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Responding to Change

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The first days of 2020 seem like a good time to reflect on what will happen to our industry in the coming months and years. There are some things about which we can do nothing. The global political situation seems to be in turmoil. Populists seem to stop at nothing, and are certainly not hampered by the need to be truthful; the Middle East is in tu...

Submitted by James Gilbert

Published 27 January 2020

Integrated and automating marketing campaign production

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i ITV, as an integrated producer broadcaster, creates, owns and distributes high-quality content on multiple platforms. It operates the largest commercial family of channels in the UK and delivers its content through traditional television broadcasting as well as on demand via the ITV Hub. ITV has the largest share of the UK television advertising...

Submitted by James Gilbert

Published 07 September 2017

Does the cloud have substance?

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Just at the moment, every customer we talk to wants to move to the cloud. It is not just a techno-buzzword: people are really attracted by it. The idea of getting rid of all hardware and letting someone else worry about keeping machine rooms alive seems like a good plan. And they sometimes feel a bit deflated when we talk quietly and calmly about w...

Submitted by Ciaran Doran

Published 04 April 2017

Smarter Branding

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The past decade of multi-channel digital broadcasting has created a paradox. The addition of OTT, VoD and other online services only serves to add to it. On the one hand, the more channels there are, the more you need to market yours if it is to win and retain a healthy audience. On the other hand, the more channels there are, the more the total re...

Submitted by James Gilbert

Published 15 February 2017

The new world of playout

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Consumers know what they expect from a television channel. They expect programmes, of course, but they also know they are going to get commercials, trailers, station idents, graphics, break bumpers, squeezebacks and hot starts, bugs and brand identities, and more. Significantly, they expect these to arrive smoothly and seamlessly, in consistent hig...

Submitted by James Gilbert

Published 22 July 2016

Emphasising Television in streaming television

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by James Gilbert Issue 96 - December 2014 There have been all sorts of doom and gloom stories, over a decade or more, about how television is changing. Budgets are being slashed, workflows are becoming automated, and standard IT hardware is taking over from bespoke broadcast kit. But despite all this, television still looks good. If you watch telev...

Submitted by James Gilbert

Published 01 January 2015

Move and Deliver

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Issue 94 - October 2014You may not have heard of the open source video company Kaltura. But you probably will have heard of Harmonic. Together the two companies made an announcement at IBC that is indicative of where multi-screen, multi-platform TV is heading. They have teamed up to develop and market a cloud-based video infrastructure and OTT TV p...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 November 2014

NAB is for soothsayers, trendsetters and people with road...

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Unlucky for some…by Will StraussPrototypes, alpha products, demos and proofs of concept: NAB in Las Vegas is all about future innovation. Will Strauss picks 13 stands that you must visit this year. With the dust from BVE barely settled, it’s already time to look towards NAB. I know, I know. Don’t shout at me. I didn’t arrange the broadcast industry...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 April 2013

Take control with Helm

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Control and monitoring are two of the biggest issues faced in playout operations. Broadcasters and playout providers want to be able to select precisely the equipment that they need and probably more so than ever, are now able to very accurately do that. But this, combined with the fact that previously largely ‘static’ devices are now empowered by...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 December 2012

Beaten by branding

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Beaten by brandingI should say right at the start that I very much like Pixel Power’s James Gilbert. He is charming company, an excellent engineer and a good judge of wine. Yet, for all these admirable qualities, I hold him personally responsible for one of the greatest evils of modern society. I refer, of course, to the squeezeback. This is the ho...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2012

Eye to Eye: Video Post-production

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This column’s previous excursion into video post-production was just before the 2011 NAB Spring Convention, always a dangerous time to talk about new hardware or software when a deluge of upgrades, lookalikes and lite-editions are about to hit the aisles of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Quite a lot has happened in this category over the past 12...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

How to create and brand a live TV experience online

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Late last year, Pixel Power worked closely with the Perform Group to brand the first ever live England football match online, a landmark event. Before we discuss that in detail, there is a wider question to answer: what do we mean by “branding”? Branding is fundamentally how you differentiate your channel; how you make it stand out in the crowd and...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

EPIC HD Upgrade

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EPIC-TV came into being in late 2006, after Norfolk County Council acquired the ITV Anglia Regional news and Network production studios at Magdalen Street Norwich. Since then it’s been re-developed as one of the technically most advanced production facilities in Europe, with three broadcast studies, two of the HD, one of them Virtual, linked direct...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 May 2009

A brief history of television graphics

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Thirty years ago, television captions were routinely created by sticking white Letraset characters onto black card. Credit rolls were possible using special devices which used long strips of black material onto which the Letraset was stuck, and which were literally rolled, either by an electric motor but sometimes even by hand. There were, of cours...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008