KitPlus | Articles

Hands on an IPad 2

It’s been near on 1 year since the Apple iPad landed on planet earth. No one knew if it was going to be a success, sceptics were sure that the tablet format would be nothing more than a fad and that true portable computing still lay in the realms of the notebook pc's. However after 9 months and 12 million units sold, Apple of course, again, annoyin...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

Eye to Eye: Video Post-production

My first direct experience of video post-production involved hauling a heavy Sony U-Matic tape machine up a flight of stairs before going back for an equally heavy playback deck, a bulky CRT monitor and a large box of interface giblets. That was in 1978. 33 years on, an Apple Mac does the whole editing job a great deal better, faster and more econo...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

BVE 2011 retrospect

BVE 2011 had much of the buoyancy and buzz of an IBC. The organisers claimed an attendance of over 15,500 visitors and 240 exhibiting companies. Many of the UK-based stalwarts who make the annual pilgrimage to Amsterdam could be seen exploring the show, confirming that BVE is now taken seriously by mainstream broadcasters. It is perhaps over-optimi...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

The 4 Golden Rules of Streaming

In November 2009 a Florida-based web design company ran a series of tests on their website. Their bounce rate (the % of visitors to their site that hit their home page but go no further on a site) started at 45% - a barely acceptable rate. Over the course of a month, they added graphic after graphic to their site. The effect was catastrophic with a...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 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

Broadcast Batteries, Today and Tomorrow

As consumers, we all have experience of being let down by batteries (think rusty Italian cars in the 1970s!). But thankfully the world of batteries has moved on: the global battery industry is today worth $71 billion and is estimated to be growing at nearly 5% a year. Of this, broadcast batteries make up a tiny fraction but the manufacturers that s...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2011

Launching Call of Duty Black Ops

So, how do you get the feed from 8 full HD camera's, games console screen captures, and a remote camera feed from 6 miles away to over 180,000 live game junkies all waiting to see the release of what is likely to be the world’s fastest selling and most anticipated Console/PC Game to date?That was the question posed to us at Mediakinetic by the digi...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 January 2011

Television on television

Just at the moment I am receiving a steady, almost daily, stream of press releases from an American company called IVI. The service they offer is aimed at an American audience so I will not bore you with the details of their campaign. But it raised some thoughts in the back of my mind. IVI has developed some clever (it claims) software, for Mac, Li...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2010

tv-bay IBC2010 double takes

Tv-bay Double Takes..!Acquisition For-A VFC-7000 Camera HD Variable Frame Rate CameraASA1800 Sensitivity, Native 720x1280 resolution with inbuilt up-convert to 1920x1080 and will output at 50 or 59.94 frame rates. 120 - 700 Frames per second recording speed. Two HD-SDI outputs enabling live and recordings to be viewed simultaneously. Standard onboa...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2010

Eye to Eye: Video monitoring and displays

Given a decent stereo audio source and a pair of headphones, it is quite easy to imagine that you are actually attending a live performance. Not so with video; human eyes are much more demanding. Fortunately picture display technology is developing very quickly and along many different routes. OLEDsLED-backlit LCDs were about the best screens avail...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

Enabling the fans

The days when a simple hotdog, a pint of beer, a score board and good lungs were the main ingredients of a great day at a football game are soon to be a thing of the past. Mike Arthur, general manager, sports and live events, at Harris Broadcast Communications, talks to TV-Bay Magazine about the advances in technology which will enable interactive...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

NAB2010 review

Sometimes NAB can be very predictable. For me NAB 2010, or 2010 NAB SHOW as its organisers call it, was not one of those shows. The mail that arrived at my inbox on 5 April from NAB Housing, saying there were hotel room bargains still to be had, lead me to think attendance would be well down. This was certainly not like the old days when rooms were...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Eye to Eye: Getting a grip

Getting a gripCameras and camcorders are shrinking at such a rapid rate that a lot of today's established support devices are looking completely out of scale. In some aisles of the NAB 2010 Central Hall, visitors were at perpetual risk of colliding with excited demonstrators nipping hither and yon with hand-held stabilisers for DSLRs. Most were onl...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010