KitPlus | Articles

LightLighting Sky News at the Gherkin

Jeff Randall Live is a new flagship daily business update on the Sky News channel, broadcast from Sky’s Gherkin studio in London. A recent addition to the City skyline, the Gherkin is located at 30 St Mary Axe. Its modern design includes a secondary exterior skin which gives the building its characteristic shape and is said to reduce its energy req...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

Splitting Image

The traditional CRT monitor stack is now all but consigned to the annals of history. Not the vain claim of some clever marketing agency or the opening pitch of a sharp dressed sales rep but more the demise of a technology that is becoming less and less available. While manufacturers still have a few CRT models available in their portfolio we’ve see...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

Game, Set and Media Management

A week into Wimbledon and my chances of getting there this year seemed to be dwindling fast. A late call on Friday afternoon though from Timeline TV rekindled my hopes of not only seeing a bit of tennis but getting an exclusive tour around the Wimbledon Broadcast Centre. Always one to grab the opportunity to see both tennis and kit in action my nex...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

Cutting Edge 3D Graphics for the BBCs Election Night

Spanish real-time 3D graphics manufacturer, Brainstorm, provided a full suite of data driven 2D and 3D graphics for the BBC’s recent UK Election Night coverage. The BBC’s election coverage includes some of the most technically challenging and innovative graphics on air, providing an excellent showcase for the power and sophistication of Brainstorm’...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

Eye to Eye: Sports Production

I was somewhat crestfallen to receive the advice 'Lay off 3D' when I rang TV Bay for guidance on the theme for this month's Eye to Eye. For better or worse, 3D looks set to be a major part of sports television in the coming years. But I picked up my crest, closed one eye and carried on running. Long-range opticsIt is by now quite widely appreciated...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

Enabling the fans

The days when a simple hotdog, a pint of beer, a score board and good lungs were the main ingredients of a great day at a football game are soon to be a thing of the past. Mike Arthur, general manager, sports and live events, at Harris Broadcast Communications, talks to TV-Bay Magazine about the advances in technology which will enable interactive...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

How to create and brand a live TV experience online

Late last year, Pixel Power worked closely with the Perform Group to brand the first ever live England football match online, a landmark event. Before we discuss that in detail, there is a wider question to answer: what do we mean by “branding”? Branding is fundamentally how you differentiate your channel; how you make it stand out in the crowd and...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

A conversation with Peter Harman, Vinten Product Manager

Vinten is celebrating its centenary in 2010. What were the origins of the business?William Vinten was an engineer with a passion for quality. He set himself in business to repair friends’ bicycles at the age of 13, did a full apprenticeship in a machine shop, and worked for Frederick Lamplough, the steam car pioneer. But it was seeing his first mov...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

NAB2010 review

Sometimes NAB can be very predictable. For me NAB 2010, or 2010 NAB SHOW as its organisers call it, was not one of those shows. The mail that arrived at my inbox on 5 April from NAB Housing, saying there were hotel room bargains still to be had, lead me to think attendance would be well down. This was certainly not like the old days when rooms were...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

19inch Racking, an evolution

If you have ever worked with 19” racking you probably have the scars to prove it. From its inception in the 1930’s to the present day the 19” rack has hardly evolved. Standards organisations, from BSI, ISO ANSI and DIN all have their own take on the 19” rack and, as you all know, you never could get that Dell server in the HP rack. With cage nuts,...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Eye to Eye: Getting a grip

Getting a gripCameras and camcorders are shrinking at such a rapid rate that a lot of today's established support devices are looking completely out of scale. In some aisles of the NAB 2010 Central Hall, visitors were at perpetual risk of colliding with excited demonstrators nipping hither and yon with hand-held stabilisers for DSLRs. Most were onl...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Does one size fits all

Economic realities are driving most technical industries toward considering solutions that combine what began as stand-alone, discrete devices into single, multifunction systems. In the broadcast and multimedia production arenas, character generators (CGs) are among the discrete systems now being offered in multifunction platforms. The assumption i...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Aston ON

In August 2009 leading Spanish real-time graphics manufacturer, Brainstorm Multimedia acquired the Aston 7 character generator from the Softel Group. With over 30 years on the market, Aston is one of the most established brands in the business and has been the gold standard in character generation in the United Kingdom for many years – to the exten...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Eye to Eye: Distribution and Delivery 2010

Distribution and Delivery are two elements of in the broadcast chainthat get taken pretty much for granted but both are highly important. My focus in this summary is on equipment and software introduced since IBC 2009 and in the run-up to NAB 2010. Distribution linksThese come in many shapes and flavours, over copper, optical fibre, RF, point-to-po...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2010

How to Automate HD

HD movies are on average more than three times larger in size than the equivalent SD movie. Naturally therefore, HD material requires more storage and longer to transfer from the archive/storage to the transmission path. Managing these increased file sizes and optimally controlling the bandwidth is one of the main challenges which need to be addres...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2010