KitPlus | Articles

Ask the Experts with Dolby

Q: Dolby has recently been making waves in imaging with its PRM-4200 Professional Reference Monitor, but isn’t Dolby an audio company?Dolby has been involved with imaging technology for years, beginning with Dolby® Digital Cinema in 2005, then launching Dolby 3D for the cinema in 2007, and then in 2010 we introduced the Dolby PRM-4200 Professional...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2012

Planning communications for a large sports outside broadc...

By Adrian Richmond and Nico LewisCommunications for the broadcast of live events are becoming more complicated and important than ever. On site, broadcasters only have one chance to grab the perfect image for the viewer– with time being a crucial factor. The larger the event the more viewers it reaches and the higher the risk that something could g...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2012

Tv-bay questions

Name & TitleJonathan Bentham, Engineering Director – IVTV BroadcastWho are you (about yourself and who you work for)?I’m a broadcast vision engineer and director of IVTV Broadcast living in the North West. IVTV Broadcast specialise in Live and Pre-Recorded content for Broadcast and other live events. What do you do? What does your company do?I am r...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2012

Ask the experts......Intercoms for outside broadcasts

Ask the experts – intercoms for outside broadcastsBarry Spencer, Trilogy CommunicationsI just assume outside broadcast trucks come with an intercom. Why do I need to even think about it?The first big point is that an outside broadcast is not just a control room on wheels. It is an event. And that means communications beyond the truck. Within the pr...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 April 2012

Building an HD MCR for The Associated Press

The Associated Press delivers fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, it has grown into a large and trusted source of independent news and information. AP’s activity in the broadcast market centres on the supply of live and edited video to over 500 broadcasting operations and 200 news...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2011

Whats new in video monitoring

The great majority of video monitoring displays in any modern broadcast presentation facility are LED-backlit LCDs. Reliable, space-efficient and economical on power, they produce excellent pictures for all but the most critical applications, usually in conjunction with one or more multiviewers to emulate a monitor stack. Domestic television began...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2011

IBC2011 must sees

Over 1,300 exhibitors will be supporting IBC2011, each bringing perhaps one, two or three new or enhanced products. My task is to distill these down to the 20 devices likely to be of greatest interest to TV-Bay readers, so far as that is possible several weeks before the show opens. As a recent convert to OS X, I note with gloom that Apple remains...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

Intercom for Sports Production

The best kind of intercom system is one that works so well that it only takes a button or two to push when communication is required. Because of how quality intercom systems simplify communication, it is one of the broadcast industry’s most undervalued technologies. However, it is absolutely essential to a successful broadcast, especially in the fa...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

So what is Digital Television. Part 3

Last month Richard described moving forward from analogue to Digital video. This month he covers Gamma and conversion difference…Gamma correctionAn analogue factor to be considered in the handling of the video signal is the perception that the video display is accurately reproducing the brightness of each element of the scene. The Cathode Ray Tube...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

KVM enterprise and video matrix switchers in broadcast ap...

KVM enterprise and video matrix switchers in broadcast applicationsEngineers within the professional broadcast world are comfortably familiar with video routers for the control of uncompressed video and audio signals within live studio and editing locations. However there is less familiarity with the use of KVM enterprise and video matrix switchers...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 August 2011

So what is Digital Television. Part 2 - Back to Basics

Component digital videoThe designers of early analogue special effects equipment recognized the advantage of keeping the red, green, and blue video channels separate as much as possible during any processing. The PAL and NTSC encoding/decoding process is not transparent and multiple generations of encoding and decoding progressively degrade the sig...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 August 2011

Question and Answer with Trilogy

Question 1: What bandwidth would I need to allow on my network to reliably support IP communications and what other issues would I need to take into consideration?The bandwidth required to support IP based intercom or talkback communications really depends on the quality of audio you want to achieve. Therefore the higher the quality, the greater th...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 August 2011

Whats new in audio

The NAB show is not the first event that comes to mind for pro-audio kit but in fact rivals any audio-specific exhibition on the planet. The following is a summary of significant new sound equipment seen during a tour of this year's exhibits. AKG's C 544 L head-worn microphone is designed to be worn by gymnastics or (almost the same thing in some c...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2011

Ask the experts - Monitoring

What are the latest innovations in monitoring?For both film and broadcast work, in addition to the fact that the picture must be true, without motion artifacts or aliasing, for a lot of applications you can also add that the picture must be processed in real time - less than one frame or one picture in progressive mode – so the main innovations are...

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