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Please help ! Remotes

J

joshzz

We're planning to broadcast some high school games by cell phone.

That in itself is not a problem but is there a device that will connect two headsets to one phone so that I can have both announcers with head set covering a game?

At the end of the game I would like to plug in another head-set for guests such as coaches and high school players.

Appreciate your help in this matter! josh
 
We do probably 26~27 football games each year on our two FM's, probably another 20 basketball games. We bought a third station, and did three H.S. FB tournament games this year on that station--a first for that station. Made several thousand on three games. Usually use either Marti or wired phone line, but one tournament site we had to use cell-phone. The idiots who designed the brand new stadium made no provision for running telephone lines to the press box.

This is what you want:

http://www.bswusa.com/proditem.asp?item=REMOTEMIXSPORT

Much better than the Conex (I inherited the small Conex unit--not very good).

Then, on the other end:

http://www.bswusa.com/proditem.asp?item=351ART

Use this on the output of your telephone connection on the studio end to sweeten the audio. Many folks just use a hybrid, but most hybrids do not provide for any equalizing of the audio. Granted, you will loose the ability to talk back to the field through the hybrid, but I just use a telephone with a mute switch & yell at them during the breaks if necessary. The JK unit has a hybrid on it's end so you can hear return audio (depending on the cell phone wiring) in the headphones at the remote site.

As a practical matter, try to grab a wired line wherever possible. We can often borrow school lines, some schools have extra lines installed both for football and basketball. Depends on their AD. Best to have an incoming 800 number at the studio, keeps everyone happy.

You will need to use headset style mikes with some noise canceling. The big weakness with cell phone feeds is that the digital transmission system does not like a lot of extraneous noise--the audio seems to "swim." Especially a problem in basketball where your people are broadcasting from the sidelines with the crowd behind them. Sometimes there is so much crowd noise the digital signal processing dissolves your signal into unintelligible gibberish.
 
Recently I've run into problems finding cellphones that my carrier can provide that will work with the JKAudio supplied cellphone cable. I've gone to using the Remotemix 4 or using the Daptor 3 with a Remotemix Sport and going the bluetooth route. That way you can use any bluetooth capable phone for broadcasts.

RFB
 
josh said:
We're planning to broadcast some high school games by cell phone.

That in itself is not a problem but is there a device that will connect two headsets to one phone so that I can have both announcers with head set covering a game?

At the end of the game I would like to plug in another head-set for guests such as coaches and high school players.

Appreciate your help in this matter! josh
Click to expand...

By cell phone? Wow that's so cheap. The quality has got to be awful, worse than two tin cans and a string. Not to mention dropped cell calls.

A good Marti RPU can't be that expensive. ???
 
While cell isn't ideal, you're talking at least 3 grand for a marti setup, THEN you need to contract with an engineer to find an open frequency and apply for it... compare that to under a grand for cell phone, and that may be the only option. I prefer Marti's and codecs, but sometimes you've got to work with what you can afford.
 
Marti's are good for when you are within reasonable range of your station. When you've got an away game quite a distance from your main site it's not going to work.
 
If you're in a metro area, you might consider a iphone (5gb plan) with the tieline app and a bridge-it back at the studio. It'll sound MUCH better. With that being said, if you're going the route of just normal cell phone quality, you might want to check into a tellular unit. SCMS and others have them. Some units provide a normal POTS connection on them. A lesser provides a mic and line out jack. Either way, the signal is MUCH stronger than a normal cell phone which can come in handy on rual games. I have a couple friends in small market radio that use them (the ones with POTS jacks on them). Several times they've put the Tellular outside, fed it power and a long phone cord to save a otherwise unairable remote because the cell signal wouldn't make it into the gym.
 
reelyreal said:
While cell isn't ideal, you're talking at least 3 grand for a marti setup, THEN you need to contract with an engineer to find an open frequency and apply for it... compare that to under a grand for cell phone, and that may be the only option. I prefer Marti's and codecs, but sometimes you've got to work with what you can afford.
Click to expand...

It might work if the talent is in a very quiet location but what about the background noise? Through most cell phones it sounds just awful. At some point you have to ask are people really going to listen to this?

Okay 3 grand for the Marti and then get an engineer to apply for an open frequency. A one time expense that will last for years and can be used for all kinds of things. Makes your remotes sound like they are in the studio.

As for the away games, find a POTS line or maybe a radio station you can do a reciprocal agreement with.

While we're on the subject, there is a problem with some small stations that don't power down at night as called for in their license because they are doing these high school games and they want to be heard.
 
Barix has a new service called Reflector. It connects to the internet with no need for setup, bypassing firewalls.

The send unit is about $320.00. The receive under $200.00. Connect your old sports system to the rca line in jack on the Instreamer. It will automatically feed the Exstreamer. This is so simple it would require a Phd in stupid for it not to work. Buy the More Expensive Instreamer at $500.00 and you also have closures you can send.

All Indiana Schools are being coerced by the IHSAA into having WiFi at all schools. Use a wireless router and you would have the ability to go to any school with no issues as far as getting ethernet. Since ethernet is easier to route than phone as it doesn't require a dedicated circuit, this might be available in any school hard wired.

One station is using a cheap laptop for their ballgames. Skype sounds better than any phone line I've ever heard. The laptop makes it easy to connect to any open network. They use the computer to logmein to control automation and play underwriting or spots from the studio. $400 investment.
 
ChiefEngineer said:
All Indiana Schools are being coerced by the IHSAA into having WiFi at all schools. Use a wireless router and you would have the ability to go to any school with no issues as far as getting ethernet.
Click to expand...

Now for the reality check: What happens if - for ANY reason - a connection to the school's WiFi can't be established? That's right. No broadcast.

The best setup is the one that doesn't depend on a facility's connectivity to get a broadcast on the air. Use a cell phone, Skype, Barix, Tieline, whatever - but come knowing you HAVE connectivity instead of depending on using the building's setup.
 
SRP said:
ChiefEngineer said:
All Indiana Schools are being coerced by the IHSAA into having WiFi at all schools. Use a wireless router and you would have the ability to go to any school with no issues as far as getting ethernet.
Click to expand...

Now for the reality check: What happens if - for ANY reason - a connection to the school's WiFi can't be established? That's right. No broadcast.

The best setup is the one that doesn't depend on a facility's connectivity to get a broadcast on the air. Use a cell phone, Skype, Barix, Tieline, whatever - but come knowing you HAVE connectivity instead of depending on using the building's setup.
Click to expand...

Absolutely right. You can't depend on a facility to provide connectivity. I did a full 15 game high school football season--all the way to the state finals--this past season and only had working facility connectivity for our Comrex Access at one school site. (NOT our "home" coverage school either, but I have had some productive chats with the Superintendent there about getting that fixed.) Most sites either have had no WiFi, or the WiFi is set up in such a restrictive way that the Comrex can't connect out. We wound up on the 3G air card with cell phone backup at most places.

There are just too many variables when it comes to trying to get an internet connection or even a working POTS line at school sites. That's where a Marti and a cell phone pays off.
 
Let me enter the real world. One school we have a full year hookup on a POTS line. We want this to be the most reliable (poor quality audio). One line runs to the basketball gym with an off premise extension to the football field. Every year we have the sports guy check the line (Each sport) and every year we call repair. What used to be Indiana Bell reliability is now :" I don't know how the Hell this is hooked up because whover hooked it up didn't do it right." Ma Bell hooked it up repair genius. He didn't even know what an off premise extension was. We still have linebacker on the lines fortunately but this guy claimed anything on premise wasn't covered.

What used to be relaible rock solid now has the support of someone in the Phillipines running support. Nothing is a given.

If you hookup with the A.D. at any school they see the need to promote their programs and jump hoops to help. At New Castle IN the tourney has been done many years now with a WIFI hookup. We check it ahead of time.

Now with a simple plug in usb card and additional units with whip antennas for bad sites we have WIFI so to speak everywhere. Tether an Android, another way. A new droid app allows the phone to operate as a WIFI hotspot. Works well.

Again, the days of showing up expecting something to work are gone. We send a cell phone out with every dedicated line broadcast.
 
It's hard to be the reliability of a good marti system. With that being said, a nice Tieline, when you have a good internet connection or telco, can sure sound good and be much easier to set up.
 
One of our stations is licensed to a small town in the metro; the local "Class A" (small school category) high school in that town is a perennial powerhouse in both football and basketball. Our station was JSA'ed for many years by a local cluster before we bought it last year--they decided the station was all music, never to be polluted by H.S. sports,--and covered that local H.S. on another station in their cluster.

Another "country" Class A school in an adjoining county was hot this year in football--so we decided to cover their play-off games. Sent the new sales guy down the narrow winding road to the county seat to sell game coverage at $100 a game; once he found the road back to the big city he came in with this wide grin and a fist full of orders (none of the other "big city" stations paid any attention to this team).

Now, there was --count them- ONE cell phone tower that covered the town, and it was Verizon, not ATT, our carrier. Poking around, we found we could get a phone line from the school's bus garage--if we ran 250' of wire up to the press box..so we ordered a line in for the play-off game. On Monday, for a Saturday broadcast. I was stringing phone line Saturday morning when the Telco guy arrived, first play-off game went off without a hitch, the local boys smoked the visiting Catholic H.S. team from up north.

Next week, of course, we were all set, line was already in, our crew did a leisurely set-up. The visiting team? The big guns from our city of license. Other station shows up, figuring they would do the game on cell like they usually do. No service, cell tower down. Didn't get on until half time.

Suspect by then all their audience was listening to our broadcast. Kicker #1: The powerhouse ran out of juice, our little "country" team went on to the 3rd round. Kicker #2: That game was played at a neutral site, the brand new field of a Class AA team. Which was designed without any provision for telephone, internet or any other kind of wired communications. Luckily we had good cell phone coverage.
 
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