New Wireless Products & Technology from ABonAir [Webinar Recording]

[Transcript] New Wireless Technology & Products from ABonAir

Jim Jachetta (00:00:01):

All right. Good morning, everyone. I’m Jim Jachetta CTO and co-founder of VidOvation. Today we have

my good friend and colleague Arie Vered from ABonAir, Arie has been in the broadcast space doing

business development for what, more than 30 years. Tell everyone about your history in ABonAir.

Arie Vered (00:00:30):

Okay. So I’m Arie and I’m based in Israel, we are in Israeli company. I’m taking care and responsible for

the US market in the company. I have more than 30 years background on broadcasting in companies,

such as Harmonic, [inaudible 00:00:58] and other companies. I have a technical background and I love

have to do the business with ABonAir in the United States. Now about ABonAir, what we are doing we

are doing wireless systems for connecting to broadcasting cameras and the broadcasting, the video

signal, by microwave from the camera to the control room. So we are actually in the last mile. We are in

the last mile and we are more in the live event, a live production and sports events, sports production.

Next slide please.

Jim Jachetta (00:02:02):

Well, before I go to the next slide Arie, I want to get a feeling for our listeners today, if they are currently

using a wireless technology, if it’s something they’re using now, but something they plan to use, if

they’re not using it now, something they plan to use in the future, or let us know if you are just curious

today, but really don’t have any plans for wireless in the near future. Oh, let me see if people can do a

quick vote.

Arie Vered (00:02:39):

Okay.

Jim Jachetta (00:02:43):

Well, so while we’re waiting for the votes to come in we were discussing this earlier, Arie why was

ABonAir founded? What was the mission statement? What was missing in the marketplace that you feel

… The problem that ABonAir solves fundamentally at a high level? I don’t want you to spoil the slides

you have coming, but what is the mission statement or the problem that ABonAir solves?

Arie Vered (00:03:23):

That’s okay. The problem was that even today the camera is connected to the control room by wire. So

it makes a lot of limitation. You cannot go anywhere if you want to have your angle of the photo or the

angle of shooting something. You cannot go anywhere because you are connected with a wire to the

control room. So, first of all the challenge was to broadcast the signal from the camera to the control

room in a wireless way, without a cable. So with this wireless technology and wireless way, you can …

You don’t have limitation. You can go very nearby to the player in case of fail. For a football game, you

can go, you can shoot anybody, either a player or somebody that they watch the game. You don’t have

any constraints or any limitation that is caused by the cable. Now, the next question was, what is the

frequency that we are going to use?

Jim Jachetta (00:04:55):

Right, right.

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Arie Vered (00:04:57):

Yeah. So at that time, there were a few choices you can pick up. And we picked up the five gigahertz

because of five gigahertz is unlicensed. So you don’t need-

Jim Jachetta (00:05:21):

It’s free. Right.

Arie Vered (00:05:22):

For that. It’s free. So that is why we go to the five gigahertz. And because of our strong technical

background of the R&D people in wifi they actually invented something that is hoping, especially

algorithm to … Against interference. If there are interference and hoping for one frequency to the other,

and this is one of our strengths. Another one is the delay. The delay is critical, especially in sport or in

any live concert. You don’t want to have lip sync and you don’t want to have a delay. So we are the

lowest delay, our system has the lowest delay in the market. Is seven millisecond less than a frame, it’s

unnoticeable.

Jim Jachetta (00:06:24):

Right. Yeah. A common question we get Arie, and we’ll get to the slides, but a common question we get

is there are more expensive systems out there, they have about anywhere from 30 to 90 milliseconds of

latency, but some of them will operate on the seven gig band on a licensed band. And in our experience

deploying the ABonAir product and in your experience customers sometimes have a fear of the five

gigahertz band. Because it is a shared spectrum. But like you said, if the channel the unit is on suddenly

becomes noisy, or somebody starts occupying that channel, you actually switch to a different channel

between pixels but before a pixel gets lost. And then I tease Arie and his founder and CEO, Eran, that

they’re too modest about their product. That they have built the only microwave video radio that I have

seen that is bidirectional. And because it’s bidirectional, it’s the only radio that has ARQ, automatic re-reQuest.

So the first line of defense is the channel hopping. The second line of defense is the forward

error correction. Correct?

Arie Vered (00:07:49):

Yes.

Jim Jachetta (00:07:50):

And then if the channel hopping and the FEC can’t recover the loss, the receiver will tell the transmitter,

“You need to resend.” And the amazing part is usually when you have ARQ, you need a long buffering

hundreds of milliseconds or even seconds. The fact that you can do ARQ so quickly within a seven

millisecond or a half, seven milliseconds is what? Basically less than half of a frame. So within half of a

frame, you can resend the packets. I’ll get to the slides let me just share the results of the … So it looks

like most of the people are using wireless today, 80%. I guess Arie, we got 20% of the people, we got to

work on them. They have no plans for wireless. So I think you’re going to amaze them so much with your

knowledge Arie, we’re going to get them to consider wireless. All right, so let me bring that down. And

let’s see, there it goes. Okay.

Arie Vered (00:09:02):

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Before we go to the presentation, I want to make clear the idea of the five gigahertz. Five gigahertz is a

shared frequency and not a private frequency. Now it is similar to a road, a very, very wide road. Like

you have, everybody can have a car and drive on this road, but it is like a road that you have 40 lanes, 40

lanes.

Jim Jachetta (00:09:41):

Four zero? 40 lanes.

Arie Vered (00:09:42):

Four zero, 40 lanes. So if one lane is occupied, you simply go to the other lane. And if this is occupied,

you simply go to the another one and so on and so forth. So you have 40 lanes, which you can drive your

car. And this is exactly what our system is doing. Okay. So we don’t a private road but the private road is

very narrow and the public road that we have is very wide. So our system is hoping just hoping, and

that’s the reason we are immune to interference. Okay.

Jim Jachetta (00:10:34):

Well, let me add to that, that we have customers that use seven gigs. I’ve used seven gigs in my career.

And you go to the FCC or the governing agency in your country, and you’re given a channel at a certain

address. The large percentage of the time, somebody illegally is on that channel. And you can’t switch to

another channel because you don’t have a license to go to another channel. And if that channel is

jammed, you have no transmission. You have to call the FCC, you have to call the government agency.

You have to complain, but might take weeks or months to even get a resolution or the interfering signal

goes away. So just because you have a licensed channel, doesn’t mean you’re always going to have

success. So I would make the argument that your system is more reliable than even having a life. Just

because you have a license doesn’t mean somebody’s not going to step on you. And REO is going to

show us some slides about stadiums with a hundred plus fans in them. We did the Arizona Cardinals and

there’s fans in the stands using wifi on their phone.

Jim Jachetta (00:11:43):

And Arie is going to show us some slides about stadiums with 100 plus fans in them. We did the Arizona

Cardinals and there’s fans in the stands using wifi on their phone, while multiple ABonAir systems are in

operation sharing the wifi spectrum with ABonAir and fans wifi. Oh, let me see here. Wait, I got oh,

wrong slide. Hit the wrong button. Sorry. Got to click on the presentation. Here we go.

Arie Vered (00:12:18):

So a little bit background on the company ABonAir, we are doing wireless video transmission system.

We founded in 2008. So we are on air 12 years. We have a lot of experience in the wireless 5G systems.

And we are offering robust and reliable micro system solution for broadcast, outdoor production, sport

and news. As I told you before our solution have the lowest latency level available in the market. Next

please.

Jim Jachetta (00:12:59):

It’s coming. There’s a little bit of latency. Did it change?

Arie Vered (00:12:59):

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New Wireless Technology & Products from ABonAir …

Yeah. It changed. I see it. Oh, no, no. Yeah. This one. Okay. So the main market segments that we are

there are ENG, the Electric News Gathering. So you can see here an example of ENG vehicle in Italy that

is using our systems. They’re both around 10 systems that are serving 10 of their fans, whatever. And

then we have the outdoor sports events, any event that you have in the United States, there are many

colleges and universities with athletics department that are doing live basketball games, live football

games, live baseball games, all these, and we are very strong in this segment as well, which is the sport

event because of the low delay mode. Mainly because of the low delay mode.

Arie Vered (00:14:26):

And live event, like parades or any live event, like a house of worship or a parade that you would like to

broadcast live. And for the picture that you can see is from a parade in Estonia, very long parade

something like two kilometers, which is 6,000 feet, a long parade. And we cover all the parade with

wireless. You cannot do it without a wireless because the guy was driving there, you can see. And it was

six hours, live broadcasting without any drop.

Jim Jachetta (00:15:31):

Wow. Wow. Well, you’re going to get to it, but another key feature of your technology is the way you

distribute your antenna system. So I’ll just foreshadow that a little bit. So you have a long parade, over

many, many miles, hundreds of yards, if there are dead spots, or if you have a very large stadium that’s a

big strength of ABonAir is distributed antenna system. But I don’t want to, I have a bad habit of spoiling,

[crosstalk 00:16:02]. But I want to give a little foreshadowing without ruining the surprise. Alright, let me

see. I’m having a little trouble, it seems to be giving me a … There it goes.

Arie Vered (00:16:18):

Okay. So here you have a partial list of universities in the USA that are using ABonAir systems. Like

Alabama Crimson Tide, we are covering a stadium of 101k seats. And we know how to deal with the

interference there. We have also Georgia University, 92k seats, Nebraska 85k, Virginia Tech with 66,000

seats. NBA Detroit Pistons, it’s basketball, 20k seats, University of Virginia, 61k seats, Kansas University,

university in Texas, Columbia, Minneapolis, Missouri, North Carolina, Vanderbilt University, Louisiana

State University, Florida State University, Louisiana State University is 102,000 seats. And in all these

universities our systems are very well deployed with no problem, no issues, no signal drops and we’re

proud of it.

Jim Jachetta (00:17:55):

Well, you also know that especially college kids, knowing my kids, they’re constantly on Instagram,

uploading something, liking, swiping. But I think they call it Insta now. The Instagram is too long. So the

Insta, they’re on Insta. And these kids in the stadium are posting video clips. They’re heavily using the

house wifi in these facilities and the multiple ABonAir systems are thriving even in this challenging

environment, correct?

Arie Vered (00:18:32):

Yeah. Even in this … Not only this challenging environment, even if you have more than 100,000 people

there, still it is working.

Jim Jachetta (00:18:44):

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New Wireless Technology & Products from ABonAir …

Right. Right, right.

Arie Vered (00:18:45):

So this line is about our flagship system, which is the AB512. AB512-1U is a state of the art, full HD 3G

system, 7 millisecond delay control, RCP/CCU, there is an option to integrate with any intercom

system, an option for a video return and many others features. By the way, the coverage is something

around 4,500 feet line of sight.

Jim Jachetta (00:19:32):

Right. Well, let me add now. I want everyone to make note of this packaging. So I don’t want to name

names, but there’s a company, their name starts with Wave or we’ll call them WC, without naming

names. The piece of gear that goes in the control room is three or four rack units wide. It doesn’t have

rack mounting ears, so you have to kluge it on a shelf. And then they have another piece from another

vendor for the camera control receiver. And they don’t offer integrated intercom. So you see this one

rack unit, nice, highly integrated system. And what makes it so powerful is it’s built on a bidirectional

platform. And what is the throughput again, of the rate? It’s like 50 megabits per second or more?

Arie Vered (00:20:32):

40 megabits per second.

Jim Jachetta (00:20:32):

40 megabits.

Arie Vered (00:20:34):

40 megabits per second. Yeah.

Jim Jachetta (00:20:37):

Other systems out there are lucky if they do eight, if they do two carriers, I think some of them can do

16. If they do a dual carrier kind of a deal but this is 40. And again, it’s a full integration. It was designed

from the ground up to of course, do video and do it very well with low latency and then integrate

camera control and intercom and nice clean one IU box. I’ve done tours of facilities where the

competing systems in there, and it’s embarrassing. You got this clunky gear, that’s not meant to be rack

mounted. It’s not a clean integration, like ABonAir. It’s not a clean design.

Arie Vered (00:21:32):

Yeah. Okay. So a little bit about the AB512, again is a sub-frame delay, seven millisecond, high picture

quality, I don’t want to go into so many technical words, but it’s very high picture quality with H.264

CODEC technology. It’s full resolution, 1080p, 1080i, 720p, whatever you have, all the range of

resolution up to 1080p. The coverage is, as I told you up to 4,500 feet line of sight, we are supporting

single zone and multi-zone. How with multi-zone, we have a unique box that transfer the RF to fiber.

And you can cascade up to 256 boxes like that. And the last one is connecting to our receiver. Our

receiver can connect either to RF antennas or to fiber.

Arie Vered (00:22:58):

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New Wireless Technology & Products from ABonAir …

Now, when you have these boxes, if you have for example, a stadium that you want to cover the

stadium, the upper tribunes. You want also to cover the tunnels. You want to cover the press room with

one camera then you put in each one, you put one FCE in the press group. One FCE in the tunnel, one

FCE in the board, one FCE in the upper tribunes. All these FCEs connected, cascade to each other. And

then with one camera, you can cover whatever you want. You can cover the all stadium, you can cover

the tunnel, you can cover the pressing room. You can go with the camera from one area to the other

area, without even losing one pixel.

Jim Jachetta (00:23:58):

A lot of our customers Arie, use bonded cellular. So I like to use the … You mentioned its different

technology, but the typology is very similar to cellular. Like these FCEs are like a digital cell sites. And if

you do have a dead spot in your facility. We’ve done installation in a ballpark, so they wanted to get the

camera underneath one of the mezzanines. So it was a little bit out of the line of sight of the main

receiving antenna. So you put an FCE under there, problem solved. And these facilities have fiber

running all throughout them. And our competition can’t do this, or if they do it, it’s not as robust. So the

competition would have to do a very expensive analog fiber optic, an RF over analog fiber link.

Jim Jachetta (00:24:55):

So it’s not digital. This is a digital connection, correct? You’re not converting, you’re not doing an RF

analog, RF transport over fiber. With the competition you can distribute your antennas but you need

very expensive RF to fiber links, and they do degrade the quality, the signal to noise will go down. I also

want to add, I’m a video guy going on 35, 40 years. I started when I was in junior high, working for my

dad at MultiDyne, but 52 dB signal to noise that has always been the benchmark of broadcast quality

video. And you will never see a figure like that on any of our competitors’ data sheets, because they

can’t even come close to that. So that 52 dB, PSNR is a big deal. And it shows that this is a broadcast

solution.

Jim Jachetta (00:25:57):

There’s other solutions out there. There’s other technology where they claim it’s not compressed. Well,

it’s actually heavily encoded. What they do is if the link loses bandwidth, they throw the least significant

bits in the garbage. To me, that’s not compression, that’s truncation, that’s heavy and coding without

any intelligence. Not looking for repetitiveness in the picture. You want an industry standard codec that

will compress and look for commonality in the pixels, in the patterns, in the geometry of the picture.

Throwing least significant bits in the trash, to the trained eye, you can see it. I challenged them to do a

PSNR test on that. And the PSNR is probably 25 or 31. Wouldn’t you agree, Arie?

Arie Vered (00:26:51):

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jim Jachetta (00:26:57):

You want me to advance?

Arie Vered (00:26:58):

Yeah, no. What I want to also to add here, is that our system, the basic system is supporting, or

broadcasting camera CCU and RCP. Sony, Panasonic, [inaudible 00:27:17], Hitachi, Blackmagic, what you

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New Wireless Technology & Products from ABonAir … name it? Because we are bidirectional so we can support it very easily. And if the customer using Sony,

and then after two years, they decided to switch to Panasonic, for us is nothing. Because the hardware is

the same. All what needed to do is to replace cables, replace [crosstalk 00:27:51]. Yeah. And you’re

[inaudible 00:27:54].

Jim Jachetta (00:27:54):

Yeah. There’s a multi-pin LEMO on the transmitter and the receiver. So you just need to purchase the

proper cable for the camera. And this WC competitor, I mentioned they actually don’t make the camera

control it, the camera control is from a third party. And they managed to integrate the wireless video

board with a wireless control on the camera side, but then that’s why you need two or three boxes on

the receive side. Because they’re made by different vendors. So the ABonAir, everything is made by

ABonAir. There’s no integration of different vendors, components in the box. It’s built from the ground

up to support all these things and the latency, no one can touch that, and the robustness it’s a great

product. It really is. We’re very proud to represent ABonAir, if I haven’t told you lately, Arie, we really

appreciate you and the ABonAir technology, it really is something special.

Arie Vered (00:29:03):

Thank you. [crosstalk 00:29:04] ready? Not only this, because we are bidirectional we don’t need, like

the competitors, they are simulating the commands that are coming from the camera to the receiver.

They are doing a kind of simulation and we don’t know-

Jim Jachetta (00:29:29):

They’re cheating it, they’re faking that they’re doing a bidirectional connection. And then there’s no

feedback. In any kind of communication, if you tell the camera to open its iris, the camera will reply, “I

opened the Iris.” So sometimes those commands get broken in a less sophisticated system and can

cause problems.

Arie Vered (00:29:56):

Exactly. So this is this issue, and now with the AB512, you can add intercom. We have our own intercom

and we can integrate to any intercom that is in the market with two-wire, four-wire, whatever.

Jim Jachetta (00:30:20):

Right, right. The other thing I like too Arie, is that customers will be like, “Well, what headset do I use?”

They provide with the intercom kit, a single ear most camera operators are right handed. So there’s no

left ear, there’s only the right ear so they can get the camera up against their head. It’s very nice, it’s

very comfortable, very high quality headset. It’s just part of the kit. So the customer doesn’t even have

to think about. You ever buy something and you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know the headset wasn’t included.

Now I got to go buy a headset last minute.” Everything you need, we just don’t provide the camera or

the monitor. But everything else that you need comes with the system, correct?

Arie Vered (00:31:06):

Yeah, yeah. Correct. Okay. Next slide please.

Jim Jachetta (00:31:13):

It’s coming.

Arie Vered (00:31:14):

Okay.

Jim Jachetta (00:31:14):

There we go.

Arie Vered (00:31:16):

Now, we are going to launch a new system, which is the AB612. It is 4K wireless system. Doing the same

as the AB512, it means intercom, RCP/CCU control working with fiber video return. Everything is

supported here in the AB612 plus few differences. One main difference is that this is 4K, UHD, 60 frame

per second, 4K support. Full 4K support, the interface is 12G SDI not 3G SDI . There is a full HDR support, and the

technology, the encoding-coding technology is much better, it’s the H.265. All the rest is doing the same

legacy functions that we have in the AB512, we have in the AB612. The AB612 will be released around

August this year.

Jim Jachetta (00:32:36):

Very good. Very good. Very good. Yeah. That’s greatly anticipating. And you were saying you’ve seen the

picture quality in the lab, the HEVC codec is amazing that you’re using. Is making very good [inaudible

00:32:52]. And of course you don’t have to use it in 4K mode, right? It’ll support HD as well, correct?

Arie Vered (00:32:56):

Yes. It’s support HD, support 4K, support everything.

Jim Jachetta (00:33:04):

Very good. Very good. Well, we look forward to seeing that. And you already spoke to this, but this is the

FCE fiber coverage extender. Tell us more about these tiny little boxes you can place around your facility.

Arie Vered (00:33:20):

Okay. The box that you see here in the picture, all you need is to plug the electrical power, and you need

to plug the antennas and the fiber. And that’s it. No need to configure, no need. Everything is very, very

straightforward, and the setup is automated. So you don’t need to do anything, any configuration here

all is automatic. And it’s seamless roaming for one FCE to another. So it’s like what you said before. It’s

like a cellular and you can … When you go with your mobile cellular from one cell to another.

Jim Jachetta (00:34:20):

The transmitter hands off to the closest FCE. If you’re going out of range of one access node, it’ll jump to

the other. And you can see in the picture there, you see how it’s got four optical connections on, I don’t

know if everyone can see that it’s kind of small, but you can daisy chain them together. So you can go

around your facility, go in and out in and out. You also have an appliance where you can do more of a

star configuration, right? Kind of like a fiber hub, right?

Arie Vered (00:34:56):

Yes. We have a special product AB1000 that it is like a hub. And then you can connect up to eight chains

of FCEs to this hub.

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Jim Jachetta (00:35:16):

Yeah. Because some facilities might not have their fiber set up in a ring. So they might have things that

home run fiber from each camera position or around the stadium to their control room. So we have the

option to do either, to do a ring or a star configuration. I think one of the race tracks we did recently had

more of a star configuration than a ring or a daisy chain. Shall I advance or did you want to talk more

about this?

Arie Vered (00:35:53):

No, we also that we recently have a new customer, I cannot mention the name. But it is a one of the

three digits, very big one. And then they are using their system for their studios. So if they are

interviewing players during a live or interpreters during the live and the interpreters or the player are

moving from one studio to another, they are using our wireless system to do that. And they are using a

star configuration, very nice configuration for studios.

Jim Jachetta (00:36:40):

Well, you bring up a good point particularly and think of a sports application where you kind of alluded

to it that some productions want to have a continue … Because the fans are in the crowd. They don’t

know the team is about to come out. So there’s the anticipation of team coming out. So now a camera

operator can start with the team message, the team, prayer, whatever they’re doing before the game,

start from the locker room, come out of the hallway, the tunnel could be very long and windy. And we

can have a continuous shot from the locker room, out the tunnel, down the hallway, out into the middle

of field, to the coin toss, all one contiguous shot without a single dropout and that is due to this

technology, right? These fiber coverage extenders.

Arie Vered (00:37:36):

Yeah. And always done with one camera.

Jim Jachetta (00:37:36):

And with the same camera. Some universities, they like the idea that the photog doesn’t have to think.

That they have an event at the aquatic center, they put an FCE there for a swimming tournament. Then

they put an FCE in the basketball stadium. And they put one out on the baseball field. They put one in

the football ball, and they put one in the auditorium where they do their commencements. The photog

just leaves the unit on his camera puts a battery on, just goes anywhere on campus, turns the camera

on. He’s got signal. And the lights on the back of the unit tell the photog he’s connected. And then

furthermore, he’s talking to the director in his ear when he hears the director, or if they’re using the

return video feature, he can see the point, he sees program video. He can see himself on the air, on the

program return. Right, you don’t want to have to send a technician out with the camera op, you want

the camera op to just put a battery on and go and be autonomous, right?

Arie Vered (00:38:48):

Yeah, exactly. Correct. Next slide, please.

Jim Jachetta (00:38:53):

There we go. It’s coming.

Arie Vered (00:39:00):

Okay. Now if the integrated wireless intercom, as I told you, there is an option to have an intercom, so

we have an upgrade kit both to the AB512 and to the AB612. And the communication is done with the

same frequency as the video. It’s full loop, the appliques, sorry.

Jim Jachetta (00:39:27):

Sorry about that. Sorry.

Arie Vered (00:39:28):

No problem.

Jim Jachetta (00:39:31):

Bad production. I’m I bad? I’m a bad producer.

Arie Vered (00:39:34):

That’s okay. And then it’s with IFB supported. IFB is a microphone for an interviewer up to 6,000 feet

range, support four-wire, two-wires. Support with the all intercom matrix, like clear com RTS it’s not

RST. But anyway and it has volume control PTT, VOX control and call button.

Jim Jachetta (00:40:11):

Yeah, I should say that all you need is, on your intercom matrix is an analog interface for four wire, two

wire. You’re good to go. Even if you have a digital intercom system, I think all intercom systems have an

analog in and out option. That’s all you need to do. And then if you have multiple systems too, you can

talk to each camera operator separately. You don’t have to have everyone on a party line. The director

hits the button to talk to camera, the field camera number one, number two it doesn’t have to share on

a party line, right. It’s better to talk to each camera of photog individually and give them instructions,

correct?

Arie Vered (00:40:55):

Yeah. Okay. [crosstalk 00:40:57]. Ready for the next slide?

Jim Jachetta (00:41:03):

There we go.

Arie Vered (00:41:05):

You have high delay?

Jim Jachetta (00:41:07):

Yeah. It’s a little latency. Well, I think it’s got to come from me to Israel, and then back again, maybe, I

don’t know.

Arie Vered (00:41:15):

There is another option that is unique to us and supported by us. Same frequency, we have also a

wireless teleprompter and video return. We are supporting two channels, two video return. So one can be their own air

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channel or any other video source. So the camera man can see himself or what is on air. And in addition

teleprompter. So if you are interviewing somebody in the field and you need a teleprompter that goes

wireless from the OB van or from the control room, you can use it, you can use a teleprompter and

another channel. You don’t need any additional antenna, anything else because it is at the same

frequency, that is the main frequency-

Jim Jachetta (00:42:17):

I should add too. Like one of the benefits of working with VidOvation is that we’re not a one technology

company. So we integrate technology from multiple vendors together. So it’s very common that we

would use some of our customers would use ABonAir to get video to their truck, if they have a

production switcher in the truck, they produced a show on site and then they might use, instead of

satellite, they might use some of our Haivision bonded cellular technology to get back to master control.

And Haivision is introducing a return video feature. So Haivision could be used to get returned video

from the studio to the truck. And then from the truck, we can feed it to the photog on the field, through

the ABonAir teleprompter and video return. So I guess my point is you see how nicely the technologies

can work together and we can help you design a system that integrates all this technology together.

Arie Vered (00:43:32):

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Next slide.

Jim Jachetta (00:43:37):

Here we go. It’s coming.

Arie Vered (00:43:37):

There we go. It’s coming.

Jim Jachetta (00:43:37):

There we go.

Arie Vered (00:43:39):

Okay. There is the AB512-XR Long Range Wireless Camera System actually it’s the same system, but

antennas are different. So this is what we call a long range. It’s up to 10 miles, but it’s point to point. So

if you have in the city, if you have a OB van and you need communication any control center that is 10

miles away with the same software, same hardware, same thing you can broadcast a signal point to

point from a building to the OB van, with everything, with video return, with CCU/RCP control, with

intercom, the delay even if it standbys delays still seven milliseconds.

Jim Jachetta (00:44:38):

Well, in the application, I mentioned before, if the broadcaster or their master control is within line of

sight and 10 miles or less away, you put these antennas up on the high point on the stadium. I mean, all

news agencies, all broadcasters have a microwave received type site in town somewhere high up. So

you put one of these ABonAir receivers up on the tower. So you would go from the field to the truck,

produce the show, and then this could go from the truck back to master control. So this would be an

alternative to using bonded cellular or satellite or fiber. And again, five gigahertz is free, right? There’s

no licensing.

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Arie Vered (00:45:30):

No.

Jim Jachetta (00:45:30):

So if you run, if you get permission to put these antennas on the stadium roof, you can have a very

reliable, free connection between the venue and your facility.

Arie Vered (00:45:43):

Yeah, yeah. Correct. Next slide.

Jim Jachetta (00:45:48):

It’s coming.

Arie Vered (00:45:49):

Yeah. Okay. Now, we will have some examples of realistic projects that were implemented. So this one

is, for example, if you want to cover golf arena, as you know golf arena is wide, is long. And you cannot

cover it with any wireless system without using some FCEs that you see here cascading to each other.

And you put FCE every 500 meters, which is 1,500 feet average 1,500 feet. You put FCE, you can put up

to 200, 256, and then you can cover kilometers of kilometers with one RF camera that is going all over

the golf course.

Jim Jachetta (00:47:07):

VidOvation could help you procure a tactical fiber that you would lay down, that people could walk on,

or vehicles could run over it. Or it’s not uncommon where you just use an inexpensive fiber and you just

leave it behind when you’re done, or you throw it out. Our fiber is relatively inexpensive. But whatever

the case is, it’s very easy to run a fiber and you just daisy chain it. In this configuration, a golf course

would probably be perfect to do kind of a daisy chain. Just follow the course between the holes and put

an FCE at each critical point. And you’d have contiguous coverage of the whole compound. A lot of times

the camera positions are put on towers. So you might not need that many FCEs if you put them on some

of the camera tower positions. And you could use sector antennas, so even from the same tower, you

could cover the Eastern part of the course and then have sector antennas cover the Southern part,

right? So if you have a strategic point in the middle, you could do sectors on different FCES, correct?

Arie Vered (00:48:21):

Correct.

Jim Jachetta (00:48:24):

So actually that brings up a question or a comment I have two. One of the first questions that Arie and

ABonAir asked when we’re doing a new project is for an aerial picture of the venue. They like to see a

picture of the stadium from the air, the golf course from the air. We look at elevations and we have a

pretty good idea just from an aerial picture where the FCE should be placed for optimal coverage. And

99% of the time your first suggestions are correct. But it’s a very common for a bigger installation where

will come out, an engineer from Israel will come out and we will fine tune the installation and the

placement of the antennas to make sure we have optimal coverage. And we even encourage doing

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testing on a game day when there’s fans in the stadium and we can tweak things to make sure

everything is working properly.

Arie Vered (00:49:30):

Yeah, correct. Next slide.

Jim Jachetta (00:49:34):

Here it comes.

Arie Vered (00:49:35):

Okay. Well, this is a very interesting slide. Here is Texas Motor Speedway. It’s a car racing, and it was

very, very important for them to cover the finish line. So in order to cover the finish line, we put two

sector antennas that are very strong and covering very well, even from a distance, the finish line. And at

the same race, we have another two omni antennas in the other part of the race. And then everything is

covered very carefully and very nicely, the race itself and especially the finish line.

Jim Jachetta (00:50:30):

Very good.

Arie Vered (00:50:30):

Next one. Yeah, next one.

Jim Jachetta (00:50:32):

Well, I should add to that, that ABonAir, Arie, in VidOvation, we provide a wide array of antennas. So in

the golfing example we mentioned earlier, maybe there’s a camera tower in the middle. We would use

omni direct. We could use omni-directional receive antennas. So we get a 360 degree. In this particular

setup We don’t need coverage behind us there’s no action behind. So by using a sector antenna, we get

more gain, a better gain, better fidelity, better link budget focusing the receiving envelope on a 120

degree or a 90 degree sector, as opposed to 360. 360 is great, but then you have less gain because you

got to cover a wider area. So these are the things that we help with the design. What type of antennas

make the most sense, or how many FCEs might be needed? These are the some of the things that we

really encourage you to call us, and we will help you design your system.

Arie Vered (00:51:47):

Great.

Jim Jachetta (00:51:49):

It’s coming.

Arie Vered (00:51:50):

Yeah, this is a football stadium in Georgia, 93,000 seats. And you can see the transmitter there. Very

nice picture of the camera man with a transmitter, you can see also a cable that is connected to the

remote control of the camera and supports the RCP that they have in the car [inaudible 00:52:17].

Jim Jachetta (00:52:19):

Right. And then you can see there’s a cable kind of going down or out of the frame. That’s going to the

little intercom, bell pack where he can control his push to talk or his volume if need be. I mean, you got

to continue. It’s coming.

Arie Vered (00:52:42):

Okay. This is another sports arena, it’s a basketball. Again, you can see the camera men with our

transmitter, and our transmitter is also disconnected, SDI to the camera and then a data cable to the

RCP/CCU and to the intercom, you can see the headset with the camera man. This is in the Detroit.

Jim Jachetta (00:53:16):

We’re having an internet connection I think Arie, can you repeat what you just said?

Arie Vered (00:53:23):

Yeah. What I say is, and now you see, [crosstalk 00:53:27].

Jim Jachetta (00:53:34):

Standby.

Arie Vered (00:53:35):

Okay.

Jim Jachetta (00:53:36):

Can you hear me, Arie?

Arie Vered (00:53:36):

I hear you very well. You hear me?

Jim Jachetta (00:53:38):

We can’t hear you. I don’t know what’s happening. I think it’s just the internet connection. Do you have

anything running on your computer maybe lets … I’m going to shut down some other applications on my

computer.

Arie Vered (00:54:05):

Now you hear me?

Jim Jachetta (00:54:06):

Can you hear Arie?

Arie Vered (00:54:08):

I can hear you. You can hear me?

Jim Jachetta (00:54:14):

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You unmuted. Well, I can continue. So this is the Chicago Bulls, I hope, Oh, Cindy says she can hear you,

Arie?

Arie Vered (00:54:32):

Yeah.

Jim Jachetta (00:54:33):

I just can’t hear you for some reason. That’s very strange. Hold on let me change my … I guess we’ve

never had an audio problem before. Yeah, it looks like my audio is stuck. Hello, Arie.

Arie Vered (00:54:52):

Yeah, I hear you.

Jim Jachetta (00:54:53):

Okay, now I can hear you. Yeah, the problem is my fault. My headset got stuck. Sorry about that. So

continue, we got the Detroit Pistons, so something went wrong with my headset and I got you on

speaker.

Arie Vered (00:55:11):

No problem. So you can see here, the camera men with our transmitter, the transmitter is connected to

the camera by SDI for the video, and then the data with the data port, it is connected to the remote

control of the camera to control the RCP. And in the other side, it is connected to the intercom. You can

see the headset with a cameraman.

Jim Jachetta (00:55:43):

Yeah. And then you can see here kind of off to the side there, the nice professional headset that comes

with the kit. I’m not a camera man, but everything is very comfortable. The headset is fully adjustable.

It’s broadcast quality, it’s a very nice set up and you can see here, it looks like this camera has two

battery plates so he’s got the … It looks like he’s got the unit mounted on a side plate, and then it looks

like he’s using a D-tap from the main battery and bringing power in that way. So there’s a number of

different ways. So you see it, doesn’t have to have the battery on the unit. Some customers mount the

smaller ABonAir with a quarter 20, like on a hot shoe on top of the camera. So there’s many different

ways you can configure the rig. It’s up to the cameraman’s preference.

Arie Vered (00:56:43):

Yeah. Okay. Here you see in Nashville, the baseball park, the baseball arena that is covered by our

system. Another project, next one.

Jim Jachetta (00:57:00):

There we go.

Arie Vered (00:57:05):

Soccer stadium, the same with soccer you can see here again, the camera man with a headset, with the data remote control which supports the RCP.

Jim Jachetta (00:57:27):

The camera operators really like not having to worry about shading the camera. In a sporting

environment, if they go underneath the mezzanine, there could be a lot of shadows. It could be very

dark, they’re tracking a ball going through the air. They could all of a sudden be in front of bright sky. So

while they’re trying to track an object, having the run, the iris or the blacks or shading the camera it’s

much better if the video engineer in the truck or in the control room is the one shading it. And it’s a

much better way of doing the job.

Arie Vered (00:58:11):

Yeah. Okay, next slide.

Jim Jachetta (00:58:15):

Here comes the next.

Arie Vered (00:58:17):

Now you will see so many slides from horse racing. We’re very strong also in horse racing and car racing.

Car racing, you already saw. Now with the horse racing, you can see, again, the camera man with

ABonAir, transmitter and then the horses are in a … Before the racing, in front of the racing. This is its

own one-

Jim Jachetta (00:58:48):

Yeah. Right, right.

Arie Vered (00:58:48):

In this all, we have FCE, and then there are others zones that we will see that there are also FCEs and the

same camera man, with the same transmitter, with the same camera, here you can see, you can go from

one zone to another zone, this is the starting line. And we have one receiver in the starting point, one

receiver in the middle of the race, and one receiver in the stable or in the paddle. You can see the next.

Jim Jachetta (00:59:26):

Right. Some customers too, like the idea that baseball stadium, they want to capture fans outside, either

coming to the stadium or leaving the stadium. We put antennas high up on the stadium and they could

get coverage almost a mile away, or fans going to the subway. They might be a little tipsy, a little

animated, but it’s part of the experience. So whatever the application, we can broaden that coverage

zone. So as Arie said, here’s coverage now in the stables, so you see here this could be a steel roof in a

concrete cavern here. And if the primary antennas are outside of this space, another wireless system

wouldn’t work, right? Putting an FCE in this zone gives us coverage in this location.

Arie Vered (01:00:24):

And then another idea is that with the same camera, you can go from one zone to the another in a

seamless way.

Jim Jachetta (01:00:33):

Right.

Arie Vered (01:00:34):

This is Louisiana State University, is a very big stadium with more than 102,000 people. You can see all

these people and the camera man with our transmitter. And no problem we are facing very well the

interference, if there are interference 100,000 people, sorry, are tapping in their mobile. And they no

problem with our system.

Jim Jachetta (01:01:19):

Right. Right. Some other people that are a little nervous about the five gig band, just really a picture is

100,000 people, 100,000 words.

Arie Vered (01:01:29):

Exactly.

Jim Jachetta (01:01:29):

All of these people in here because of the robustness of ABonAir’s technology this system works without

dropping a single packet and a single bit.

Arie Vered (01:01:47):

Yeah.

Jim Jachetta (01:01:48):

Here comes the next.

Arie Vered (01:01:50):

Yeah. This is from the ENG area, from the news, another customer in Europe that they have around 10

different OB van or vehicles. And in each one of the vehicles, they have one of our systems and they are

using it for news.

Jim Jachetta (01:02:16):

So the beam, the camera operator goes a couple of 100 yards away from the vehicle, beams it to the

vehicle microwave and then you do satellite back to master control.

Arie Vered (01:02:29):

Yeah. And this is another example of a live show in a studio, and we cover also live shows in studios like

the Big Brother, Big Brother is not exactly in studio but like the Voice, Sing Competition, Song

Competition, and so on and so forth.

Jim Jachetta (01:02:59):

Well, like you said earlier in a studio environment there could be concrete walls in between each studio.

And the camera operator is a union guy, a union operator, a guy or a girl or hired by the facility. They

just roam from studio to studio to studio. They’re doing one event in studio A in the morning, and then

no one has to think about it, “Oh, we need to move some antennas or move some receivers.” Just all the

stages are lit up, all the stages have coverage cam you just show up with your camera and you shoot.

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Arie Vered (01:03:41):

Yeah. Next one please.

Jim Jachetta (01:03:45):

It’s coming.

Arie Vered (01:03:46):

Yeah. Again, this is important again TVP, the Polish state broadcaster, and they are shooting in the field,

they are shooting a ski competition.

Jim Jachetta (01:04:06):

Very good. So I guess we’ve seen things in the Middle East, we’ve seen things in the cold, so I guess it’s a testament to your temperature range that it works in the very cold and the very hot that you’re not only

very reliable, but you’re environmentally very reliable. You can handle any kind of conditions.

Arie Vered (01:04:29):

Yeah. Correct. And this one is in Israel, in Nazareth, in the Christmas service, sorry. And you can see,

Nazareth is very famous, of course, and religious place for all the Christians. And you can see the camera

man with the intercom belt and everything there. And again, it is outside. We put two FCEs and then we

cover all around the church, and the church itself also is covered by another one FCE.

Jim Jachetta (01:05:24):

Well also too, like I’ve done a little bit of camera work in an amateur capacity. I’ve also, here at

Saddleback Church locally, because I know what a vector scope is, and a waveform monitor is I’ve done

some video engineering, some shading, and it’s rare that the camera operator will actually talk back. You

see the two little controls on his little belt pack, he’s just controlling the volume so he can hear the

director and he’s just getting instructions, “Camera one, please zoom in, camera two, get a shot of

player A, camera three, get a shot of player B.” And a lot of times it’s like, yes or no. They’ll shake,

“Camera one are you ready?” He doesn’t talk. Or he doesn’t want to have his mic open, but if he does

need to speak, he can press the push to talk button. Correct?

Arie Vered (01:06:18):

Correct.

Jim Jachetta (01:06:20):

But unless something is wrong, it’s very rare that the photog will speak. Or he’ll speak and just say, “Hey,

I need another battery. Somebody come out here, give me a battery I’m running low.” But it’s rare that

the photog talks back. So he’s just listening there and then he can go with a free hand and press the

push to talk. I guess he could leave his mic open but I don’t think the director would like that. So let me

go to the next, oh, this is a good slide. It’s coming.

Arie Vered (01:06:52):

Oh, this, it’s a slide that you can see a partial list of our customers all over the world. You can see many

universities in the United States. We talked about universities in the United State. You can see the Texas

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Motor Speedway, you can see an NEP, which is a very big operator in the United States. You can see

many others here, you can see we have systems all over the world. Some of them you can see here in

Europe, one of them is TF1 in France, the other one France Télévisions, the other one is AFP in France, a

RTL in Belgian, we have got from Netherlands, we have got from the UK, some companies even from the

Middle East, all over the world, cold places, hot places, whatever you can imagine. And you have a

partial collections of logos of our customers in the United States and worldwide.

Jim Jachetta (01:08:12):

Well, I should add to that. We did the Arizona Cardinals, NFL team, and they’ve done a couple of Super

Bowls there. For that installation I think we did three FCEs. We had one at the 50 yard line and then two

kind of up in the bowl to get fan coverage, the photog shooting fans. And that venue is interesting, I

believe it has a fixed roof. They wheel the field out into the parking lot, so the grass can get sun. And

then on game day, they bring the field back. I think that’s the stadium. They bring the field back in under

the roof, put the air conditioning on because it’s very hot in Arizona. Then when the game is over, so the

grass can get some sunlight, they wheel it back outside. So you would think it would be easier to open

the roof, but they don’t do it that way. I believe that’s the stadium. So that was a fun project. So I think

that’s it yeah. Go ahead Arie.

Arie Vered (01:09:22):

The module I want to add recently this year we had a few projects in horse racing, very successful

project, three in the United States, two in Europe. And even in the United States, it’s not common, but in

Europe there is a call that is going after the horses. And you can see the horses live from the car. So

very, very interesting, the car is running after the horses and in the car, there is a wireless system and

you can see, you can take a very, very amazing shooting there.

Jim Jachetta (01:10:16):

So we’ve talked about live production, mostly sports, et cetera. You did mention some studio work,

were these live shows Arie, in these studios or were these produced shows do you know?

Arie Vered (01:10:32):

No, the studios are all live shows.

Jim Jachetta (01:10:36):

Well, so that’s what brings me to VidOvation, our headquarters is here in Southern California. We have

an office in Arizona. We have an office in New York. But here in the Hollywood area video assist is very

common that you might have an airy camera or a red camera shooting a produced production of film,

cinema, et cetera. But the videographer, the director needs to see the shots that they’re getting so they

might want to use this technology for video assist and having the low latency makes it ideal for that. So

maybe this is a new area we can get into. I could see the technology working very well in those

applications.

Arie Vered (01:11:30):

Yeah. By the way if you mention this areas, which is video assist and house of worship.

Jim Jachetta (01:11:41):

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Yes.

Arie Vered (01:11:41):

As well, we are going to launch this year a new product, or even a new product line, 4K, especially for

these two markets and in a very, very competitive price. I cannot talk too much about that now but we

will have very soon, this is a reason for another webinar.

Jim Jachetta (01:12:10):

Yes, yes. I would love to have you again, Arie. I think we’re kind of winding things up. I think you were so

articulate and so informative. I don’t think we have any questions. If anybody has any questions

certainly feel free to chat with us right now. If not, you can reach me or anyone here on my sales team

at VidOvation. We have offices in New York, Arizona, Southern California. We are available from 6:00

AM Eastern Time to 6:00 PM. Pacific Time. 6:00 AM Eastern to 9:00 PM Pacific Time. We have 24, seven

technical support. So you can reach us virtually any time here at VidOvation, we’d love to hear about

your wireless applications. We will help you design a system, it’s very straightforward I don’t want to

make it sound like it’s complicated to design these systems.

Jim Jachetta (01:13:19):

It’s just, we’d like to see an aerial picture of where you would like your camera operator to operate. You

want to come out at midfield to do a coin toss. You want to be in the tunnel. You want to be in the end

zone. We want to know these things to make sure we have the proper coverage. And then we’ll come

out into the field and help you with deployment and tweaking and optimization of the system. And we’d

love to hear from you anytime.

Jim Jachetta (01:13:48):

So thank you, Arie, we look forward to having you again, maybe the end of the summer, September or

August. I won’t get to see you at IBC unfortunate. Oh, and I forgot to say, I hope everyone out there is

staying safe and healthy. We wish you all the best. We’ve been doing a series of these webinars at least

once a week, we’ve been … This was the exception. I wanted to have Ariana and I didn’t want to make

him wait. So we did today’s one on a Tuesday, but we’ve been every Wednesday at 10:00 doing a

different vendor.

Jim Jachetta (01:14:27):

We have one tomorrow in our series from Haivision. We will have you back Arie, end of summer to talk

about some of the new products. And thank you so much, this was very informative. And I hope you stay

safe and healthy. And we’ll let you go have some dinner and practice your saxophone. I don’t know, if

you logged in a little late before we started, Arie says, “Well, I’m going to skip dinner because I have

saxophone practice.” So I learned something personal and something new about Arie today that he

plays the jazz saxophone.

Arie Vered (01:15:04):

Yeah. Saxophone is for the soul. And dinner is for the body, but saxophone is for the soul. And it’s very,

very important. Anyway, Jim, thank you very much. It was my pleasure to be here and to talk about

what we are doing. I hope to see all of you soon, either in the field or in another webinar. And really,

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really special thanks to Jim for hosting this webinar and helping me with all the logistic and all the

procedures.

Jim Jachetta (01:15:42):

I’ll make sure my headset doesn’t cut out in the middle next time. I apologize for that. That was me.

Thank you everyone. Have a great day. Be safe. And we’ll talk to you soon. We’ll see you soon hopefully.

Thank you. Bye-bye have a great day.

Arie Vered (01:15:59):

Thank you and goodbye. Thank you.

Jim Jachetta (01:15:59):

Bye-bye.

Arie Vered (01:15:59):

Have a great day. Thank you.

Jim Jachetta (01:15:59):

Bye-bye.

Arie Vered (01:16:00):

Bye.