to run the cable across the floor, either tape it down (gaffer tape) or use some kind of cord cover or track.

Another option that might be available sometimes would be to have the guest speaker place the laptop somewhere off-platform and control it with a wireless remote.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 5:40 pm
by Xtreemtec
1.5 meter HDMI to the Decimator and from there SDI to the mixer. The decimator can always be consealed somewhere..

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Sat Dec 14, 2019 9:08 am
by scotmacman
Can I suggest a different approach? It doesn’t answer your original question, but might offer some compromise thoughts?
Perhaps your desire for a clean look at the front of your church overrides even the guest’s desire to need their laptop in front of them?
Can you mitigate the need for them to have their laptop with them at all? Can you ask some “friendly guests” Why do you need your laptop in front of you? . Perhaps it’s a bad experience in the past with controlling the presentation? Then buy some top-notch presentation remotes (D’san Perfect Cue / Interspace MicroCue) to give them confidence. Perhaps they want to see what slide they’re on? Give them a repeater screen at the back of the hall, or behind some flowers on the floor. Or give them a tablet/iPad on the lectern and send them their signal back rather than them sending it to you — that direction is more of a reliable path (screen share for example). Perhaps they want to see their slide notes? Offer to print them off... (not a tech solution at all but perhaps wins over ‘cables on the floor’?) Some laptops that support multiple external displays could have slides on one external screen and presenter notes on another screen — share that screen to a tablet, and give them that.
Again, sorry this doesn’t answer your question directly, but I guess I was interested to see if there was a different approach.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Sat Dec 14, 2019 9:15 am
by scotmacman
Another thought:
If you do end up having to run cables can I recommend Slipway tape? You can get them from a variety of online retailers: LeMark is one that came first for me on Google.
It’s matt black, so non-shiny for cameras; is designed for floor use; has a non-adhesive centre strip, so no “tacky” cables afterwards! And also allows for cables to be pulled through easily so if — after running the tape — you find yourself half a metre short, you can pull more on the cable as it’s not stuck to the tape holding it down; if you roll it out with two people and get it straight it’s actually surprisingly neat and ‘sharp’ — like it was “meant to be there”. Lastly, on the days you don’t have a guest then you don’t lay the tape that day.
The tape isn’t cheap, but — for my money anyway — it’s worth it!

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 6:07 pm
by Linden deCarmo
I think it might be useful to provide some more details on our church service use case. I really do appreciate all the suggestions so far though.

1. The pulpit is completely transparent. Can't hide cables anywhere around it.
2. The pulpit is moved to the center of the podium/platform just for the sermon. Otherwise, its not present in the middle on the platform and that's probably 60+% of the time. This really make hiding any cables in/on it difficult.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 6:14 pm
by Linden deCarmo
scotmacman wrote:Can you ask some “friendly guests” Why do you need your laptop in front of you? .


Excellent point. This is the first thing I ask when its requested. We have a machine running ProPresenter hooked up a stage display and projector that can take PowerPoint and/or Keypoint files and this works for 99+% of our guests. When they find out what the setup can do, they are fine.

But occasionally, there are guests with very complicated presentations and they need the ability to jump forward/backward 20-40 slides at a time depending on timing/congregational questions etc. They also want to look at their notes and see what the upcoming slides will be. Our current stage display isn't large enough for that. Its on my To Do list to get a larger stage display but we're not there yet.

As of now, we don't have a solution for guests with these type of requirements except to hook their laptop up directly. Hopefully, I think I've explained all the background to the use case now. Should've provided this info up front. Sorry about that.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Wed Dec 18, 2019 2:44 pm
by scotmacman
A few more thoughts...
Copy their presentation to a MacBook and AirPlay to an Apple TV plugged in to the ATEM?
Barco ClickShare (Likely expensive)? Have used it once in a clients premises. Worked fine, as advertised on both and PC.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Wed Dec 18, 2019 5:02 pm
by Linden deCarmo
scotmacman wrote:Barco ClickShare (Likely expensive)? Have used it once in a clients premises. Worked fine, as advertised on both and PC.


Thanks for the pointer. Wasn't aware of that solution. Seems to be limited to 30fps though.

Does anyone have experience with both the Aries Pro and the Barco solutions?

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Wed Dec 18, 2019 5:18 pm
by Linden deCarmo
While researching the Barco, ran across this NorthVision product that reports to have virtual zero latency at 4k resolutions and is uncompressed (there was a video on YouTube that compared NorthVision to Barco). Operates at a high frequency that doesn't interfere with 2.4 and 5ghz wifi devices. Going to check them out also.

https://www.northvision.com/copy-of-ac45

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Wed Dec 18, 2019 6:11 pm
by Charles Papert
There is a very small and powerful transmitter that I have adopted after owning the Teradek 2000 which cost many times more. The Amimon Connex Mini has a retail price of $1699 and utilizes the same chipset as the $10K Teradek 3000 (Amimon supplies the boards for all brands of FCC approved HD transmitters as they have the patents on it). It's designed for drones, so it's very small and lightweight. The Mini has a range of 1600 feet line of sight, and for $300 more you can get the Connex Fusion which doubles that range to 3300 feet. There are some caveats..the transmitter has micro-HDMI connector so you will the appropriate adaptor cable to full size HDMI, and you may need some third party power solutions (Camera Motion Research has a full suite of affordable adaptors, batteries etc for the Connex line). But it is an incredibly capable and reliable transmitter for the money. I use them all the time on large scale episodic television and commercial sets and they perform extremely well.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Wed Dec 18, 2019 7:05 pm
by Xtreemtec
Linden deCarmo wrote:While researching the Barco, ran across this NorthVision product that reports to have virtual zero latency at 4k resolutions and is uncompressed (there was a video on YouTube that compared NorthVision to Barco). Operates at a high frequency that doesn't interfere with 2.4 and 5ghz wifi devices. Going to check them out also.

https://www.northvision.com/copy-of-ac45

60Ghz.. Not sure about your country. But it's a licensed band in Europe. You need a special permit for that stuff..

Also the higher the frequency, the less range you get with the same amount of power. So basically comes down to that will have much less range then a 5.8 Ghz setup.. ;)

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 11:28 am
by Linden deCarmo
The NorthVision solution is out of our price range in the near term so we're going with HDMI cables for our January event. The current plan is to do a short HDMI cable run from the laptop on the pulpit to the floor and then a longer HDMI run to the Decimator. The longer run can be attached to the floor and hopefully avoid the kicking loose and/or tripping concerns.

I'd appreciate any recommendations/suggestions for a reliable HDMI coupler and/or extender to connect the two cables. Also, if you have an alternative approach to doing the HDMI run, please post it.

Thanks.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 4:54 am
by Jschroeder
You could get a short range 10-30m wireless hdmi solution and have the receiver connected nice and close at the front of the stage so it would only be 5m away making it reasonably reliable.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Sun Feb 02, 2020 4:50 pm
by Koko Pudja
The most budget friendly way will be using Hollyland Cosmo 500, 600 series to connect the laptop wireless. It is way cheaper than Teradek Bolt series but it has been rock solid to me. The receiver end can be plugged to a MD-HX to keep the incoming signal matched to your ATEM setting.
The latency is zero because it is rated for live multi-camera live production.

If you can live with very few latency, you can even save more by using their lower end Mars 300 series

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Sun Feb 02, 2020 5:50 pm
by Ian Morrish
For Windows Laptops, any i5 or better has built in WiDi and can connect to a wireless display.
For receiving this I use an older netgear Push2TV and a hdmi splitter so you have the confidence monitor on front row (also provides hdcp) and the other output into an sdi up-down-cross converter to go to the switcher.
Nice thing about this is it is point to point WiFi, no other wireless infrastructure required.
Latency can be a few 100 ms but for ppt that shouldn't be a problem.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Tue Feb 04, 2020 10:42 pm
by Linden deCarmo
Hi Ian,

Thanks for the response.

Ian Morrish wrote:For Windows Laptops, any i5 or better has built in WiDi and can connect to a wireless display.


But if there are a lot people in the building, the 2.4 & 5Ghz channels can still get full and drop connections.

Ian Morrish wrote:Nice thing about this is it is point to point WiFi, no other wireless infrastructure required.
Latency can be a few 100 ms but for ppt that shouldn't be a problem.


Our guests sometimes show video, so its not just PowerPoint.

For January, we went with HDMI cables and other than having to connect the cables before the sermon, the audience didn't notice anything different than normal. Very smooth.

Re: Wireless HDMI solution that is reliable and low latency

PostPosted: Wed Feb 05, 2020 7:02 am
by Platon Kavvadias
I have used the Nyrius Aries Pro in a similar setup in order to have the minimum cables exposed.
The Nyrius receiver was a few meters on the side of the stage, so the distance between the TX and RX was around 10 meters. Then the RX hooked on a scaler and the sdi back to the switcher.
The speaker had only to hook the hdmi TX on his laptop.

Although I never had a problem in "speakers" setup, whenever I tried this on music festivals I always had problems with frequency noise. So, if you're "clean" it will work. If you have a lot of wireless devices (microphones, headsets, wifi, pos, etc) try it first.