Overview
A few months back, I was sent a Hollyland 3000P wireless transmitter to review. At 3000ft, it’s comparable to a Teradek Bolt 3000 XT, but costs about $3k less. I was interested to try it out, so I said yes – why not? I had some shoots coming up that I had already rented a Teradek 3000 system for, so I figured I would bring this along too with the Teradek as a backup.
Features
The Hollyland Cosmo 3000P comes with a single transmitter and receiver, with a claimed 3000ft range. It’s also got a hard case, crab clamp, magic arm, and a pre-installed V-mount plate on both the receiver and the transmitter (as well as p-tap and AC power options). Both the transmitter and receiver have SDI loop out; the transmitter also takes an HDMI input and the receiver has an HDMI output.
First impression: this system is massive. The transmitter is the size of a comparable Teradek receiver, and the receiver is a giant panel antenna. There’s no way this can be a mobile setup.
Performance
My AC and I set up the system on a shoot for British Airways, and God damn is it big. It actually wouldn’t be too much of a problem if they put a v-mount plate on both sides of the transmitter, so I could squish it between my battery and the battery plate like the new Cinegears Ghost Eye, but since that’s not an option here it just sits on an articulating arm being giant and in the way.
The receiver was a whole other beast. How do you mount this massive piece of gear? It’s got a baby pin mount to put it on a separate stand, but the arm itself that comes off of it is garbage and won’t hold its own weight; it just kind of flops over. Had to bring in grip team to rig it – not helping me move fast, here.
Once we got the system up, it worked great. No lag, great picture, but we were only using it inside. Honestly, I couldn’t test the 3000′ range like I wanted to, because for the Acura commercial I had coming up I needed a 1:2 system (1 transmitter, 2 receivers). The 3000P does not support multiple receivers. I also needed one of the receivers to be on a handheld SmallHD 702 monitor cage, which I could do with a small Teradek 3000 receiver – not one of these massive panels.
Conclusion
The systems definitely transmits video well, but is wildly impractical as a piece of kit. It’s huge and ungainly. It’s plasticy; I wouldn’t want to drop it because it would probably break immediately. Get something else; if you want a panel antenna you can hook a Teradek system up to one, but you at least have the option to use the Teradek receiver without the panel. This thing is ungainly and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
