INDIANAPOLIS - Wheelhouse Media is a full service creative agency with directors, producers, writers, editors and marketers who specialize in creating original content for motion pictures, television, commercials, and marketing campaigns.
To stay at the cutting edge of production technology, in 2013 we acquired Shearer Brilliance, a digital media company skilled in IP video backhaul and live streaming. Once we were armed with the technical know-how for moving digital video back and forth between events and our studio, we began to take on a number of large clients. As our client list grew, so too did our need for reliable and sufficient bandwidth for moving live video over the Internet. Although most of our event locations offered some form of connectivity, including fiber connections, we quickly realized a single connection wouldn’t be sufficient for our needs. We began to look for a product that would allow us to scale our bandwidth requirements while also providing redundancy.
SHOPPING FOR A BETTER SYSTEM
The first product we tried allowed us to bond built-in ISP cards from Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, and it worked rather well at first. However, several issues arose, including the inability to bond together a mixture of Internet connections such as fiber, DSL and BGAN. We needed a product that was cost-effective, portable, customizable to our event needs, and one that came with a dependable support team for whenever we might have questions or issues. We were familiar with Teradek and reached out to them to steer us in the right direction in terms of a bonding device.
As we were already familiar with the reliability of Teradek’s Cube systems, the company suggested that we evaluate their Bond product, as it would give us the option to use whatever 3G/4G LTE network we wanted and also would allow us to simultaneously bond wireless connectivity together with existing hardline connections such DSL and fiber. The best part about the Teradek system was the thousands of dollars we saved by avoiding equipment leasing contracts and using the cellular modems that we already owned.
SEAMLESS TRANSITION
We decided to purchase the Teradek Bond and immediately put it to the test at a TORC racing event at a venue that had dedicated fiber connectivity. As luck would have it, just minutes into the show the fiber line failed. However, no one noticed this failure as the Bond divided our bandwidth across 3G/4G LTE connections seamlessly and without interruption. Bond’s ability to adapt in real time to changing bandwidth conditions meant that the video being fed back to our studio and clients remained solid. And at the end of the event, we changed locations and bonded six separate Internet connections together to provide enough bandwidth to FTP our ARRI Raw files back to an editor thousands of miles away.
Simply put, the Teradek Bond is the most versatile and capable device for streaming and IP video backhaul in our arsenal. Its ability to bond together nearly any sort of Internet connection, its very affordable price, and its incredibly small design has changed the way we work with digital video.
Chris Shearer is president of innovation and technology at Wheelhouse Media and specializes in IP delivery systems and long range wireless video. He may be contacted at chris@wheelhousemedia.tv.
For additional information, contact Teradek at 888-941-2111 or visit www.teradek.com
