KitPlus | Articles

Changing expectations

by Dick Hobbs Issue 90 - June 2014 I can remember when Ericsson made mobile phones. Now they are a major player in television playout or, as we now have to call it, delivering content. Interestingly, they also carry out extensive research, and have their own forecasting group which is looking at the way the business is changing. They have published...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 July 2014

Mildred: The next generation of OB vans

by Kate Phibbs Issue 87 - March 2014 As live streaming occupies an ever-increasing piece of the broadcast industry pie, todays leaders of the online broadcasting industry are paving the way by investing in original and status quo challenging research and development. The team of engineers at industry leader, 3xScreen Media, kept these principles of...

Submitted by Kate Phibbs

Published 01 April 2014

Dick Hobbs is Counting Pixels

by Dick Hobbs Issue 86 - February 2014 At the start of each year you hear the sound and fury as the technology correspondents of broadcasters and the popular press head off to Las Vegas for CES, the annual exhibition of the Consumer Electronics Association. I have never been: I feel that two trips to Las Vegas a year would count as cruel and unusua...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 March 2014

Service providers should see OTT as a revenue opportunity

by Haggai BarelIssue 84 - December 2013 Todays content service providers can use over-the-top (OTT) content to enhance the viewing experience for their subscribers and generate revenue for their service offerings. To accomplish this, however, service providers must overcome the initial - and justified - belief that OTT is a threat that must be bloc...

Submitted by Haggai Barel

Published 01 January 2014

Streaming Downtown Showdown

by Kate PhibbsIssue 82 - October 2013 With summer well and truly on its way out, what better way to send it off than a trip to Paris to produce and live stream the Vans Downtown Showdown 2013. After the success of producing and broadcasting the Vans Spring Classic in Italy in April, we here at 3xScreen Media knew that Downtown Showdown, Europes lar...

Submitted by Kate Phibbs

Published 01 November 2013

The international worship market: shoot, compress and del...

by Kieron SethIssue 81 - September 2013 The worship TV market in the U.S. is big business, with an output that rivals many international broadcasters, both in terms of quantity, production values, audience size and commercial success. John Hagee Ministries leads a 17,000-strong congregation and broadcasts to the USA on 160 TV stations, 50 radio sta...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 October 2013

Cellular bonding now and going forward

by Ronen ArtmanIssue 81 - September 2013 The worship TV market in the U.S. is big business, with an output that rivals many international broadcasters, both in terms of quantity, production values, audience size and commercial success. John Hagee Ministries leads a 17,000-strong congregation and broadcasts to the USA on 160 TV stations, 50 radio st...

Submitted by Ronen Artman

Published 01 October 2013

Dick Hobbs gets up to speed with ESOMPS

The UK communications regulator Ofcom has issued a consultation document on the prospects for a technology called Earth Stations on Mobile Platforms, or ESOMPs. My first response to the consultation is that they should get a better acronym. An ESOMP is a small communications device which is attached to a mobile platform: a train, a plane, a ship or...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 October 2013

Evolutions in the media cloud with Bob Pank

by Bob PankIssue 80 - August 2013 Years ago my boss, the sales director, warned me that talk of technical revolutions was not good. After all, a revolution ends up where it started. On the other hand evolutions were much better. Of course he was right. Over the years the technology of television has continuously evolved via numerous incremental imp...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2013

Ask the experts: Content readiness in time-deferred workf...

by Sudeep BoseIssue 79 - July 2013 What are the fundamental considerations that must be addressed to ensure the quality of non-real-time content, whether played out from a broadcasters media server or time-shifted for VOD and other OTT services?When focusing on the actual content itself, rather than the service, network or other components, the key...

Submitted by Sudeep Bose

Published 01 August 2013

Cloud STB with Bob Pank

It’s like trying to get to Heathrow in time for your flight. Many of us have to go there by road and the journey will involve travelling on the UK’s busiest motorways. Even outside rush hour the journey may be quick, or not so quick or a real nightmare. This is a bit like live streaming video on the Internet. Yes, we’ve probably all used at least o...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2013

Building a live linear streaming channel to reach multipl...

The market for live and on-demand streaming video has exploded in recent years thanks in part to broadband connections and the proliferation of connected devices. A recent survey by The Diffusion Group showed that some 50 percent of online video viewers watch some form of streaming live video at least once a month, and 64 percent said comprehensive...

Submitted by Jennifer Baisch

Published 01 May 2013

IT Broadcasting

Magdoos Media is the archetypal early 21st century broadcaster. The company televises live events for such clients as Codemasters, ArabicGamers, 2K Games and Russell Investment, webstreaming and narrow-casting programmes on behalf of niche markets, from gaming conventions to corporate events. “Delivery channels vary from public access networks such...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 December 2012

Understanding and Managing the Piracy Continuum

Content owners, content distributors and security vendors have traditionally characterized digital “pirates” as a single malicious group with ill intentions. This, however, is seriously short-sighted because it is an overgeneralization that not only overshadows true consumer behavior, but results in misguided piracy mitigation tactics and missed re...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

OTT Monitoring: keeping it simple and useful

IntroductionOTT is generally understood to mean a technique where the transmission of video to the subscriber is based on the same underlying methods as those currently being used to serve out web pages on the internet today. The Over-the-Top name refers to the potential of this technology for bypassing existing traditional television distribution...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2012