KitPlus | Articles

State of the Nation and Virtual Social Distancing

Under normal circumstances, I usually make my plans for NAB in November time. It’s when the airlines tend to have sales. This year, for personal reasons, I did not get around to booking back then, and it was only at the end of February that I could start thinking about it. Well, the airline sales had long gone, and I was faced with the prospect of...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 26 March 2020

The Business Case for Hybrid TV and AI

Video on demand (VOD) and OTT live services have come a long way since their introduction and, rather than solely competing with traditional broadcasting, they are becoming more important than ever in helping to keep broadcast TV networks popular, in particular when combining TV broadcasting with online TV into Hybrid TV models, thanks to convergen...

Submitted by Oliver Botti

Published 26 March 2020

Cinegy Channel Playout

Canis Television & Media is a UK-based specialist broadcast services company, providing its clients as a one-stop shop for everything from production facilities to asset valuations to traffic control. In response to growing demand from its clients, Canis identified a need for channel playout facilities. The company reviewed the market, looking at b...

Submitted by david wright

Published 04 June 2019

AI in Media and Entertainment

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term appearing everywhere these days. What is happening in media and entertainment (M&E) that makes the industry ripe for AI? In other words, why does the M&E industry need AI?In virtually every industry, AI is claiming a growing stake in the supply chain, creating both operational enhancements and business efficie...

Submitted by David Candler

Published 09 November 2018

Will we soon be paying our respects to PayTV

Recent reports show pay TV in the US peaked in 2012 and will keep dropping over the next five years. Digital TV Research’s North America Pay TV Forecasts state the US will see a 20% drop between 2012 and 2023. Should the UK be readying for a similar change in consumer viewing, or is something different happening here?Looking at UK pay TV revenues,...

Submitted by Malcolm Harland

Published 18 July 2018

VR and the importance of tracking

I would like to begin this article by clarifying what we at Shotoku mean when we talk about VR in live production. It’s not the production of immersive, 360 content where you need to wear a headset; we are talking about virtual studio (VS) and augmented reality (AR) work, such as placing graphics into a green screen environment or physical set. The...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 26 March 2018

Studio Invate - Case Studio

Studio INVATE is a video company based in Bangkok, with an inventive reputation. Its public persona is everyday commercial work, such as producing highly creative videos, live broadcasts and commercials, for companies ranging from large industrial brands and retail businesses to educational institutions. But in between the studio and on-location wo...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 12 February 2018

Driving the Bandwidth Conundrum

At the time of writing, there is a story on the IBC website with the headline "In five years the problem won\'t be bandwidth, but knowing what to do with it". That seemed to me to be an interesting assertion, so I read on. Now I appreciate there are few who are as old as I am, but if you are you may remember the claim, in the early days of nuclear...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 04 April 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

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

You need more damn pixels

There has obviously been a lot of chatter in recent years about 4K, but is it enough? 8K and beyond is where the excitement lies, but not in the way you might think. 8K and beyond for broadcast, both of which are easily achievable in a software-only, IP environment, may seem a bridge too far for most at the moment, and they\'re probably right¦for n...

Submitted by Jan Weigner

Published 13 January 2017

The FAQs on automated quality assurance

The transition from tape-based to file-based video and audio recording allowed a completely new approach to the business of checking that programmes and interstitials conform to broad-cast industry standards prior to transmission. The Vidcheck team designed the world\'s first au-tomated broadcast quality control product. We have been working on fil...

Submitted by Thomas Dove

Published 25 August 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

Authoring and Monitoring for the emerging 3D immersive Br...

by Anthony Wilkins Issue 107 - November 2015 The world of broadcast audio is on the verge of a major revolution. Numerous 3D Immersive formats are under development and will find their way into the mainstream of broadcast production and distribution in the near future. Unlike the world of relatively constrained channel based coding as we are accust...

Submitted by Anthony Wilkins

Published 01 December 2015

A brief history of time

by Dick Hobbs Issue 106 - October 2015 And another IBC is written into the annals of history. Another week in Amsterdam, sharing knowledge and experience. Say what you like about IBC: it is a great chance to meet, talk and learn. Now at IBC I actually perform a number of tasks behind the scenes which keep me largely occupied and out of trouble. And...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 November 2015