nick - i have spent a lot of time over the last few months looking into the issue of how to get a live signal transmitted from the GH2, both for use with a model helicopter and for hand-held shots where it is impractical for the director to run beside the operator. i have had several conversations about this with Panasonic UK, including one today. this is the short version of what i have discovered:
1) most portable video senders require a CV (composite) input (eg via RCA phono connnector, usually yellow). i have not yet found a portable video sender that will take HDMI - i have spoken to an american maker of video senders, and they were not interested in HDMI - too much bandwidth being one reason. i am about to talk to a prof at an acclaimed british technical university to see whether there is any student interest in pursuing developing a portable HDMI video sender (it looks like xbee has too little bandwidth and there are HDMI handshaking issues which seem to be a major headache).
2) i have tried to convert the HDMI output to CV, but the HDMI converter i have (a £60 device) will only accept HDMI signal from the GH2 when the camera is in playback mode (which is useless). when in live shooting or recording mode, the converter sees no signal at all from the GH2. i have tried every possible GH2 HDMI output permutation, always with the same negative results.
3) the CV output on the GH2 is crippled during recording mode, otherwise one could simply use that, and all would be lollipops and roses. i spoke again to Panasonic UK about an hour ago about this, and was told that thanks to my previous enquiry, Panasonic Japan is now aware of the problem, but there is no strong likelihood of a firmware fix for it. i was asked to gather evidence from users of the desire for CV output during record, so if anyone reading this will email me at juliandarley@gmail.com, that will help to make the case.
4) i believe there is something strange about the HDMI output of the GH2, since the HDMI to CV converter i have is quite happy to convert HDMI from my dvd player. meanwhile, the GH2 will drive my (v cheap) lilliput 7" monitor perfectly well, so you could argue that the HDMI converter needs to be better since something can actually read the GH2 HDMI output correctly.

i hope this is of some use, as it has taken some money and many hours of research and experimenting over a number of months to get even this far. i would be incredibly grateful to know of anyone else's experience, as i was planning to film a micro-budget feature with the GH2 as well as shooting aerial work with it, but the lack of live, usable output is a complete showstopper.

julian

I also had problem with that HDMI output, first with one of my LCD screen, second (more related to the topic) with high end videoconferencing endpoints (ex-Tandberg now Cisco endpoints : EX90, C90), those codecs can ingest and stream almost everything I connected to them (PCs, Bluray players, HD video cameras), but no luck with the GH2.

Another guy here also had problem connecting GH2 to his PC to stream using Webex (which would be a good solution for you to stream 360p video to Internet)

Is there even a way to tether the GH2 at the moment?

@driftwood
I think that you saw this - http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1134/wireless-hdmi-connection#Item_2

>yep, but theyre not available yet.... are they?

Why they are not avalable?
That topic has links to product pages :-)

The problem is I need to be able to roam probably over 30 metres to 50 metres. In some way the new HDMI wireless gear from HP etc... (see Vitaliy's link) only go to 20m. But thats not too bad. FI may very well order one to try out. :-)

Delivery: Estimated between Thu. Nov. 3 and Thu. Nov. 17 ... too late for what I need. Its probably time for me to pick up the old Sony EX3 and hire a D-Cam rig for it :-(

Would be nice to know if one could mount an external antenna and/or tweak this little box a bit, so it outputs a little more.
@driftwood be careful, what works in the lab might fail in a crowded, electronically polluted environment like such a public event is. I would mount the transmitter on the very top of the rig and see if you can get the receiver fixed on the ceiling, so you always have line of sight. One could also think about a laptop with BM shuttle in backpak, some vlc that crunches the stream so it can go trough 5 ghz wlan. Stay away from 2.5 ghz if possible, its usually very crowded at events and will be stopped by things that contain water.

Good advice @Meierhans, thanks

@Bueller

It is of no way cheap :-)
About 20x the price as I see.
I can't find ANY range specifications.
And it is based upon cheap H264 encoder and WiFi card.

Somebody help driftwood!!!!!

@gizmo, what kind RC helicopter are you using?

@driftwood - are you based in the UK? also, i thought you wanted something cheap??
i am considering contacting a prof at a premiere UK technical university to see whether there are any students who are interested in this problem, since a good value, portable HDMI sender would possibly have an interesting market.