KitPlus | Articles

Chris Barlow gains greater customer satisfaction

by Chris Barlow, Technical Director, AstecMonitoring the quality of service and experience for customers across an often complex and sizeable broadcast estate, can be a difficult area to oversee and hard to control. Gaining an understanding of the quality of the services customers are receiving has many variables to consider including the presence...

Submitted by Chris Barlow

Published 01 May 2013

Building a live linear streaming channel to reach multipl...

The market for live and on-demand streaming video has exploded in recent years thanks in part to broadband connections and the proliferation of connected devices. A recent survey by The Diffusion Group showed that some 50 percent of online video viewers watch some form of streaming live video at least once a month, and 64 percent said comprehensive...

Submitted by Jennifer Baisch

Published 01 May 2013

Creating a feature-rich subscriber-based OTT entertainmen...

TV Everywhere has become a way of life in the Nordic market, where every major broadcaster has succeeded in taking its services over the top and into the online video space. One of those broadcasters – pan-Nordic pay-TV channel provider C More Entertainment – has offered Web TV services for years through its online video portal. Competition for vie...

Submitted by Helge Hoibraaten

Published 01 May 2013

Dick Hobbs looks at intellectual property rights

Troll onby Dick HobbsIn my column last month I wrote about the Tolkein sort of troll. This month I want to look at another sort: the ones who acquire portfolios of patents not with the intention of making anything useful, but simply to try to extort money from those who just want to earn an honest buck. I am sure that every one of you reading this...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 April 2013

The way forward for lighting control

High Quality LED Fixtures are the Way Forward for Lighting ControlPat Grosswendt, Co-Founder, LitepanelsThe majority of directors of photography (DPs) work by the motto that if anything looks lit then it has been done badly. Whether on the set or in the studio, lighting directors strive to create images that look as natural as possible. The key to...

Submitted by Pat Grosswendt

Published 01 March 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

Will Strauss gets a grip!

By Will StraussOf all the many areas of television technology that tv-bay Magazine covers, you might think that camera support is the one that appears, on the surface at least, to move the slowest. Take the tripod for example. Fundamentally, the design hasn’t changed for a hundred years. Or how about the dolly? The wheels and track device that Alfr...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 March 2013

Ask the Experts: What Workstation?

Investing in a new computer workstation or high end PC for use with digital video/or and media production can be a daunting task. With so many different manufacturers to choose from, and with a practically endless list of components to select from customers can be left with literally millions of possible choices. Scary if you aren’t a hardware guru...

Submitted by Mike Leach

Published 01 February 2013

Issues in surround audio and new technologies to address...

Issues in surround audio and new technologies to address them. Surround audio and the encoding technologies, such as Dolbys AC-3 used to transmit it, have introduced new issues in maintaining audio quality. At a time when skilled audio personnel are getting scarce and budgets are shrinking new technologies hold the key to delivering top quality aud...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2012

The social geek

Today I want to consider this Venn diagram. It has been widely circulated on the internet: it appears to have been created by the Californian producer and publisher Scott Beale in 2009. It is a laudable attempt to differentiate between nerds, geeks, dweebs and dorks. You may feel that, given all the other pressures on our busy lives, time spent det...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

The semantic web made simple

There is a new term creeping in to discussions in the broadcasting business, and particularly around those involved in asset management and research projects. The term is “semantic web” and, I suspect, there are a lot of people who are neither completely sure they know what it means, nor trust its relevance in our business. I aim to provide some si...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

Understanding and Managing the Piracy Continuum

Content owners, content distributors and security vendors have traditionally characterized digital “pirates” as a single malicious group with ill intentions. This, however, is seriously short-sighted because it is an overgeneralization that not only overshadows true consumer behavior, but results in misguided piracy mitigation tactics and missed re...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

CHASING THE OLYMPIC DREAM

When the reverse happens it proves that old adage … that more of the same is often the best strategy, says Peter Savage. As the Olympics are over, and as it will soon be the end of the Paralympics, it is time to summarise the effects the Games have had on the country. The feel-good factor has been astonishingly high bringing with it a new – or, rat...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 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

New Solutions for Accelerated and Secure Movement of High...

For broadcasters and media enterprises of all shapes and sizes, the ability to move critical content rapidly and securely from point A to point B has always been important – but it’s never been so complex and rife with risk as in today’s multiformat, multiscreen content delivery environment. Today’s broadcasters and content owners are often require...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2012