KitPlus | Articles

The Wireless Way to 4k

DTC’s AEON group of products have been specifically designed for the 4K market. We encode with the more efficient HEVC algorithm, which means we are taking a 12G signal and compressing it to a bitrate that can be managed over an RF link. So what makes this a leading idea in the 4K revolution?For a start, sport continues to drive technical innovatio...

Submitted by JP Delport

Published 09 November 2018

Managing Technological Change

Continual technological change in the broadcast and media industries can make it difficult to plan for the mid to long term. Typically, broadcasters and media organisation are still implementing the last set of changes to working practices when the next changes come along. Display manufacturers and viewer expectation help drive the different techno...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 08 September 2018

Investing in the Future of Broadcast Media

At the time of writing, the summer World Cup is providing its usual challenge to camera crews trying to televise the bright sunlight of the stadium without losing detail in shaded areas such as the covered terraces. It is a perfect demonstration of the need for high dynamic range. Several broadcasters are experimentally covering this year's tournam...

Submitted by Clive Northen

Published 18 July 2018

Delivering on the 4k Promise

It’s happened. Consumers are demanding 4K UHD content. They have the TVs, smartphones, tablets and other devices they need, and with much of Netflix and Amazon original content in 4K, as well as sports coverage from BT and Sky, consumers have tasted the future of content quality and are hungry for more. But broadcasters need not worry if their cust...

Submitted by Lorna Garrett

Published 07 June 2018

Peace of mind in a complicated world

For many in the broadcast industry these are challenging times. With competition coming from all angles and different technological camps advocating different approaches to infrastructure and the way forwards. With the number of different variables increasing, the choices of whether to use SDI or IP infrastructures, and the choices around HDR and W...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 19 October 2017

The importance of a low noise floor

The Noise Floor of a piece of T&M equipment is the inherent noise (or intrinsic jitter) introduced by the equipment itself. The level of inherent noise affects the accuracy and repeatability of jitter measurements that can be made, especially when measuring low levels of jitter. With the permitted 100KHz jitter on a 12G-SDI signal being only 0.3UI,...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 07 December 2016

Taking a hybrid approach to the SDI/IP transistion

Broadcasters are not newcomers to technological transitions. As an industry, we\'ve survived analogue to digital, baseband to file-based workflows, SDTV to HDTV and now 4KUHD resolution, not to mention weathering a barrage of new compression formats. Today, we\'re facing one of the most dramatic transformations we\'ve ever undergone: SDI to IP. Unl...

Submitted by Matthew Coleman

Published 07 December 2016

The future of timing and timecode

It is SMPTE\'s 100th anniversary! I hope that all readers have had a chance to view the Centennial Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN2yYrEFMFQ) and to contemplate that 100 years ago we were in the dawn of the cinema era, where different equipment used different frame rates, different sprocket sizes, different frame sizes and the concept of d...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 24 August 2016

Test and measurement in a multiformat world

The evolution of television technology since the days of 525-line and 625-line standard definition has left a large legacy of standards which modern broadcast systems now have to recognise and process. In today's video and audio business, creatives and technical staff have to be ready to handle a multiplicity of signal types. In its standard form,...

Submitted by Kevin Salvidge

Published 24 August 2016

5 Things I Saw At NAB

by Peter Savage Issue 113 - May 2016 ARRI Trinity stabilisationIt may look like something that was dreamt up for a sci-fi film but the Trinity stabilisation system is a truly remarkable bit of kit that is most certainly real. Available as an upgrade to the Artemis or a third-party camera stabiliser, it consists of a compact and lightweight two-axis...

Submitted by Peter Savage 2

Published 13 May 2016

Audio

by Pieter Schillebeeckx Issue 113 - May 2016 Audio monitoring has come a long way since its humble beginnings of a box with a speaker, a volume control and an analogue input. Today\'s high-end audio monitoring units boast an impressive array of I/O such as SDI, MADI, AES-3 and Analogue while offering a large amount of functionality such as accurate...

Submitted by Pieter Schillebeeckx

Published 13 May 2016

Waveform Monitors in 4K Production

by Alan Wheable Issue 112-April 2016 Waveforms have always been one of the essential tools for anyone working in the video industry and are used for level alignment, grading and quality control to touch on just a few areas. Working with HD and 3G-SDI waveform technology may have been a solution in the early days of UHD/4k to display the waveforms f...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 25 April 2016

SDI, IP, Uncompressed and Compressed

by Phil Adams Issue 112 - April 2016 Why did you decide to create a new platform for T&M? There\'s a lot of talk about hybrid in the industry and we recognised early on that there were some big changes in the pipeline to do with SDI, IP, uncompressed and compressed signals and we had a lot of our own end users asking for something specific for UHDT...

Submitted by Phillip Adams

Published 25 April 2016

4k is a reality for live production

Some aspects of the broadcast industry move exceedingly quickly; new cameras are launched seemingly daily, shows are commissioned and shows are axed but the overall pace of the industry remains pretty steady. Would it shock you to hear that NHK in Japan first built its own 4K prototype camera in 2003? (At this point, it's worth clarifying that we'r...

Submitted by Liam Laminman

Published 01 April 2016

Staying within a recognisable landscape

by Alan Wheable Issue 110 - February 2016 2015 saw the maturing development of UHDTV 4K signal technologies and a growing agreement that both SDI and IP will exist in their respective strong application areas, as a solid engineering solution to the differing requirements of live signal handling and programme contribution. While the apparent panacea...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 16 March 2016