Functional As A 1-channel Replay Machine
By Jeremiah
Rated 3 out of 5
Date: 2025-12-03
Roland Was Smart To Make A Small, Portable, Relatively Inexpensive Replay Solution. It's A Market That's There For Sure, As More And More High Schools And Smaller Productions Have Spring Up In This Age Of Easy Live Streaming. I Give Them Full Kudos For It. (And The Fact That It Can Be Integrated/triggered From His Mid-range Switcher Line Is Pretty Amazing).
On The Downside, Even Though It Has Two Inputs, It's Functionally A One-channel Replay Machine. You Can Only Record/playback One Of The Channels At A Time. (And The One You're Not On, Isn't Recorded While You're Not On It). It Also Fails In The Most Basic Operation: Quickly Rewinding And Playing Back. All I Want Is A Box That Has A Live Button And A Wheel That I Can Spin Back Quickly. I Understand That Engineering A Variable Speed Jog Wheel Is Probably Complicated, But At The Very Least, There Should Be A Way To Set The Default Speed When The Wheel Is Turned. 2x Or 3x Or Something. You Can Have It Set To "shuttle" Mode, But It's Not Precise Enough For A Single Person To Use On The Fly. You Tilt It 1mm Too Far And It Goes Back Super Fast.
In The Case Of The Roland P-20HD, Your Switcher Is Getting A Live Source, Which Is In The Main Window, And The Replay Source In The Second Window. You Will See Live Play Continue On The Left Side When You Frame By Frame Scroll Back The Replay Window. (which Is Agonizingly Slow). If You Want To Send A Replay To The Main Feed, You Hit A Button To Switch It To Replay Mode And It Immediately Switches. (As Of Now, There Is No Way To Add A Graphical Stinger With The Machine Alone, But It May Be Possible When Paired With A Roland Switcher. There Are Default Transitions, Like Mix, Or A Corner Wipe, But Nothing Like A Real Switcher). With The Firmware Upgrade, There Is Thankfully The Option To Start The Playback Speed At The Position That The T-bar Is In, So It Will Immediately Go To The Other Window And Play Slowly.
I Am A Professional Replay Operator, And Have Used Many Replay Machines. I Think That Roland Put A Lot Of Work Into Getting The Clip-saving Part Of The Process Fairly Solid, But Just Didn't Think About Having A Replay Ready As Soon As Possible. I Am Going To Be Testing This On A Real Live Event In A Couple Weeks, And I Have A Feeling That I Will Have To Use It Sparingly. Again, The Ideal Replay Solution Would Be Something Where I Can Just Roll The Wheel Back To An In, And Playback In Slo Mo Quickly. Having A Graphical Stinger Flash On The Replay Would Be Ideal. I Would Encourage The Roland Engineers To Shadow A Replay Operator At A Sporting Event Using A Broadcast Replay Machine So They Can See How It's Used. On Those Machines You Make A Couple Turns Of The Wheel And You're Back At The Start Of A Play And You Can Play Just By Twitching The T-bar. It's Faster Than Is Possible On The Roland.
I'd say it's 5 stars, but they are half-stars.
By Kevin
Rated 3 out of 5
Date: 2024-12-04
Roland built a solid unit, but the resolution and quality of that image are too low in my estimation 10Mbps is kind of low-quality, and I feel that they could have done better. Also, you can import images, but not make them a stinger. What's the sense of doing Replay without a stinger? There is a replay button, so using this as a stand-alone replay system without a stinger makes me think it wasn't planned to work that way. Use it with a video switcher that could use a stinger, but then you still only have 1 channel of recorded replay. Why? 2 Inputs, but only 1 record. Nice, but not good enough. Plus the original MSRP was way overpriced given its image quality, another dunk in the trunk.