How to Broadcast Live Video from a Trade Show by Bringing Your Own Technology with LiveU
By Jamie G
Participating in a trade show like NAB, CES or others is a costly proposition. The square footage for your booth, the carpet, the furniture and/or booth fabrication, the equipment & products, electrical, internet and more. These expenses add up very quickly, but it is important for companies to be there for brand growth, marketing, and sales. Broadfield Distributing Inc. is a distributor of live streaming and production equipment, and we host a Broadfield Partner Pavilion with our vendors a few times each year at NAB, InfoComm and other regional shows. In 2022 we decided to use the equipment we sell to extend the reach of our trade show booth by broadcasting live from the NAB NY Show and again this year from InfoComm 2023 in Orlando. This livestream allowed us to extend our reach from the show to dealers who could not attend and to get even more from the large investment we made in the show. This is the how-to article for how we accomplished a live broadcast.
Bringing a hardwired, high-bandwidth internet connection into your booth to livestream is very costly – sometimes thousands of dollars each day! When you add up multiple days and multiple shows each year the budget begins to justify the cost of other options like a cellular phone or modem. The next challenge though is that convention centers are large, concrete buildings that are infamous for bad cellular and data connections that can even make keeping up with daily emails a chore. Obviously, sending clean audio and video out to your live stream, even a quick bit from your iPhone, is just not going to work. The solution we found is the LiveU Professional encoder with multiple cellular modems to send a signal back to our production system. The results were amazing! See for yourself at https://www.broadfield.live/video/broadfield-booth-tour-at-infocomm-2023-live/
Now that we have successfully completed the livestream a few times I will list and review the equipment we used and would be happy to connect you with one of our nationwide resellers and integrators who can help you spec out a similar system with equally successful results.
THE CAMERA – Believe it or not this is going to be one of the easiest parts of the puzzle. If you have a camera that you like and use the LiveU encoders will accept either an HDMI or SDI input so they will work great with anything. We recommend a Panasonic LUMIX S5 because we love the image quality and it is a small camera that packs easily in a camera bag that travels easily, can stay with us or can be stowed safely during the show.
THE CONNECTION – As mentioned in the intro this is the key ingredient! We used a previous generation LiveU LU300 encoder. We started the live stream with 2 modems and noticed some issues back in the studio, so we added one more modem for a reliable connection. (Remember how bad convention center signals are?) The LU300 communicated to the LU2000 server we have in our studio always available as an input to our TriCaster system. The LiveU products created the reliable point-to-point solution we needed to go from the trade show floor in FL to their LRT cloud service and to our server and production system back in NY. The newer generation LU300S field encoder supports 4 modems with 2 internal 4G modems and 2 external USB modems. These 4 connection points will insure even better cellular bonding and more reliable communications from your event allowing multiple paths for your signal to cut through all of the trade show interference and other challenges of the large convention centers.
AUDIO – The key to every great video solution is good audio. We used a RODE wireless mic system that allows 2 small transmitters to send audio to a single receiver by the LUMIX camera. The clip-on transmitters were perfect for quickly changing the mic from one person to another while the live stream kept rolling. In fact, if you watch our InfoComm stream you’ll notice that after a little practice we got into a better flow communicating from the show floor to the production studio to make that even better.
THE INVESTMENT – The LiveU field unit encoder plus server starts at around $15,000 if you’d like to add the trade show broadcast to your current production capabilities. Once the equipment investment is made, you’ll be ready to livestream from multiple trade shows each year and other events like your national sales meetings, investor briefings, product training, factory tour, manufacturing walk-throughs and more! Just take a look at the cost comparison for a high bandwidth connection for 1 event like the InfoComm 2023 vs. the LU300S solution.
InfoComm 2023 in the Orlando Convention Center used a contracted provider for all network connection needs. The cost for a dedicated wired network connection with a minimum of 6Mbps would be $5,900 for just this one show while a wireless connection starts at $8,800. These rates are even higher in cities like NY and LA so it’s very clear how much the LiveU system will save you over time.
Check out this Broadfield quote for the setup.
| Vendor MPN | Item | Description | MSRP Pricing |
| LU300S-4G-4 | LiveU LU300S with 4G modems | LU300S HEVC video transmit unit with 2 internal (AT&T & T-Mobile) 4G modems + 2 external 4G Modem(Verizon & AT&T). B Side Internal ATT Roaming and Webbing. Includes standard SW package supporting up to 1080p60, up to 6Mbps live transmission, 2 audio channels. Can be upgraded with SW licenses. Data Plan sold separately. | $9,995.00 |
| LU-US-DATA-015 | LiveU 15GB Data package per month | US and Canada data plans. Annual Fee for purchase and monthly fee for Lease. Overages charged at $15/GB. *Available on the LU300 only. | $1,800.00 |
| LU10-SV-1UL01 | LiveU LU2000 Single HD Output Server | LU2000 – 1U Rack Mount Decoder Server – 1x SDI Output and supports NDI, MPEG-TS and RTMP output. | $4,500.00 |
| LiveU Total | $16,295.00 | ||
| DC-S5BODY | Panasonic LUMIX S5, 4K Mirrorless Full Frame L-Mount Camera | Panasonic LUMIX S5, 4K Mirrorless Full Frame L-Mount Camera | $1,999.99 |
| S-S24 | Panasonic LUMIX S 24mm f/1.8 | Panasonic LUMIX S 24mm f/1.8 | $899.99 |
| Panasonic LUMIX Total | $2,899.98 | ||
| RODE Wireless GO II (Not sold at Broadfield) | $ 299.00 | ||
| Total | $19,493.98 |
Broadfield is your source for LiveU livestreaming solutions. To get connected with a Broadfield sales rep please give us a call at 800-634-5178 or visit www.broadfield.com