KitPlus | Articles

Boradcast playout on-site and in the cloud

Broadcasters come in many shapes and sizes, each with their own unique set of ambitions and their own preferred route to success. Some are happy to innovate, particularly if it increases staff efficiency or reduces operating costs. Others prefer to let their competitors do the innovating and then follow whatever path appears to work best. Thus the...

Submitted by Don Ash

Published 19 October 2017

Monetizing OTT

i Competition in the TV arena is hotting-up for traditional broadcasters with even ESPN, a strong-hold of sports TV, seeing a reduction in subscriptions with the number of American homes paying to get the service declining by more than 12m since 2011. With Mintel reporting that the subscription video streaming market in the UK is due to exceed reve...

Submitted by Oliver Botti

Published 07 September 2017

State of the Nation - part 1

i Imagine you are the director of the Champions League Final, knowing that 200 million people will be watching your every decision. Or you\'re directing the Eurovision Song Contest. Or even, to be honest, the Tunbridge Wells local news opt out. And at live minus 30 seconds, all the screens in the monitor wall suddenly go black then show a demand, i...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 07 September 2017

The UPs and Downs At NAB with Mr MXF

i "Nothing is finer than the pictures on that monitor", said my colleague as we stood in front of the enormous Sony LED screen showing super bright, super wide HDR pictures that were beautifully shot and carefully presented. The English language, however, can be confusing because when I returned from NAB and showed my wife the photos that I took, s...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin - new

Published 01 August 2017

Controlling the Chaos of Remote Uplinks

For Satellite Broadcasters, consumer needs have never been so varied. Audiences are increasingly accustomed to personalisation in every type of content they consume. They now demand, or rather expect to receive breaking news from a scene, content specific to their regions and access to live sporting events held thousands of miles away. As a result,...

Submitted by Roger Franklin

Published 19 May 2017

Mr Cloud, as much about cashflow balance as technology

It was an ordinary Tuesday, the last day of February 2017. It was getting late in the day and I was online doing my monthly management accounts and was just finishing the data entry for a very long Invoice when refreshing the expenses Tab on my browser showed this delightful picture. Woah, I thought, someone has updated the package and not done the...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin - new

Published 04 April 2017

What Virtual Dreams Are Made Of

As you might expect, virtualisation is now a very common topic in terms of the questions we get from customers and partners and it also appears in almost all RFPs that we take part in. Basically, customers want to know what we\'re doing with the cloud, but often when they say this, they are talking about private clouds. The tendency is that people...

Submitted by Mike Jacobs - new

Published 04 April 2017

Libec HFMP out of the box review

Just before we all broke up for Christmas we took delivery of a new \'thing\' at KitPlus HQ. Our first reaction was surprise and a little curious as to how it was going to make itself useful. What\'s the point? The innovative new HFMP (Hands Free Mono Pod) certainly got us thinking. Where other monopods fall over, this one stands strong! It was spe...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 15 March 2017

The now and how of LED Lighting

LED lighting has come a long way from the days when companies like Outsight were ridiculed by major manufacturers at trade shows because, the manufacturers asserted, technology couldn\'t be entrusted with the requirements of our industry. During this time the market has moved from that initial question, "What is LED?\" to "Is LED ready?\" and final...

Submitted by Tama Berkeljon

Published 15 March 2017

Libec TH-X Tripod review

It is worth highlighting that I am primarily an Editor. Like many of us, over the years I have regularly been involved in the entire creative process in some capacity but increasingly I am asked to go out and film the simpler corporate jobs such as exhibition stands or a \'piece to camera\' for YouTube, Vimeo etc. and embedded into the customer\'s...

Submitted by Nick Robbins

Published 15 March 2017

Dick finds the truth out there

The Oxford English Dictionary has determined that its word of the year for 2016 was "post-truth". We\'ll skip over the fact that it is, clearly, two words. Post-truth is, according to the world\'s best lexicographers, "an adjective defined as \'relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opi...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 15 February 2017

The future of post production

Love it or hate it, 2016 will certainly be a year to remember, for many reasons. In the world of post-production, we\'ve seen high dynamic range become incorporated into UK studio pipelines for the very first time. We watched Ang Lee demonstrate exactly what you can do by shooting at 120 frames per second in combination with stereo 3D. We\'ve even...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 15 February 2017

Mr MXF thinks the future is bright

I have had the good fortune to spend some time with students at Southampton Solent, The University of Surrey, Ravensbourne and Godalming College in the last few weeks. Although student numbers are down on the technology courses, enthusiasm is high and the passion for the broadcast and media industry is evident in the eyes of the stars of tomorrow....

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 13 January 2017

Where university meets universe with Tim Peake

If you had told me last year that, going into my second year at the University of Portsmouth, I would have met and interviewed Tim Peake, then I would have probably laughed and said something along the lines of "I wish". Well, turns out I didn\'t have to wish, because I did just that. As a second year in Television and Broadcasting BSc I\'ve starte...

Submitted by Georgia Thirtle

Published 13 January 2017

Social streaming and broadcast

We are witnessing a growing trend from broadcasters looking to complement TV content with social streaming. When done well, it can really help increase consumer engagement on a huge scale and we have seen some great examples of it over recent months. At the recent Kit Plus Show, I talked about the marriage between broadcast and social streaming, wh...

Submitted by Craig Moehl

Published 13 January 2017