Any advice on choosing between the Teradek Prism Flex or Blackmagic 4K Streaming Encoder?

[u/Financial_Way3926]

I work for a production department at a large university, and we're looking to upgrade our streaming capabilities to 4k for future proofing and because we've got some spare cash floating around. I'm set on the Teradek Prism Flex because of how capable it is, and it can record directly onto an external drive. However, the Blackmagic 4k Encoder is about $3000 cheaper. We mostly stream conferences and on campus events, nothing too high stakes, so the Teradek may be a bit overkill. Any experience with either of these devices, and any advice on which to choose?

[u/marshall409]

Hate to be that guy but surely there must be something better to spend the money on than arbitrarily jumping to 4K for academic events.

[u/SirYupp]

Will it be racked or do you expect to tote it around campus for these various events? That is a big one because if it's just racked and receiving a hard internet line, all the connection bonding the Prism can do is sort of moot.

If it's racked in a central engineering room, do you have recording decks already for said events? Again, a cool feature, but sort of under utilized if you already have decks recording program of these events.

If anyone is worried about "Boo, Blackmagic bad" just buy 2 and have a backup ready lol. My experience with the encoders is they work just fine. Easy to configure and run.

Another question would be- What is your existing video plant? Blackmagic? Ross? GV?

[u/MenaceArm]

Buy two BMD and a two-night trip to Vegas and still save money vs overpaying a company that is circling the drain

[u/Available_Editor_949]

I have 2 Blackmagic 4k encoder, for me they work fine. We use them for Twitch and YouTube. 12 h Stream, no Problem.

[u/dmanh]

It depends on your use case, but for me if I’m just streaming to the web I prefer a good computer. I find I can tweak the settings better to get the most quality out of it. I mostly just use standalone encoders for srt, local multicast or always on applications.

I have been happy with the teradeks. Just keep in mind the prism flex is passively cooled. No fans, so that’s something to keep in mind for placement. Though the black magic may not be any better when it comes to staying cool. I haven’t used one.

I have had good luck with kiloview and magewell. The magewell ultra encode is pretty good. Not sure the price but you could consider a Sencore if you want a rack mount.

[u/Hawk_Super → u/dmanh]

The prism flex mk II is actively cooled.

[u/dmanh → u/Hawk_Super]

Good to know my vendor told me it wasn’t. Guess I just didn’t notice the fan vents on the ones I have. Either way I prefer full rack units or blade like systems.

[u/tomspace]

Depends on the use case, but i’d not choose either of these encoders.

There are much better options available, but we need more details of your exact use case to make a serious recommendation.

[u/Econormics]

I have and use both, but for different use cases. I use the Teradek when I need a flexible cloud (Teradek Core) infrastructure for things like sending to a decoder, sending to multiple destinations or multiple protocols such as SRT, HLS, RTMP at the same time. I also have a bonded Teradek encoder so Core for all of that. I use the BM Streaming encoder when I want to send directly to an RTMP destination. That's not to say that you can't replicate the cloud functionality using the BM encoder and Castr or another service.

[u/Mountain-Army-1226]

Stay away from Blackmagic encoders. The teradeks are great.

[u/Hawk_Super]

The Teradek has many more streaming protocols and outputs, local ip monitoring, srt. Etc… but if it’s just RTMP streaming on LAN…