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Review: Hollyland Pyro H wireless video transmission system

Damien Demolder

Review: Hollyland Pyro H wireless video transmission system 1

Hollyland’s Pyro H wireless video transmission kit aims to connect cameras with external monitors and recorders that are positioned across the room, in another room or on the other side of a field. The Pyro H kit is part of a Hollyland Pyro system that includes a Pyro S kit for cameras with SDI connections and a Pyro 7 wireless field monitor that acts as both transmitter and receiver. The Pyro H kit is designed for cameras that use HDMI to connect with the outside world, and as such brings all sorts of prosumer and consumer mirrorless models into its orbit.

Even on a modest set, cables can begin to take over floor space and connected devices can only be as far apart as those cables allow.

Cables create trip hazards, restrict our movements and take up too much space in the kit box. Wireless video transmitters were born to do away with at least the longest ones, and to extend the distances possible between connected cameras and monitors. This kit claims to be able to spend 4K footage to a monitor/recorder positioned up to 400m/1300ft away from the camera, and to do so without breaking the bank.

Specification

The Hollyland Pyro H kit includes one TX (transmitter) and one RX (Receiver) unit, a coldshoe mount for the TX and a USB-C-to-USB-A converter. Each TX and RX unit comes with a pair of screw-in antenna that can be angled for optimal signal pick-up. The TX and RX units communicate via 2.4GHz and 5GHz signals according to distance and congestion, and each TX transmitter unit can speak to up to four RX receiver units at once within a group – so we can have several monitors receiving the same feed simultaneously. In addition, the TX unit has an HDMI loop-out so we can cable-connect a monitor on or near the camera too.

Hollyland has plenty of experience with these sorts of transmitters having marketed its MARS system for some time, but in the Pyro system the company has made a number of improvements, including to the range. Hollyland claims the Pyro TX and RX units can be up to 400m/1200ft apart and still communicate so long as they are in line-of-sight (LOS). That’s quite a jump from the 120m/400ft range of the MARS system. Also, now we can transmit 4K footage as well as 1080p, with ‘best’ options of 4K in 30fps or 1080p in 60fps – so good enough for external recording in high resolution as well as just monitoring.

There are a number of power options available for both units, including standard NP-F type batteries in the rear-mounted plate. Users can also power the units via an external battery to the USB-C ports or via a common locking DC power cable you might use from a D-Tap battery or from a mains power supply.

The USB-C port in the RX unit doubles as a video output too as it is USB OTG (On-The-Go) so we can plug that directly into a PC and stream to Zoom/OBS etc without the need of a separate capture card.

The units draw less than 7W and weigh 192g each, and both measure 109×62.3×33.4mm/4.3×2.45×1.3in as they are the same shape and size.

Set-up and handling

Setting up the Pyro H system really is just a question of attaching a battery and switching them on – they connect automatically and in no time at all. If you are just using one TX and one RX unit that’s pretty much all there is to say – they just work. If you are using more than one RX unit you’ll just need to activate the pairing function and wait for them to find each other. The single transmitter can communicate with up to 4 receiver units including the Pyro 7 monitor and we can transmit to mobile devices likes phones and tablets via the HollyView app – but not all at the same time. In the regular mode a single transmitter will send a signal to two receivers and two devices with the app running, and they can be up to 400m/1300ft away from the transmitter. If we need more than two receivers we switch the transmitter to Broadcast mode which allows us to reach up to four receivers but within a range of 200m/650ft.

The frequency the system operates at is chosen automatically by the transmitter, but we can easily select our own if the signal becomes interrupted for any reason.

Fortunately the TX and RX units are pretty lightweight, so they don’t add much to the heft of the rig or any handheld monitors we’re using. They need power of course, so the eventual added weight of the system will depend on how you decide to run them. The rear of each unit has a mount for a NP-F type battery, and this option is the simplest, if not the lightest. If the camera or monitor is running from a V-Lock battery and you have spare output ports we can also run the units from this – either via a USB-C cable or via a D-Tap-to-locking DC port cable. We can also run the unit from mains power if there aren’t enough other options, so we’ll never be short of electricity. The only thing we need to be aware of is that the transmitter won’t work in Broadcast mode when we’re powering it via the USB-C port.

In use

There are a lot of different uses for a set-up like this. The most obvious is to connect a camera and a monitor, but we can also record the signal via an Atomos Ninja or Blackmagic Design Video Assistant type recorder. We can also connect a receiver to a PC via USB and stream to platforms like OBS without the need for a video capture card. If your computer’s USB has power-out you can power the receiver and stream video from the one cable, which is very handy.

The range claims of 400m/1300ft seem a good deal more than most of us would need for everyday shooting, but I suppose it’s useful to have for the occasions it is needed. On a more regular basis the range hopefully means we get a stable signal at shorter distances when obstacles come between the TX and RX units – and that is what I found.

In my tests the TX and RX units could ably communicate through several domestic brick walls and maintain a clean stream from a good distance at the same time. With one TX and one RX unit in my review kit, as well as the HollyView app on my phone, I wasn’t able to test the system in Broadcast mode, but have no reason to believe performance within the 200m/650ft line-of-sight range would be any different.

There is a lag though. Hollyland says that we should expect latency of 0.06 seconds or 60ms. This may be true somewhere along the line but in practical applications I found the system delay from camera to monitor to be much more like half a second. I know there’s about 20/100sec between my Lumix cameras and the display of the Atomos Ninja/Shinobi when they are connected directly via HDMI. With the Pyro H system in between that extended to about half a second when I was running between camera and monitor, though when streaming via USB to the PC the delay was more like a third of a second. The HDMI connections between the TX and the camera, and then between the RX and the monitor clearly play a part, and while it isn’t Hollyland’s fault it is still a characteristic of using this system.

I suspect for most situations that delay isn’t especially important, but I found when shooting stills of people chatting animatedly I wasn’t able to judge the moment using a monitor connected via the Pyro H system. In less time-critical applications there will be no issue but when capturing specific moments is crucial, this isn’t the way to go. However, for most video shooting scenarios this delay will hardly matter, unless you’re a focus puller dealing with a wide aperture camera/subject movement. If you are a focus puller working in a fast changing scene you’ll be best to connect via the HDMI Loopout, as the lag falls back to the usual ≈20/100sec you’d get from a direct-to-camera cable.

We have two wireless modes to work with depending on what our priorities are. Smooth Mode uses a fluctuating bit rate to reduce latency, while HD Mode keeps the bit rate between 8-12Mbps to ensure best quality. I didn’t notice a difference in the lag between the two.

HollyView App

I wouldn’t usually give a product’s app its own section in a review, but the HollyView app is something else. You connect to the transmitter via Wi-Fi and can monitor what the camera is sending directly on the screen. That’s pretty cool on its own, but the app also allows us to monitor waveform, false colour and the kind of displays we get on a regular monitor. It also offers stretch for anamorphic lenses.

But slightly cooler than all that is the record feature. With a trigger button on the screen we can record directly through the app to our phone’s memory – and in FHD with audio too. Maybe I’m easily impressed, but I thought this was an amazing feature that lets users immediately share clips shot with a real camera – and the quality is really good too. If you shoot lots of social media content and need the footage straight away it would be worth buying a transmitter on its own just for this feature.

Conclusion

This is a pretty remarkable low-cost video transmission system that is very easy to set up, simple to use and very effective. I like that the units are lightweight and that they can be powered via a range of input options, and that they pair quickly and with no effort from the operator. The streaming via powered USB OTG to a PC is an unexpected, and very useful, bonus and makes live broadcast a simple option. Similarly, the monitoring features of the HollyView app, as well as its ability to record FHD footage directly to a smartphone or tablet, is really very impressive – and opens the system to another sector of user.

The lag while connected via HDMI cables to a camera and then a monitor is only really inconvenient for still shooters needing to capture a specific moment, but the time it takes to switch from shooting to review mode is a drag. I suspect these delays would be somewhat foreshortened when monitoring on the Hollyland Pyro 7 wireless monitor that’s part of the system, as that would cut out one of the HDMI connections. This theory is somewhat borne out by the reduced lag when the RX unit is streaming to OBS via USB. Once again, this HDMI lag isn’t Hollyland’s fault, as their part of the delay is only 60ms, but it is something to consider all the same for some shooters.

The flexibility of this Pyro H system makes it a pretty attractive option, and its expandability means it isn’t only for skeleton crews – and the price opens the door for lower-budget and owner-operators to bring in a useful collection of features that not too long ago cost a whole lot more.

Hollyland Pyro H Specifications

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