KitPlus | Articles

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

No more softly softly on the cloud

According to Wikipedia The Cloud is a metaphor for the Internet in cloud computing, and cloud computing itself means using multiple server computers via a digital network, as though they were one computer. Both refer to things that have been going on for years. I can remember seeing graphic cloud symbols on computer system diagrams many years ago....

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2012

Cloud Matter Part 1 - Fear of Fluff!

Although I’m writing this article in the usual way, by sitting at my desk and tapping on my keyboard, the only app running on my computer is the web browser. I can see the article on the screen but have no idea where it’s being stored. Still I have every confidence that it will be instantly recalled whenever I want it.... provided my modem and Inte...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2012

LIGHTS, CAMERA, PROMPTING

Prompting equipment may seem to be one of the most standard, reliable and commonplace pieces of a workflow but that doesn’t mean provision should be treated with complacency. Thinking ahead and selecting best of breed is as applicable in this case as it is for a supposedly more mission-critical asset management, newsroom or production system. In re...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2011