Teradek Bolt

[Frederic Chamberland]

Thanks Dan for the clarification ,

Now , after another day of fumbling around both units , I was able to link the paralinx transmitter to the Bolt receiver . There is a very specific path to follow but it is feasable . The opposite could not be done (bolt transmitter to paralinx receiver) but I was one step away from it...

Anyway , while this is entertaining news , it just confirms both manufacturers use the same technology here . And it allows me to have a backup sender...

I don't think there is something very special here mixing manufacturers since the technology behind consumer WHDI devices allows you to link to different brands (like bluetooth).

Guess I was just lucky to have both units to play with .

Now let's try this Bolt on the steadicam for the next two days . I have been using the paralinx for 3 months now and know what it can and cannot do . Let's hope this thing gives me similar results .

Cheers.

 

[Alan Rencher]

Frederic, have you ever tried hooking two Paralinx receivers to one Paralinx transmitter?

[Frederic Chamberland]

No, I only have one of each. I tried linking both receivers (Bolt and Paralinx) to one sender (paralinx) and could not do it. After linking both one at a time to the same sender, one receiver would "override" the other one.

[Dan Kanes]

Frederic, have you ever tried hooking two Paralinx receivers to one Paralinx transmitter?

 

Hey Alan,

 

Multiple Receivers via PARALINX ARROW is something coming quite soon - No penalty to anyone using 1:1 or planning on buying a 1:1 any time soon either. Not to HighJack the thread at all - this is meant to be as respectful as possible.

 

I'm always available at DAN at PARALINX dot NET if anyone has any questions about our system or products, and to anyone currently using our system, we would like to say thank you very much!

 

Best,

 

Dan

[Jon Beattie]

Had my first chance to play with the Bolt on set today. We were shooting on an epic at hotel chantelle in NYC.

 

Had transmitter mounted on top handle of epic powering the transmitter with a ptap cable plugged into 12v hirose on top stage. Went right from camera to bolt transmitter and used the loop thru into my sled. Receiver was horizontally mounted to monitor handle setup with battery on top of receiver and 5.6' tvlogic monitor.

 

The built quality of the transmitter is good with the connections and layout being quite simple and solid. It's all aluminum and seems like it'd take the bumps of production very well.

 

The receiver is abs plastic and very lightweight. Also super simple layout. With only the one pass through hole for hardware mounting it horizontal with a 1/4" 20. Wouldn't have mind a vertical 1/4" 20 threading but its not that critical. Noticed right away as Frederick pointed out that the receiver has a fan you can hear the low electric wooshing of.

 

Took the opertunitty while they were lighting to start walking around the building to see how it'd behave. Rig was in a 30'x40' room more or less about 10' from north wall at the mid point of room and the ceiling was 15' high. Walked to the stairs on the far side of the southern wall with the dj booth and storage closet inbetween the main room and stairs.

 

Was able to get up 2 flights of long stairs and into the roof top bar before it cut out. Transmitter on ground level and I was on 3rd floor with a few walls etc between before signal went out. Got that far once. The other times it cut out at nearly the top of the second flight of stairs. The ceiling of the 1st floor room with transmitter was tin, if I didn't already mention.

 

Took a walk outside going both north and south of location. Again rig in same place about 25' - 30' from doors with one wood panel wall separating entranceway and main room. As most buildings are in NYC exterior wall was mix of brick and concrete. Made it maybe 30’ - 35’ down the sidewalk before unit cut out.

 

As far as using the system shooting everything we did was in the same room with handheld monitor and Steadicam not being more than 30' apart. Never had a cut out or an issue. All running continually for 6 hours. Transmitter got hot. Not modulus hot but maybe laptop hot. No funky bootups or warm ups. Funny enough when batteries on my rig went down, they never knew. Epic was being powered with onboard battery and the Bolt's own internal battery kept an image going. A nice little thing if you ask me.

 

When the signal is weakening before a cutout you can see one of 2 things happen the image gets grainy or it seems to be in slow motion for a moment. You get a onscreen display (sort of) that says looking for signal etc. Only takes 2-4 seconds to reastablish image when in range. Maybe quicker. I didn't time it but it felt that fast. It was much faster than hpvideo system I tested in May. The hpvideo system took 8-15 seconds to reastablish signal.

 

One can always daisy chain receivers and transmitters to really beef up range. You could have a bolt receiver on a meridian transmitter or 2 bolt transmitters as its still way cheaper than meridian. To that you could even have an AC follow with receiver and they could be the one tethered to video village. It also shaves weight off the sled and keeps the radiation blast away from the boys or the brain.

 

Didn't test straight unobstructed line of site range. The 75' or so it did go when we went outside was through multiple walls and had a few bathrooms between transmitter and reciever. So for a location pretty good. Looking forward to seeing how it does on a sound stage and in a good old wooden house.

 

Size, weight, power consumption, signal quality (so far) & ease of use the bolt was a pleasure. It being as small as it is it'll make it really easy to plant and move units around. Could even have an assitant carry a receiver on longer setups and they could be tethered to video village.

 

Just a first test. Overall happy and optimistic about the system. I'd say I like it much more and is showing more promiss than the camwave ever did. It didn't do that thing the boxx can do needing to "warm up" for 10-15 minutes before it does what it's supposed to. Though its hard to compare the boxx and the bolt when you look at the price points or fully consider them competing products. In a side by side controlled comparison I'd expect the boxx to be better than the bolt as a pure transmitter. It better be for 5x the cost.

 

It's just day one though and like most first dates we usually cling to the good and not the bad. Though there wasn't much bad today.

[Frederic Chamberland]

Same here , first day with the Bolt on my sled .

Inside a monster house in the basement . Couple of stairs . Stayed on all day with no issue but one little glitch ; i lost the signal 20' away just turning around a wall . Came back couple of seconds after the break .

Loosing the signal means more then 7 seconds for me to reconnect...

Very,very nice feature Jon mentionned and I have to agree: the Tx stays connected with it's internal battery while we change the sled batteries. Image comes up very fast when camera is powered back on. Big plus.

Going outside tomorrow for more testing : cold weather here in montreal , we'll see what it's made of....

[David M. Aronson]

Can you have two bolt systems working in parallel to eachother? I'd love to have wireless telepromptor to the sled and wireless video back to video village.

[Mike Gailing]

Can you have two bolt systems working in parallel to eachother? I'd love to have wireless telepromptor to the sled and wireless video back to video village.

 

David,

 

Yes, we have tested up to 4 pairs working simultaneously in a small facility. You may also be able to squeeze more in depending on how far away you space them apart.

[Joshua Gitersonke]

I have been using the Bolt for a while now and the performance is pretty outstanding in open line of site use. Over 200 feet easily with some small obstructions. With nothing between I can see the 300 ft advertisement. The indoor use is also good, but not too many walls and doors can get in the way. The two receiver functionality works like it should. The device is very simple there aren't any complicated set up processes to go through, I have two of the receivers and they are plug and play. You just turn it on and plug it into a monitor. I haven't been able to test any of the sdi record through. I don't have a pix or samurai to experiment with right now. If your looking for a Transmitter that has basically the same wireless video functionality of a Paralinx, Boxx, Recon with all of the inbuilt qualities that a professional transmitter has and a great price... the Bolt is it. Lemo power port, SDI... The Bolt is awesome. I will have some pictures very soon.

I would say this is probably the great equalizer for all pro wireless transmitters. like the Boxx or Recon etc...

These are so inexpensive and work so well there is no reason to rent a more expensive system.

The transmitter is small and rugged. Stick it on top of your rig. It's not going to make a big deal.

I also tested this with a cube at the end of the signal line.

So the Bolt going from my Steadi to the receiver (which has two sdi outs.) to a video village monitor also to a Cube which was sending out to a couple of iPads on it's own network.

Nothing seemed to interfere. It all worked nicely.

The people that use the Cube are using it for specific uses. Of which it has many. The Bolt as an add on to this will get the signal to video village without delay for the director. And you can continue using the Cube as you have been.

The Family of Teradek seems to be growing and

[Frederic Chamberland]

The Bolt works as advertised but it's not perfect. As Joshua stated, it's a fantastic device when Tx and Rx are in line of sight. It's actually amazing. Going around one or two walls will be a new venture. Started a shot in a wine cellar with the door closed and the receiver was 10 feet away from the door; lost signal. As soon as the door would be ajar, connection came back.... Then receiver upstairs on first floor , we were in the basement, lots of mosaics images and signal drops.

Then outside at minus 5 celcius for about 2 hours : thing never had a hiccup.

If you want a strong signal and not care about where to put the receiver before every shot, look elsewhere. If you don't mind moving the Rx to the best spot on every shot, read on:

It's a plug and play device. you power it on and forget about it. No buttons, no channels.

Also attached is a picture of the Anton Bauer Matrix plate with the Bolt fitting nicely. I wired the lemo power directly inside the AB power plate, No wires hanging around. Added a 750 pin to put on a c-stand . Simple and efficient.

 

So I'm keeping the Bolt, because it's HD-SDI. It works for 90% of what I need to do. I'll be more than happy to add this to my kit and not have to raise much the rental price since it's that cheap to own.

And compared to the Paralinx , I must admit I have pretty much the same results on both units.

So for anyone who's on a budget and can live with HDMI connectors , I'd go for the Paralinx , also note Paralinx customer service was 5 stars; always easy to reach and answered every questions in the next hours.

If you have the extra $$ and want HD-SDI built in ( and don't care about customer service being 3 out of 5 stars), go with the Bolt.

 

My 2 cents.

[Thomas English]

"I would say this is probably the great equalizer for all pro wireless transmitters. like the Boxx or Recon etc..."

 

Please guys. Don't post a review biased based on price or value. The issue here is quality first and price second. Most people working this forum would rather you respected that detail as it costs us way more than any of the purchase price of these systems if we get fired off a job.

 

Please do not post comparisons unless you have extensive experience to the products you are comparing to.

[Aaron King]

I have to agree with Thomas' statement. I purchased the Bolt system and have been very pleased with it's performance so far in the testing I have done (no jobs with it yet), but it is not to the standard of the Boxx. I have worked with the Boxx on a few jobs and it is impeccable with all the necessary features for high end production. For majority of the jobs I do on an average basis the Bolt is going to work just fine, but if a larger job comes up I will let them know what I have and if they feel they need better they can (and probably will) rent a Boxx system. The same goes for the my Bartech, sometimes a larger job prefers to have a Preston system and they rent one, or an AC has their own.

 

I am more impressed with the Bolts performance over that of the CamWave, for which I am very happy. The price and performance of the Bolt is great, and it has allowed me to finally have an HD wireless option in my kit, rather than having to be tethered or have production give me a hard time because they now have to pay more to rent wireless (music videos don't like to spend money).

 

The Boxx is in my opinion the best transmitter on the market, but I don't feel it's intended to be a tool the average person owns. That's what rental houses are for. Let them buy it, and production rent it.

[Victor Lazaro]

I'm personally impressed by the born factor of these new hd transmitters.

[Frederic Chamberland]

Aaron just resumed perfectly my opinion about hd transmitting in 2012.

[William Demeritt]

Perhaps we should have a separate thread just for people to contribute their experiences with each transmitter package, which they bought and why (if they did) etc. Lots of people have had different experiences at this point, maybe it's time to start collating all these thoughts into one thread where people can read through and draw their own conclusion on what to recommend for rental, or even what to buy on their own?

 

And of course, the Great Transmitter Debacle will happen someday...