MINI TESTS
HOLLYLAND MARS 400S PRO WIRELESS KIT £627/$649 hollyland-tech.com
SPECIFICATIONS Range: 121.9m/400ft with line of sight. 91.4m/330ft withWi-Fi App Latency: 0.08s Data rate: 12Mbps Wireless video compression: Uncompressed Transmitter connections: HDMI input, 3G-SDI/ HD-SDI input, USB-C Receiver connections: HDMI output, 3G-SDI output, USB-C Video formats: SDI 1080p 23.98- 60fps, 720p 50-60fps. HDMI 1080p 23.98-60fps, 720p 50- 60fps, 720p 50-60fps Display: OLED Power: 6-16VDC or 1x Sony NP-F fit battery Dimensions (WxHxD): 110x72x33.5mm/4.3x2.8x1.3in Weight per unit: 206g/0.5lb easily, allow clients to watch real-time footage or use for remote monitoring yourself, or perhaps if your camera is on a gimbal or jib. Once you’ve had one, you end up finding lots of uses for it. PROMOVIEMAKERRATING: 9/10 It’s easy to set up and use for all camera types, and it works well. Pros: Affordable, bright display Cons: One mounting point, no case
record the video to your phone. This allows you to upload to social media almost instantly. The app also enables firmware updates. There are limitations to the distance you can transmit. This is stated as 121.9m/400ft with line of sight between units, or 91.4m/330ft with the app via Wi-Fi. After a quick trial, these figures don’t seem too optimistic, and buildings and traffic do seem to cut the distance down, as you’d expect. The Mars 400S Pro units are well made and low profile. They also come with a cold shoe mount and standard threaded base tomount to your camera. The units scan to pair up and set a common channel, which you can manually change if you want.There is a bright OLED display for changing settings via a basic menu system. Here, you can turn the cooling fan off, or make it quieter than standard, if you are recording critical audio. The units can be powered by a USB-C powerbank, the included locking DC power adapter or by a standard lithiumNP-F camera battery. For the money, it’s a great bit of kit that means you can livestream
Until relatively recently, only the biggest productions could afford high- quality wireless videomonitoring. But Chinese firmHollyland continues to innovate with far more affordable kits and the latest is the Mars 400S Pro that costs roughly a quarter of the price of high-end systems at £627/$649. The kit is a compact transmitter unit that takes the video signal from your camera via HDMI or SDI and beams it to a matching receiver unit. Again, this connects via HDMI or SDI to a remote monitor, streaming device or even a TV to allowmonitoring. You can buy up to three additional receivers if you want to stream tomore devices. So, clients and directors on set can all have their ownmonitors. The output signal is 1080/60p at 12Mbps, so it’s not really made to be the sole recording for high-quality post-production. But it’s good enough for monitoring or even live HD TV or web streaming. You can livestream directly from the receiver via a computer, using a USB Type-C lead. When used as a pair of units, the delay – or latency – is just 0.08secs, so it’s not quite real time and, therefore, isn’t perfect for focus pullers. A setting in the menu offers a faster option that makes it even closer to real time, but this does affect quality slightly. One option could be to just use the transmitter and log in to its Wi-Fi. Using your smartphone, and running the free Hollyview app, you can monitor the video in real time. In this way, several clients are able to log in and watch the action. The transmitter can simultaneously transmit to one receiver and two apps, or to a total of four apps without the receiver. The app has lots of tools, like waveforms, histograms, focus peaking, zebras, false colour, 3D LUTs andmore, although it can be a bit fiddly to get set up initially. A really useful option is the ability to
BELOW The transmitter on the camera sends video to the receiver on the monitor
“It’s a great bit of kit that allows you to livestreameasily”
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