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Trends in IP based broadcast

The momentum behind moving media operations to IP-based environments is unstoppable and to stay ahead of the competition these days, companies need to be migrating operations away from rigid, single-purpose components and towards software-based common computing resources. The good news is a well-architected IP-based production facility is now able...

Submitted by Glodina Lostanlen

Published 13 January 2017

Broadcasting virtual reality to the world

Following the recent launch of a number of virtual reality (VR) headsets, such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, VR is introducing new and compelling platforms for broadcasters to deliver their content, and new ways for audiences to consume. While the way that audiences consume content continues to shift, with the ratio between viewing on fixed scre...

Submitted by Steve Plunkett

Published 13 January 2017

Rethinking standards in the media world

It\'s actually a more difficult question than you think. When I ask the majority of engineers this question, I will get a technical answer. It will be something like "to be sure we meet the specification\" or "to be sure we don\'t put bad signals on air\" or "so that I don\'t get fired for getting loudness wrong\" The reality of course is that moni...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 07 December 2016

The importance of a low noise floor

The Noise Floor of a piece of T&M equipment is the inherent noise (or intrinsic jitter) introduced by the equipment itself. The level of inherent noise affects the accuracy and repeatability of jitter measurements that can be made, especially when measuring low levels of jitter. With the permitted 100KHz jitter on a 12G-SDI signal being only 0.3UI,...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 07 December 2016

Cause and effect of jitter in an operational IP video net...

What are the advantages of moving to an IP infrastructure? The most commonly cited advantage of deploying IP Video networks in production and other operational applications is the ability to use Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) IT-based infrastructure, which takes advantage of the economies of scale of the IT industry when compared with the relative...

Submitted by Paul Robinson

Published 07 December 2016

Smart audio - the way foward for live broadcast productio...

Today\'s broadcast facilities are facing ever-increasing demands on their resources as they strive to keep up with consumers who expect more content on more devices, both where and when they want it. Amongst all the various elements broadcasters have to handle (including video, graphics, data, captions and subtitles), the importance of audio should...

Submitted by Anthony Wilkins

Published 07 December 2016

Hacking Hell

There was a really scary story in the news a week or two ago. In the words of Yves Bigot, director-general of TV5 Monde, "we were a couple of hours from having the whole station gone for good". What happened to this highly respected broadcaster was that malicious hackers set out to destroy the network\'s systems. That has to be an alarm call for al...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 07 December 2016

Blackmagic Design URSA Mini Reviewed

The yeti finally arrived earlier this year - I call it so, because for almost twelve months until BVE 2016 we\'d only seen it in pictures! So getting my hands on one in a real word environment was an absolute no brainer, when Simon Tillyer dropped me a line offering the opportunity to review the camera for KitPlus. I\'ll cut right to the chase with...

Submitted by Ben Sherriff

Published 07 December 2016

A changing media industry

Q. How is the media industry changing today? The media industry, especially the digital TV industry, is going through some revolutionary changes both in terms of how video is delivered and how it is watched. Until a few years ago, consumers watched TV programs that were delivered via a dedicated and controlled network. Content was aggregated and de...

Submitted by Anupama Anantharaman

Published 07 December 2016

TVFutures - The Battle of the Flowers

Studying on the BSc Television and Broadcasting course at the University of Portsmouth had given me some experience working as a camera operator, but this summer I had the chance to put what I\'d learned over the last two years into practice. Back home in the sunny island of Jersey, in what newsrooms would usually call the \'silly season\', an even...

Submitted by Alex Watson

Published 10 November 2016

IBC - how was it you

IBC 2016 was very much a launching show, with more new products and updates than in many recent IBC\'s or NAB\'s. With so many of these announcements directly in the remit of a cameraman, blink and you\'d miss the next big thing in camera and lenses news. With this in mind, this review focuses on camera and lenses only. One consistent factor among...

Submitted by Duncan Payne

Published 10 November 2016

IBC with the BBC

IBC is an exciting opportunity for us in BBC R&D to share with the world the work we've been doing on a range of technologies. Those attending the conference will be able see much of the work we are doing on new forms of content and workflows and get an understanding of the object based principles for broadcasting which we are working towards, enab...

Submitted by Jon Page

Published 26 September 2016

Live streams versus srowing files

So, what is the difference between a stream and a file? It may seem like a dumb and obvious question, but it's crucial in the design of many file based workflows and the applications that drive them. Let's start with the basic and obvious answer. "You can random access a file but you sequentially process a stream". This used to be important back in...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 26 September 2016

Dick puts it all together

Many of you will be reading this as you prepare for IBC. Some may even be reading it on the train/plane/ship to Amsterdam. I want to take a couple of minutes of your time to look at a last minute addition to IBC. It concerns IP, but trust me: this is good news so please do not stop reading just yet. For very, very many years we have connected video...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 26 September 2016

Wireless transformation contributes to IP future

The consumer appetite for content is driving broadcast manufacturers to explore every opportunity to make physical devices smaller, faster and more efficient - right from the ability to squeeze the business end of an OB truck into a single flight case to HD transmitters that can be held in a child's hand. Only a few years ago none of this would hav...

Submitted by JP Delport

Published 26 September 2016