After more than 25 years in film, TV, and sports, David Anaru has streamed fight events to over 60,000 people. Today, he runs the whole operation on the YoloBox Extreme — and he’s refreshingly honest about why.
From Fox Sports to fight nights
David has spent over 25 years in film and TV. Along the way, he did a huge amount of sports filming for Fox Sports in Australia, worked on TV shows in New Zealand, and produced shows of his own. Then, around 2015, he moved into streaming — back when the technology was still pretty rough.
He didn’t start his streaming business with a grand plan. Instead, he simply had the gear and the production know-how, so he gave it a go. Somehow he found an audience, and it kept growing from there.
Today, more than 60,000 people have come through his website to buy or watch fight events. The real figure is actually higher. However, he deliberately halves his own numbers. As he puts it, “I prefer working from a number I know is realistic and using that as my goal. Anything above that is a bonus.”
From vMix rigs to the first YoloBox
In the early days, David ran vMix 9 or 10 on a desktop PC that he physically carried to venues. Then, around vMix 14, he moved to a laptop with a Thunderbolt enclosure and a Blackmagic DeckLink Duo 2. Meanwhile, he was still shooting on Sony EX1 and EX3 cameras, plus other Blackmagic gear.
He first came across the original YoloBox around 2018 or 2019. At the time, it caught his eye, but he didn’t buy in until the YoloBox Pro arrived. Above all, he wanted portability — the ability to get into a venue, set up fast, pack down fast, and cut the number of operators he needed.
For a while, the Pro went well. But then a firmware update left the video looking choppy. So he assumed something had broken, and the unit ended up in the closet. Years later, however, he discovered the fix was simple: a factory reset. Once he ran it, the Pro worked perfectly again. Unfortunately, he just didn’t know that at the time.
The night that changed everything
After the Pro, David bought a YoloBox Ultra, mainly for its four inputs. Still, he didn’t use it much at first. Partly it couldn’t yet do everything he wanted, and partly he was already a heavy vMix user. In fairness, he admits he didn’t give it a proper chance — vMix plus Stream Decks could handle almost anything.
Then one night, he had three fight events running at the same time.
Because only two of his vMix machines were free, he pulled out the Ultra for the third event. It was a simple three-camera production, so he decided to give it a shot. In the end, he came away impressed.
Of course, it wasn’t perfectly smooth. For example, he used an HDMI splitter to stream and feed the venue’s big screen at once. On top of that, the fight card changed at the last minute, so he had to load new graphics from an SD card. Only later did he realise he could simply run vMix into one of the Ultra’s HDMI inputs when needed.
Why two YoloBox Extremes now run the show
When the YoloBox Extreme launched about a year later, David bought one. Then he liked it enough to buy a second. Since then, he has sold both the Pro and the Ultra. Today, two Extremes run his events.
This year, he has built up a lot of real-world examples with the YoloBox Extreme — different venues, different setups, different situations. As a result, he can show exactly how it performs, rather than just quoting specs.
He is also blunt about his reasoning. A laptop and vMix could do almost everything, he says — but that’s not the point:
“I want to be portable. I want one main device. I want to arrive, set up, produce the event, pack everything up and leave without carrying half a television studio with me.”
For instance, he powers his Extreme from four Sony batteries on a four-battery plate. As a result, he gets around 10 hours of runtime out of it.
Pushing the YoloBox Extreme to its limits
Naturally, David has also tested how hard the Extreme can be pushed. Ideally, he’d love four replay channels, six ISO recordings, and one program recording, all at around 20 Mbps. Still, he understands that’s a lot to ask from a single portable device.
What he reliably gets, however, is three replays, four ISO recordings, and one output recording at around 12 Mbps. Everything he produces is HD, because for live fight production he simply doesn’t need 4K.
He has hit a couple of pain points, too. One that frustrated him, for example, was audio routing when both HDMI outputs are in use. For now, he works around it with an HDMI splitter on one output.
He’d rather show than tell — so here’s the proof, straight from a live fight night:
Want to go further?
Explore the YoloBox Extreme tech specs if you’re sizing up the gear.
Read more customer stories if you want to see it in action first.
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a Marketing Specialist at YoloLiv，passionate about creating content that helps users explore the full potential of live streaming.
