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Anyone with Telos Z/IP experience?

317C50KW

317C50KW

I'm already planning for football backhaul this fall. I've used dial-up codecs, ISDN and the Access boxes. Obviously ISDN and Access are the most stable but
ISDN service while available to me will not work logistically this season. The Access is great, the price of admission isn't. So I'm giving some thought to the Telos Z/IP this season. The home stadium and most of the away venues have wired IP connections or wifi in their press boxes. I don't feel comfortable with a 3G/4G solution because we're in a major metro area and the home field is in the shadow of the downtown business district and tons of cell traffic. We're also buying the time for the broadcasts, chances are we'll have to provide a turn-key solution to the station.

So is anyone using the Z/IPs and can you tell me what you like and don't like about them. Again this for remote use, not STL. I plan to get a demo pair before I commit.

And is anyone using Luci Live/Luci Live Lite? I see where one of the vendors is offering an Z/IP-Luci Live Lite bundle.

Thanks!
 
I have looked at them as well, and like what i see but.. I've never seen a stadium where the LAN or WiFi was reliable enough bet a broadcast on it. ISDN as old as it is still works the best in the reliability camp. That said, you might look at the tieline offerings. I have used there commander series with cell data for regular broadcast and they offer a ISDN card with it so you could take advantage of ISDN and utilize the LAN or WiFi when ISDN was not an option. Same options go for the access but as you said, its our of your price point.
 
Try the Tieline BridgeIT too. They're relatively cheap, just bought a pair for a client for $2,850. There is forward error correction and a jitter buffer that can adapt to some rather nasty IP situations.

Have used some as an STL, and some on a remote basis. The most complicated remote I've done with them was live from a beach (yep!). Used a 1W wifi booster on the remote end with a yagi pointed at the hotel some 3/4 of a mile away and another yagi/booster at the hotel pointing at the beach. Secured them with WEP to keep people off the wifi and it worked flawlessly.

IF the network connections at some of your sites are going to be really marginal, I might lean towards the Telos unit.

Also find out if the stadium wifi is going out over the same WAN as you are plugged into their LAN. If so, it may be problematic. You would want to do some form of QoS, but getting that done at each place might be a problem.
 
bradgoehl said:
I have used there commander series with cell data for regular broadcast
Click to expand...

Bradgoehl-

Not to hijack the thread, but what was the set-up here? By "cell data", you're not talking about CSD cell service, right?

Thanks, CO
 
Pros: sound quality is great & relatively easy to set up, sending & receiving closures is a breeze, and you can have a "fallback" network connection set up in case the primary one fails
Cons: sometimes hiccups when adjusting bandwidth - haven't had the same issues with the Comrex running over the same Internet connection(s), and any issues with the unit require sending the logfile to Telos to debug

For remotes, I would go with the Comrex Access units or the Tielines. The Zip/One units are better suited to STL uses (in that area they are great and would use them myself)
 
I've been evaluating how to do sports this year. Ten years ago telco
was king. Blueboxes and Matrix for games and even STL. They stayed
up for weeks. ISDN was around too. Now telco service is crap,
2 weeks for loop repair and the only ISDN tech is 150 miles away. Most schools/
offices here use VOIP which won't support Bluebox or Matrix. Our cell
structure isn't very stable either and can't afford new Comrex stuff.

I went back to line extenders which don't care about analog or digital. They
work well if you:
1) Put a compressor ahead of them, they overdirve easly.
2) Place EQ on the studio end and set it by ear for the best sound not for
flat response, you'll need to roll off some bass, watch for clipping.
3) Never use wirth a cell phone, cell response won't support extenders.
4) Use a device at the game in the analog line between phone and handset
to inject.

When I can't get a wired line I use cell which actually sounds nice but won't
pass music like the marching band.

I find most school wifi is unstable and you lose the stream, wireless the same
and even if you have connection Skype sounds worse than cell! If I could
get a cat5 into the net I'd stream good old WMA to a server at my station.
But most schools don't supply it.
 
Everyone, thanks for your thoughts, keep 'em coming.

I'm lucky in a sense that 2 away stadiums are new/recent construction and a 3rd has remodeled their facilities. They all have solid ethernet pipes, I used them last year with an Access. One away stadium shouldn't be a problem, though I think it's only wifi the final one will probably cause me the most grief since it's in a small suburb and it's an old facility. The school districts here are very helpful.

The home field is the question mark. In the evening we have a beautiful view of downtown Dallas and see the Cedar Hill towers blinking in the distance. It's an RF jungle though. ISDN has been the most reliable at that location and I can have it re-installed (AT&T) but I still need a solution for the away games. I'm going to be asking the district's IT folks to give the two broadcast booths their own ethernet/IP addresses this year but if that fails I guess I can go back to ISDN.

Prior to this coming season I had Bluebox/ISDN/Access available to use. Due to the telco's infrastructure Bluebox was the most problematic. I'm working with a new rights holder and the broadcasts are on a new signal.

I want to get this right. But I'm also willing to be an IP guinea pig since it's the future. We could find ourselves visiting schools in Verizon (no ISDN) service areas in the future. As suggested by one poster, I'll certainly consider the Access. And thankfully 4G-LTE is widely available.

Oh, and ellenparks will be happy to know that I've got the send unit of a dual-line Comrex sitting on top of a file cabinet in my studio/office. Got it free from someone who didn't know what it was! Need the back end though!
 
I've had experience with Tieline and the Telos Z/IP One. I agree, for STL use, that the Z/IP is a great option. The advantage of it is that is dynamically adjusts for worsening conditions by racheting down the audio quality and buffer to prevent issues. Tielines have an adaptive buffer, but that's about it. So, for STL use, the Telos Z/IP One is really the best option. For remote sports broadcasting, however, it might not be the easiest product to use. if your planning on dragging aorund a mixer and headphone amp, it might be just fine. The real advantage of the Tieline stuff IMHO is that you can get a iMix or Field Commander G3 that has effectively a "board" built into it. It's real buttons, with no touch screen wierdness. I personally run one using a cradlepoint for cellular use. One of my clients uses a pair of them with the USB port module (sold seperately) to use their 4G ATT stick. I have another client that has a pair of them with the 3G internal module from ATT. All of them seem to work pretty good, but occationally run into network issues. I also run two full-time STLs with Tieline Bridge-IT units at my main job. I really wished I had more buffer time and adaptive bitrate with them like the Z/IP One. They are currently limited to 950ms which at times can let a glitch through wereas the Telos unit can be set for several seconds of buffer. So, to re-enterate what the previous person said, I think I would probably rather use the Z/IP One for STL purposes, but for sports stuff Tieline's integrated offerings are probably your best bet.
 
Most schools, if you can get analog POTS in the booth, you can most likely get DSL too. At least a lot of then here in north Jersey have POTS installed to the booth, directly, bypassing the school's VOIP or PBX. Usually those POTS lines can be made to be a DSL.

Luckily for home games, it's a 1 mile Marti shot back to the studio. Have the IFB on the subcarrier of one of the translators for the AM.
 
I was using their 3G data cards with Verizon and AT&T with a high gain antenna. They now make a USB 3G/4G adapter card for cell data
 
BTW anyone know of a used Comrex LX-t frequency extender they might have lieing around? Either the lx-t or lxtr I'd be interested in taking it off your hands
 
Here are two testimonials - unsolicited - about using Z/IP ONEs...

Dave Barnett, CE at KVMR.. http://www.thebdr.net/articles/audio/codecs/RI-ZIPOne.pdf

Dave Anderson, CE at The JOY FM.. http://www.rwonline.com/article/joy-fm-enjoys-the-sound-of-the-z-ip/214740

For getting more reliable Internet service to non-wired locations, consider this...
http://www.cradlepoint.com/products/small-business-home-office-routers/mbr95-wireless-4g-3g-router

or this

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/...t&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=6411

I've got both and have been very impressed with the speeds and reasonably low latency.

And here's advice for pre-testing a given location:
http://telos-systems.com/techtalk/IP-Audio-Connection-Tests.pdf

With the above information, you might have more confidence in choosing an IP-Audio codec. Any IP-Audio codec needs a decent IP connection. Some IP-codecs can do *some* mitigation of dodgy connections, but you have to get the bits through.

BTW, if you're wondering about "is this a good idea?" CBS Sports regularly backhauls 1080i HD video over the Public Internet for on-air broadcast use. If you give some modicum of care to this IP-Audio stuff, it can work wonderfully.

Best,

Kirk Harnack
VP-Telos Systems
 
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