KitPlus | Articles

Building Blocks

by Dick Hobbs Issue 112 - April 2016 That is the MIT Media Lab saying, in a typically American academic way, that they want to help producers make better content. That is what you find if you Google "object-based broadcasting". Which is what I did on your behalf this month, because BT Sport - which seems to have taken up the idea of innovation in b...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 25 April 2016

Being heard in the jungle

Professional wireless sound solution specialists, Raycom, were asked in summer 2015 to specify, supply and commission a huge new RF wireless distribution system for ITV's popular reality television show, "A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!"The show is set in 500,000 square metres of dense Australian jungle. The celebrities competing are filmed in vari...

Submitted by Andy Clements

Published 01 April 2016

Highly Experienced

by Dick Hobbs Issue 110 - February 2016 I was recently asked to write an article on quality of experience in video streaming. Obviously the first thing I did was ask Saint Google to find me recent research on the subject. It pulled up an absolute gem, a report published by Ofcom, the UK government's communications supremos. It was written by an out...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 16 March 2016

The 4K Conundrum

by Eric Achtmann Issue 108 - December 2015 2015 has confirmed once more that 4K remains the TV industrys Holy Grail. While 4K TV screens are becoming more affordable and Netflix, Amazon Prime and even YouTube are beginning to offer some 4K content, mass adoption is still sluggish as the increases in bandwidth required for distribution make 4K busin...

Submitted by Eric Achtmann

Published 17 December 2015

How to solve a problem like 4k

with Peter Savage Issue 108 - December 2015 A lack of standards and content is holding back sales of 4k television sets and, until that situation changes, there is very little the consumer electronics business can do about it, writes Peter SavageSince the late 1960s and early 70s, when we began to ditch our old black and white TV sets in favour of...

Submitted by Peter Savage 2

Published 15 December 2015

Sorry for any disruption caused: Netflix strikes again

by Peter Savage Issue 107 - November 2015 Netflix helped to change the TV landscape with its OTT subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service and its Originals. Could it be about to change things again by making programmes in-house? It might seem obvious to say it but what we used to call television is currently changing at great speed: and its all...

Submitted by John Smith

Published 01 December 2015

Distribution in the UHD Era

by Paul Briscoe Issue 103 - July 2015 Once upon a time, there were few broadcast TV standards. Each used its own regional image formats, color encoding scheme and sound and vision modulation standards. High-power over-the-air (OTA) transmitters broadcast the signal on internationally coordinated and regionally allocated radio frequency (RF) channel...

Submitted by Paul Briscoe

Published 01 August 2015

The holistic approach to fighting piracy

by Rory OConnor Issue 102 - June 2015 Now more than ever, consumers are driving the way that their content is delivered and consumed across platforms. Content owners increasingly need to be able to respond and adapt in an agile manner to deliver quality content across every consumer device from the day they hit the market. To stay relevant, operato...

Submitted by Rory O Connor

Published 01 July 2015

REVIEW: Matrox Monarch HD

by Colin Ashby Issue 95 - November 2014 Firstly, a confession; it\'s a fair bet that, technically, I know a lot less than you the reader although I\'ve worked in broadcast television for over 30 years so I have a lot of hands-on experience. To balance this out, I\'m a cameraman so we\'re by nature attracted to new models, bright shiny things, whist...

Submitted by Colin Ashby

Published 01 December 2014

Mobile News Gathering

by Erwan Gasc Issue 93 - September 2014 What are the most common challenges facing broadcasters in the field today? One of the most critical challenges for broadcasters today is arriving first on the scene of a breaking news story and being able to send live video coverage. Tough competition between TV channels, combined with the fact that consumer...

Submitted by Erwan Gasc

Published 01 October 2014

Green storage Fat wallets

by Ben Pearce Issue 91 - July 2014 Its not just eco campaigners that want to reduce their carbon footprint. Its also the financial director. Whether youre a small company or a transnational enterprise, you run the risk of losing control of your data and buying more and more disk space. You may be storing many copies of each file on multiple externa...

Submitted by Ben Pearce

Published 01 August 2014

The Evolution of TV to the Bus Train and Park Bench

by John Mills Issue 90 - June 2014 A Digital RevolutionSince the not-quite-fully-electric late nineteenth century, Television has been evolving. The first major, modern change to the way people experienced TV was when technology enabled them to decide when they were going to watch the programmes they wanted to watch. VHS recorders and then DVD play...

Submitted by John Mills

Published 01 July 2014

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