Review: NewTek TriCaster 8000

Streaming Media by Jan Ozer

NewTek's TriCaster 8000 is an extraordinarily capable live production and streaming solution that supports 8 simultaneous feeds and should be sufficient for all but the most complex live events, with a range of intriguing new features including powerful social media capabilities.

The TriCaster 8000 (TC8000) is the ultimate TriCaster with many intriguing new features, most notably social media support, and greatly expanded hardware and software capabilities. At $39,995 (including control surface), it’s a bargain, since duplicating the same functionality with traditional broadcast gear would cost much, much more. For those with lesser budgets, the 8000 (Figure 1, below) is also a harbinger of features to come; hopefully in lower-cost TriCasters, but if not, almost certainly in competitive products.

In this article, I’ll recount my impressions from an extended product demo I received in NewTek’s San Antonio offices in mid-July. But first, for those unfamiliar with the TriCaster, let’s set the stage.

Background

The TriCaster family of products consists of computer-based, live production switchers with an extraordinarily deep feature set, which includes multiple inputs from a range of sources, integrated title creation, digital disk recording and playback capabilities, multiple live virtual sets and multiple outputs, including broadcast and single stream and adaptive streaming feeds. Since its inception, the TriCaster has carved a very large niche for itself at the high end of the event producer market. For an overview of TriCaster functionality, check out Livestream Studio vs. NewTek TriCaster [http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=88300], which incorporates a detailed look at the low end of the TriCaster product line, the TC40, which costs $5,995 without the control surface.

Units are priced according to both input/output capabilities and feature set, and the TC8000 is top of the line in both regards. All units run Windows under the hood, though you can’t access Windows-based functionality from within the TriCaster interface. read more...