KitPlus | Articles

Do you have firmware deficiency syndrome?

For 5 days in June 2013 we did a survey on Facebook and our own website and asked how often camera users had gone online to check for firmware updates…Checked online for a firmware upgrade….. …within last 30 days 18%…within last 90 days 9%…within last 12 months 3%…never checked online 70%We could have gone further to see which users used what camer...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 01 July 2013

Product update with DSM

DSM has been manufacturing batteries for the TV and Film industry for over 35 years and have always been at the forefront of new technologies, the new 84Wh direct fit BPU-60 replacement batteries are no exception. They are guaranteed to work with all Sony®PMW range of cameras as well as showing the minutes remaining in the cameras viewfinder. All D...

Submitted by Dave Martland

Published 01 July 2013

Finance - the shooting season with Peter Savage

Peter Savage goes biking and rediscovers that new isn’t always best for creating real impact, and that flexibility is the new game. The shooting season has started and, with it, the weather looks (well, this week at least) as if we could at last see some summer. The light is better, the days are longer, and the summer sports programme has kicked of...

Submitted by Dave Martland

Published 01 July 2013

An unexpected debate

At the end of last year I went to a screening of The Hobbit, or rather the first volume of The Hobbit, as An Unexpected Journey is the first part of a trilogy. I say I went to a “screening” not because that is the way that we trendy media types talk, but because it was a private showing to some of the great and good of the industry in the UK, organ...

Submitted by Robert Howard

Published 01 March 2013

Operating at the cellular level

The live coverage of outside broadcast events, news or sports has always been an expensive and logistically cumbersome business. The need to invest millions of pounds in specialist satellite trucks can take years to recoup, putting the ability to service live sports contracts beyond the economy of a very few suppliers. Even the live presentation of...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

Robert Llewellyn

Many of you will have heard of the TV show on the "Dave\" Channel called "Carpool". You know the one, Red Dwarf and Scrap heap Challenge star Robert Llewellyn picks up someone in his car, drives him or her around a bit and has a chat. It’s a great series and you feel like your spying on a private conversation between two people on their way to work...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 August 2011

Navigating uncharted waters

I’m home again from the annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas. It must be something to do with getting older, but this year both key performance indicators (good dinners versus greasy hamburgers, and early nights versus late night carousing) fell on the conservative side. And my flight home landed 45 minutes early, rather than a week or so late. I was hea...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2011

Watching Television

The pictures on this page give you a small insight into my life. The first is a picture of the television in my living room. At the time of taking the picture I was watching the English cricket team losing in high definition. The second picture is of my desk. Again you will see that it is dominated by a large screen (I’m afraid I still have a sneak...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

True Colours Shine Through With CCS

When you are a broadcast engineer working in front of a stack of LCD monitors, seeing a significant difference between the brightness and colour of each monitor can be both annoying and tiring on the eyes. Worse still, if you in a Master Control Room and the pictures have taken on a sickly green hue, how do you know that it is just the monitors at...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Eye to Eye at the Wildscreen International Film Festival

Founded in 1982, the Wildscreen International Film Festival is claimed to be the world's largest event of its kind. It attracts several hundred delegates from more than 30 countries, all of whom (if they register early enough) get their contact details listed in the festival directory. The festival is staged every two years in Bristol and revolves...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2010

Lighting the X Factor

It’s Friday morning at a television studio in the shadow of Wembley Stadium’s iconic arch and already there are fans and paparazzi outside waiting to catch a glimpse of their favourite contestants and judges arriving for rehearsals. Now three weeks into the live final shows, nine contestants have reached ‘Rock Week’, once again singing for their li...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2009

SRW-5800 Training

“Hi Dave, how was the course?” This is the sort of greeting you come to expect from fellow engineers when you have recently attended a training course. Engineers are notorious for having no “small talk”, probably because our minds are usually concerned with things like volts, amps and ohms… and why that VTR always works on the bench, but fails as s...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 July 2009

Ask the Expert with Broadcast Service Centre

Ask the Expert with Broadcast Service Centre’s Dave LlewellynThis month we visited independent service company, Broadcast Service Centre Ltd (BSC), specialising in providing top quality technical support for a wide range of equipment within the Broadcast and Pro video industry. Dave Llewellyn has worked as a broadcast engineer for BSC (Broadcast Se...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 May 2009

Mixing with the wildlife on Springwatch

As the 5th series of ‘Springwatch’ draws to a close I’d like to share with you an insider view of one of my favourite vision mixing jobs. As a freelance vision mixer I work across the board on all sorts of programmes: quiz & chat shows, sports, drama, music & Light Entertainment, recorded & live, studio-based or Outside Broadcast. But for four week...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008

Fancy a trip from Beijing to Paris in our Landrover?

That’s more or less how it happened, not months of planning or deciding I needed adventure in my life, just “Fancy the trip”. Of course no money in it (when is their ever?) but who could pass up such an offer. Dave at Broadcast Services in Chertsey had been preparing a Landrover for the journey for some months having acquired a left hand drive mode...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2008