Senator John Edwards had just announced his bid for the democratic nomination for president of the United States, and was on the road to rally support and receive feedback from citizens. He stopped in for a Town Hall meeting in a Portsmouth, New Hampshire elementary school and the crew had arrived prepared to stream this event live to the Internet.

The campaign advance team had a satellite live truck on site, but they were unable to test everything the night before. So, the thought occurred that maybe some backup might be useful. Marc Dole of Hatchling Studio in Portsmouth was part of the video team for this location, and he contacted Blaine Holm, of Video Hardware Services asking him to bring a TriCaster PRO out to the location the morning of the event. There were concerns that several firewalls on the school’s network might impede the stream, and Holm knew that TriCaster PRO could easily get through that with its push-based Windows Media streaming capability. Further, what available bandwidth there was would have to be shared with the press pool and onsite bloggers turning out for the event. “no one really knew if it would work. We had not tested it in the real environment with their accounts,” Explained Holm.

TriCaster’s role as backup device changed when it was realized that the satellite truck was haveing difficulty smoothly streaming the event without dropping frames. Holm, in the room with TriCaster PRO, gets the call ‘the truck is having problems, I’m thinking of switching to you’. This, as the music begins playing and crowd began to cheer at the imminent arrival of their candidate. Holm clicked on TriCaster’s red ‘Stream’ button to initiate the session, and in seconds, the event was successfully and smoothly streamed out to about 40-thousand viewers.

Holm says the campaign staffers were extremely pleased that TriCaster was there to save the day. “As I was leaving, one of the coordinators yelled out: ‘There he is! If it weren’t for you we would not have been broadcasting’”.

Holm says he’s been using and selling NewTek equipment for quite some time, but he saw how TriCaster redefined simplicity. “It’s so EASY! I’ve been in the computer business for about 20 years. However, I had never done a live stream before. Oh, I’ve talked about it plenty, but never actually done it. It was a piece of cake, and only took me less than a minute to get it going. The live switching, titling, internal VCR all operate flawlessly.”

Holm says his customers are generally ecstatic after purchasing TriCaster. “They like what they get for the money. They love the ease of use. It just works and is very user friendly. The portability is a big feature as well. When you add it all up, there is no product that even comes close. That makes our customers happy, which makes us happy.”

Video Hardware Services LLC has been an authorized NewTek reseller since the mid-90s. We manufacture custom workstations for the content creation industries. Although they represent most manufacturers, they enjoy selling NewTek products the most.