KitPlus | Articles

Ask the Experts

by Matthew Rehrer Issue 90 - June 2014 What trends are you seeing with respect to investment in archiving solutions?Investment in archiving solutions has been shaped by several major trends, all fundamentally driven by the desire to store and manage media content in such a way that it can better support effective and/or profitable use of those asse...

Submitted by Matthew Rehrer

Published 01 July 2014

Made with love

by Simon Marett Issue 89 - May 2014 It can wash over you, hardly heard but intensely felt. It can convey a mood without a word being spoken. It can jar and jangle your nerves - in a good way, if its a thriller. Or it can make you cry. The choice of music is a crucial component to the overall feel of many TV programmes - as important as the grade, t...

Submitted by Simon Marett#

Published 01 June 2014

4K at NAB

by Bob Pank Issue 89 - May 2014 The long term NAB veterans will be well aware of just how quickly new technologies can come and go in the television industry. For instance, only a couple of years ago, 3D was still the hot topic, now it has gone quiet, but not altogether gone away. So it is good to report that 4K had another very good NAB, probably...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2014

A complete cable network out of a hat!

by Peter LampelIssue 79 - July 2013 Time-to-market a familiar buzz word for any engineer. Meeting these demands requires early concept testing where simulations have become an indispensable tool. This approach is particularly useful when developing cable TV components, which must cope with many different types of interference. Simulating complete c...

Submitted by Peter Lampel

Published 01 August 2013

How to choose the right broadcast microphone

By Ralph Dunlop, Director, Sound Network– UK distributor for DPA Microphones1. What are most common types of microphones for broadcast use and how far has microphone technology progressed in the digital world?Traditionally the most popular microphone used in broadcast and film sound recording was the “Boom” mounted mic. The problem with older boom...

Submitted by Ralph Dunlop

Published 01 June 2013

BNC: Is it at the end of the line?

by Robin PalmerThe familiar BNC connector has been around a long time. It was invented in the late 1940s, primarily for military radio frequency and microwave interconnections. The initials derive from the style plus the names of the inventors (Paul Neill and Carl Concelman): Bayonet Neill–Concelman. The original development work was done by Octavi...

Submitted by Robin Palmer

Published 01 May 2013

Photon Beard shines bright in South India

by Peter Daffarn, Managing Director, Photon BeardOn 23 January 2013, the highly anticipated Mathrubhumi News Channel, part of a 24-hour Malayalam-language cable television network based in Trivandrum, capital city of the state of Kerala on the southwest coast of India, was officially launched. Also launched that day was India’s first wirelessly con...

Submitted by Peter Daffarn

Published 01 March 2013

Ubiquitous Cloud at IBC

It was one of those IBCs that was more consolidation than innovation. There wasn’t any one product or technology that stood out as a game changer. There was more evidence of 4K being pushed as a more realistic alternative to 8K and more of the must-have 84-inch 4K TV screens. Well they do look fabulous but I still had to go and see NHK’s 85-inch SH...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

Building a digital archive

The search for specific content within masses of stored videotape once required a visit to the archive librarian, a great deal of patience, and some luck. Even if one was able to explain successfully the footage you needed, and if the librarian proved able to locate that content, there remained the possibility that tape degradation or generational...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2012

Eye to Eye: Video over IP

Live video streaming via Internet Protocol is perhaps most familiar in the form of Skype’s free-of-charge online videophone service. Skype is a very easy way for an on-location broadcaster to get a video contribution back to base. A safer and more conventional technique, as with a reporter-to-anchor interview, is to live-stream video via one’s own...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2012

Quality is the best policy

Despite all the changes in our industry at the moment – and maybe because of them – quality is more important than ever. HD has become the production standard norm. Why have audiences embraced HD so enthusiastically? Because it looks and sounds great. If you have a 42” or bigger screen in your home then the difference between SD and HD is obvious t...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

File-Based Workflows

For perhaps two decades, much of the broadcast industry has made a fuss over “workflow,” treating the term as if it were something lofty and complicated - which of course, it isn’t. Workflow simply refers to the steps that users take to complete a task, start to finish. Thinking about workflow typically has been easy for the people and companies wh...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2011

Getting rid of the horn

I have to start this column with a statement that may, to some readers, be profoundly shocking. I am not much of a football fan. Indeed, writing this in the immediate aftermath of that dismal Sunday when England’s “finest” succumbed pathetically to the might of the German machine, I have to say I did not watch a moment of the match. There was some...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

Ask the experts. Eye & Jitter

Why should TV broadcast engineers be interested in adding Eye and Jitter measurement to their T & M facilities?The call for Eye and Jitter as part of overall video test and measurement lies in the widespread adoption of serial digital interface (SDI) standards for broadcast. Unlike analog transmission in which the image quality gradually degrades a...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

PHABRIX storming ahead at NAB with eye and jitter

It is not often that a product is released that encapsulates so distinctly the essence of British ingenuity but the new SxE hand held test and measurement instrument with eye and jitter functionality from PHABRIX may just have set itself in that mould. Having successfully launched the PHABRIX SxA, a three in one portable testing device at IBC2008,...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 June 2009