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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

Exhibiting at CABSAT first time feedback

CABSAT started with a curious phenomenon. Rain in the desert. It was PHABRIX’s first time in Dubai exhibiting its test and measurement products at CABSAT and we’d obviously brought the weather with us. Now rain in Dubai is like a severe snowstorm in the UK – everything stops. As the Emirates plane, equipped with a front video camera, displayed our...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2010

Breaking Down Loudness Control

Q: What is loudness and why is so much attention being paid to it?A: Loudness is what people hear. It refers to the perceived strength of a piece of audio such as music, speech or sound effects. Among other factors, loudness depends on the level, frequency, content and duration of the audio the listener is hearing. Right now, television viewers are...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2010

Eye to Eye: Whats new in audio 2009

Part of my day at SATIS recently was sent discussing with Neutrik the dodgy issue of sexual compatibility, a subject not mentioned in my report from the show for TV-Bay last month. I had recently invested in a Roland Edirol R-44 solid-state audio recorder. Used in conjunction with four Rode phantom-powered capacitor microphones, it makes an excelle...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

NEW CAMERA INNOVATIONS FOR WORLD GYMNASTICS CHAMPIONSHIPS...

Billed as the Greatest Gymnastics show on earth the World Championships came to the O2 Arena in October with 437 gymnasts making it one of the biggest events of its kind ever. The O2 played a perfect host to the event with unprecedented BBC coverage, spectators packed to the rafters and a perfect “warm-up” to the Olympics in three years where the A...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2009

A Guide to Testing IPTV: Technologies and Challenges Par...

Throughout this article series we have seen that IPTV network operators face many challenges and explained that effective test and measurement is key to overcoming these challenges. The majority of IPTV networks are still in the early stages of development and operators are therefore primarily concerned with optimising QoS parameters in order to ge...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2009

CADLOCK - securing the future of broadcast.

When absolute CAD, the Soho based broadcast installation experts released their range of rackmount products in 2007, it was to improve the way equipment was installed within a facility. But the client feedback indicated that the products were not only being purchased to solve the rackmount issues, but also to increase the security of the assets. Th...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2009

Eye to Eye: Content Protection 2009

In the early days of audio and video recording, the limitations of analogue devices provided a fairly high level of content protection by ensuring that any captured signal was either inferior to the original or fairly soon became so. Optical digital media changed all that, allowing practically perfect copies of speech, music, still images and movin...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2009

A Guide to Testing IPTV: Technologies and Challenges Par...

Testing IPTV NetworksThe Technology LifecycleThe deployment of new technologies tends to follow a similar lifecycle that begins with early research, development and standardisation and ends with full deployment and service management. The lifecycle diagram illustrated in Figure 5 shows a number of different technologies moving through the design an...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2009

Five Best Practices for Securing Your Content during Coll...

That is the sound of your content leaking into the hands of pirates – costing the industry billions. Wolverine, Iron Man and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are just some of the movies reported to have been leaked. The same holds true for TV content – though some argue that when a pilot or season premiere leaks – it falls into th...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2009

3D Post

The state of 3DRewind a couple of years and 3D was a hot topic but there was very little production and few companies able to offer suitable support for efficient 3D post production. Many people thought it would fade, as before. A few even hoped it would go away! Now many are supporting stereoscopic 3D. The most activity is in the DI (digital post...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2009

Lighting series

So far in this series, I have stressed some of my own preferences for good portrait lighting; using Fresnel lamps for key lights to enable accurate barn dooring, minimum spill light and an even ‘field’ of light. Open faced lamps, whilst cheaper, do not give the same control of light, they give rise to double shadows and are also prone to bubble fai...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2009

A Guide to Testing IPTV: Technologies and Challenges Par...

Before we can go on to look at testing IPTV systems, it would be useful to provide an overview of the technologies involved. Network ArchitecturesFigure 3 shows an example of a typical IP network structure. Content is first delivered into the video headend; this can be done in a variety of formats over a number of different delivery mechanisms (e.g...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2009

Tv-bay Digital Signage Special Report IBC2009

Sign of the times at IBCDigital signage – the use of video screens or projectors to create dynamic information and advertising displays – has moved on rapidly from technological showcase and niche market to become a mainstream media. Recent research by Multimedia Intelligence predicts a doubling of the market by 2012, with 2.3 million displays in u...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

Ask the Experts on the Topic of Distribution and Delivery

NAB 2009 was fascinating with respect to how many customers were looking for solutions and insisting that manufacturers work together to provide solutions, as opposed to just supplying products. File-based workflows were the talk of the town (well, at least the talk of NAB) and there certainly continues to be significant discussion and implementati...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009