As the owner of a three-man freelance camera company, Van der Struijs Video & Audio, whose main client is the Netherland’s RTL Nieuws, ‘Cameraman Peter’ uses Dejero’s camera-mounted or wearable LIVE+ EnGo mobile transmitter to report breaking news and deliver real-time low-latency HD pictures from all manners of remote locations.

Van der Struijs refers to the unit as his “all-in-one ENG”, as it allows him to access locations that would have been previously difficult or impossible to reach with a full crew and a satellite truck: “The EnGo allows me to take on the role of multiple people – camera operator, editor, sound engineer, technician, producer and even reporter if necessary”.

In Rio, Van der Struijs was running from venue to venue with an RTL news reporter to get exclusive interviews with the winning medalist, as well as those less fortunate in the medal tally. Just two years ago when Peter covered the World Cup, in the same city, he was confined to areas where the satellite truck was located in order to transmit pictures, which meant he was missing a lot of opportunities to gather content.

“Now, with the EnGo I have more opportunity and more time to capture more content – which keeps my customer, RTL, very happy,” said Van der Struijs. “First of all, the EnGo weighs nothing in comparison to all the other gear we need to carry around which, in itself, saves a lot of energy and gives us extra mobility. But more significantly, you can just push a button, wait for a network connection and you’re ready to go”.

“Another key feature for me is just how easy it is to swap out the SIMs as I move from region to region or country to country. You can fill the EnGo with 2 x 6 SIMs; for example, one for local use and one for international use, which worked extremely well for me in Rio”.

Dejero’s LIVE+ EnGo encodes IP video and bonds all available networks, with connections that include up to 6 x 3G/4G/LTE cellular, dual-band wireless (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac) for Wi-Fi and Dual 1Gb/s Ethernet port for LAN, WAN and portable satellite (including Ku-band, and ka-band). Van der Struijs says that this superior connection and bonding performance, along with the system’s the system’s wireless modules and dual-band MIMO integrated Wi-Fi capabilities, enabled his team to outperform other camera crews on the ground who were struggling to deliver live broadcasts from the same locations in Rio:

“In terms of picture quality, I like to use a 10Mb/s transport stream, which is really crisp and clear, but as the network was very crowded in Rio, I dropped to the more commonly used 5Mb/s, which is actually also very good. However, at certain points, even during live connections, my bitrate was affected by a bad network and dropped to 3.5Mb/s, which made me believe my pictures were distorted, but the feedback I had from the MCR and the studio was that the picture was perfect HD and the quality wasn’t affected at all”.

This was made possible by Dejero’s intelligent connection management technology that adapts to network congestion in real-time.

“The key for us is simplicity when it comes to sending video; the border that lights up around the screen gives a quick visual status on connection: if it’s blue, all is good, if orange, it’s not so good and if red, it’s bad! In addition, for sending raw footage when you’re in a hurry, you can use a store and forward function, meaning you just use the LIVE+ EnGo to transport a video file within seconds, across the ocean to the studio while you are moving to your next location”.

During the course of the summer Games in Rio, Dejero deployed private Wi-Fi hotspots in key locations, Anatel-certified mobile transmitters with local SIM modules and offered onsite support 24-hours a day for a number of broadcasters over the duration of the Games.

In advance of the event, Dejero also worked with Anatel, the Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency, to achieve certification for its mobile IP-video transmitters for all international broadcasters covering the games whether from high up in the mountains or down to the shores of Copacabana Beach.