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Audio Technology Spotlight

In the ever changing world of TV technology, formats, standards and delivery, it’s always been reassuring to think that audio equipment for sound gathering on location hasn’t changed too much. That is, until the last couple of years when the emergence of the now widely used digital solid state recorders, digital transmission radio mic systems, high...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2009

The morality of meltdown

Apologies for breaking away from my usual broadcast-orientated comments but, when looking at the micro of our own world, sometimes big macro economic tsunamis crash in – and can have hugely damaging effects on our own small, flat, micro economic island. I’m writing this over the weekend when the US Congress is deciding whether it should bail out th...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2009

Everything you ever wanted to know about TV lighting Part...

Back in time in the days of monochrome TV, portrait lighting was used to try and compensate for the lack of colour in those days of flickering 405 line pictures on tiny screens. The other consideration was to compensate for the lack of depth; the missing dimension from our TV screens. When colour TV came along in the 1960’s, pictures looked more re...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2009

SOOM under the Senegal sun

No power – inconceivable for Europeans, but normal for the African village Ndelle. Situated six hours from Dakar, it is attainable only by dusty, sandy fields. However the approximate 800 village inhabitants have reason for joy: The company Solar 23 is building a solar plant in Ndelle. The German cameraman Jrgen Killenberger captured this project i...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2009

Why should people take holidays

As I sit here on holiday taking a well-earned rest in August – the month when most people in our industry feel they are captain of the good ship Mary Celeste – it is good to reflect on why people should take holidays and how and why they are good for your business as a whole. Re-charge and re-tuneThe first and most notable reason is that they do re...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2008

Lights, Camera, Makohead Action

With the movie Quantum of Solace due to hit the big screens in October, audiences around the world are already gearing up for another huge blockbuster from the James Bond stable. The movie, which began shooting at Pinewood studios in November 2007, will undoubtedly include the spectacular action sequences that are the hallmark of James Bond films....

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2008

The largest fibre and Ethernet video SAN network in the w...

Out of the Ashes of the old Anglian TV studios EPIC has risen like a phoenix to become not only a major broadcasting hub in Norfolk but to rival traditional studios throughout Europe. With the financial backing of Norfolk County Council and the East of England development agency, EPIC has converted the old TV studios and installed a state of the ar...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2008

London to Capetown, by bike Part 2

Continuing Frank’s journey after leaving Nigeria….. I arrived in Cameroun at the beginning of the wet season and it had been raining constantly for a week before I got there. The road was in a horrendous state. It was a two hundred kilometre long mudbath, in some places the mudholes were two metres below the normal road height. My bike fully loaded...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2008

Aston 7 your lucky number for Sports Graphics

Aston Broadcast has been supplying CG products for long enough to know that the world of live sports graphics presentation never stands still for long. Programme directors like to push the boundaries on visual effects in order to wow the viewer and to differentiate the presentation from that of rival channels or programmes. More often than not, Ast...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008

Stryder TV Brick House Video User Report

Stryder TV is based in Oxfordshire and for decades we have provided both British and International broadcasters with a complete video production services. Our camera crews have operated in 45 countries from the Arctic to the Tropics and we produce anything from web content to beaming live pictures across the world with our satellite truck. We neede...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008

Selling your business Part 3. Gearing up for sale

In the final article in his series about preparing your business for sale, Peter Savage outlines the strategy that leads to success even in a slowing economy. Last month we were left with a conundrum: how do you sell a business when the company clearly has a value but the market, and consequently the performance of the business, is in reverse? This...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2008

IPTV in 21st Century TV

The radio and television networks born and raised in the last century are a consequence of a medium in which broadcasting is the natural way of working. From one to a fickle many it has been a matter of finding material with mass appeal which has occupied generations of commissioners. Recently, I went to the exhibition of the IPTV World Forum 2008...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2008

tv-bay interviews Malcolm Robinson

How long have you been with Sony?Just over 4 yearsAnd where were you before?I originally trainedat Ravensbourne before moving to CNN where I worked on stories such as the Russian Coup. I then worked for Cine Video where amongst others covered the West Indies cricket tours. After working for Visions I contracted for 4 years before moving to Sony. Wh...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2008

Getting up to speed with IPTV

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) has been gathering pace around the world for the past few years and is major competition to cable and satellite broadcasters. As a satellite subscriber its something I seem to have largely overlooked and the recent IPTV World Forum prompted me to get up to speed on this emerging format of TV delivery and called f...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2008

Everything you ever wanted to know about lighting Part 1

Anyone starting on the long and winding road of lighting might well be baffled at the number of very different approaches that he or she might find in books and articles. I certainly did, and that was probably because my training in Television had been engineering based, where the very nature of engineering provides specific answers to specific pro...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2008