LON

Church celebration at a distance

“We first looked to see if we could hang a simple webcam of a few hundred euros somewhere,” explained Roelof Janssen of the parish. “When we came to the conclusion that that was insufficient, we engaged LON. LON advised us CUE-Support because it is a partner you can rely on. For financing, we contacted the Ons Net Nuenen cooperative.”

On Dec. 24, 2020, the new system, which runs on local broadcasters’ technology, went live. It was important to LON that everything remained compatible. As such, quite a few hours were spent with Roger Creemers, director of CUE-Support, discussing the best fitting solution. Joop Simmers of LON: “Roger had proposed a number of things that were correct, but would not do enough justice to it for us. We had a good exchange of views on that. There was no push to sell, but rather a search for a solution that suited all parties. Therein lies a big difference from the pure approach of turning over sales.”

Operation from multiple locations

The church has four AXIS brand cameras that can be controlled by laptop and a joystick. This ministry can be done from the church itself or from LON’s studios. In the future, it should even be possible to direct from home on the couch.

Joop: “The starting point was to make investments that fit our standard and on which we can build. We don’t want to be confronted in the future with the fact that products are no longer compatible. We are already seeing that choices we have made in the past on Roger’s advice now fit again. That brings with it a piece of efficiency.”

The technology in the church offers so many more possibilities than a standard camera because remote direction is possible. By using multiple cameras, there are images from different angles and also can be zoomed in and out. Because everything goes via fiber, all images are HD quality.

Fiberglass

Streaming from the church is a result of Nuenen’s own fiber optic network, which it has had since 2005. It is the first municipality in the Netherlands to implement integrated fiber optics. CUE-Support was aware of the possibilities of this fiber optic network in the Brabant locality. Joop: “We designed the basic architecture ourselves for some of the hardware we wanted. We ended up with a company in the US that could supply the necessary stuff for us, but that was prohibitively expensive. We then talked to Roger and he started looking in his network for specialists in that field.”

Through CUE-Support, LON came into contact with a small company in Zaandam. This company looked extensively at the schematics we created and eventually delivered a test setup. “If we wanted to share the evaluation with them, it could be delivered at cost,” Joop said. “We now have three such systems and everything can be interconnected.”

Future

Because all products and systems can be connected to each other and are thus fully compatible, it is even possible that LON could set up independent studios in 24 locations in the future. A studio in the monastery or in the soccer club cafeteria is among the possibilities. If advice is then needed again, chances are the broadcaster will contact CUE-Support again.

“The cooperation is so close that half a word is enough to reach a solution. CUE-Support employs people who know their business. You always get answers to your questions. CUE-Support goes beyond just selling equipment.”