KitPlus | Articles

League of Legends European Masters

ESL, the world’s largest esports company, relied on a full Blackmagic Design live production workflow at the inaugural League of Legends European Masters tournament. The new league launched this Spring, with the first split taking place in the UK, specifically, at the historic Haymarket Theatre in Leicester. The European Masters tournament is the p...

Submitted by Sam Deans

Published 18 July 2018

Run Leaner, More Agile and Scalable OTT Operations

The migration to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for media processing is underway and growing as broadcasters and content service providers explore new ways to increase agility and operational efficiencies. With media processing SaaS, content and service providers can quickly and easily deploy new channels, deliver a better quality of experience (QoE)...

Submitted by Olivier Karra

Published 18 July 2018

Artificial Intelligence and Economics

It’s May, so it seems inevitable that this month’s column should be a bit of a reflection on NAB. And it will, in due course. But first, some news which I think is interesting. Cisco, the IT giant, is selling off its video software solutions business. It is being bought by an as-yet unnamed new company, backed by venture capitalist Permira Funds. T...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 07 June 2018

Broadcasting Indoor Sky Diving

When you say you’re broadcasting skydiving, there are two types of reactions. One is the creative, who’ll say something along the lines of “Wow. Those shots must look great” and other is the engineer who’ll say “That must be a real hassle to get all the infrastructure in and secure.”When you say you work on indoor skydiving, both people will think...

Submitted by Daniel Harker Barnes

Published 07 June 2018

Moving to an IP Platform Considerations

Audio transport methods have remained virtually unchanged in the broadcast industry for more than half a century. Common approaches to routing audio around large broadcast facilities have closely followed methodology employed in telco central offices, with the use of X-Y crossbar or crosspoint switching. This began to change with the arrival of sol...

Submitted by Stephen Brownsill

Published 07 June 2018

Delivering on the 4k Promise

It’s happened. Consumers are demanding 4K UHD content. They have the TVs, smartphones, tablets and other devices they need, and with much of Netflix and Amazon original content in 4K, as well as sports coverage from BT and Sky, consumers have tasted the future of content quality and are hungry for more. But broadcasters need not worry if their cust...

Submitted by Lorna Garrett

Published 07 June 2018

Out of the box: Sennheiser Ambeo VR microphone

The use of 360 video, especially on platforms like Facebook and YouTube is really starting to take off. Gone are the days when you needed to buy multiple GoPros and rigs in order to get something decent looking. Now players like Insta360 and even GoPro with their fusion 360 camera are providing single camera, high quality solutions, enabling the ma...

Submitted by Jon Pratchett

Published 26 March 2018

Tried and tested: DPA d:vice

KitPlus recently took delivery of an interesting piece of equipment for review. We like our iPhone gadgets here. For us, useful iPhone gadgets started when the Olloclip lens gave us a wide angle adaptor. This was a good start, finally evolving into a proper tool when Ziess produced the Exolens system for the 5,6 & 7 series iPhones. Around the same...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 26 March 2018

Empowering connectivity choice in the field

Reliability, flexibility and ease of use are the key requirements when covering the news and live events, especially when the location could be anywhere. Connectivity is one of the biggest concerns in the field when the pressure is on to capture a key event – if you cannot establish a reliable transmission path to send your video back to the broadc...

Submitted by Yvonne Monterroso

Published 12 February 2018

Innovation in cameras moving to 4k

For a number of reasons, wireless camera links needed time to migrate to 4K. However Broadcast Sports International, BSI, designs their own cameras and builds their own hardware and their transition to 4K is already complete. In an industry where innovation is key, hire companies buy what is on offer from the manufacturers, however BSI has taken a...

Submitted by Tony Valentino

Published 12 February 2018

AoIP in the intercom world

Everyones talking about using AoIP (Audio over IP) in the broadcast world, but what does it mean to the operators actually making the production - the intercom users? And after years of interoperability taking the lowest common format of analogue tie-lines (also known as 4-wires), has intercom today already moved into the digital world by sharing d...

Submitted by John Sparrow

Published 17 January 2018

State of the Nation - Telling Imaginary Stories

In mid-October, Nokia issued a press release from its headquarters in Finland, announcing a refocusing of its business, with a growing emphasis on digital health. Read on a few paragraphs, though, and you find this statement: In digital media, the slower-than-expected development of the VR market means that Nokia Technologies plans to reduce invest...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 02 November 2017

Leveraging licensed broadcast spectrum assets

There are several different approaches to transmitting live and file-based content from the field to the studio. Traditional microwave Electronic News Gathering (ENG) provides high bandwidth, high-quality transmission with low latency. Using the secure, dedicated BAS spectrum keeps control in a broadcasters hands. The past few years have seen a shi...

Submitted by John Payne

Published 02 November 2017

There is no where to hide from cybercrime

The media sector is an attractive target for cyber attacks of all kinds from malicious individuals who enjoy disrupting high profile shows, to organised criminals who are attracted by the value of content, to nation states aware that media is a way of conveying or distorting messages. Such attention is hardly surprising, given the pervasiveness of...

Submitted by Mark Harrison

Published 02 November 2017

State of the Nation - part 2

This is, of course, the IBC issue of this splendid magazine. Much of the rest of its pages are filled with what you will see there, or (in some cases) what vendors and their marketing communications agencies want you to see there. This year’s IBC is a particularly special event, though. It is 50 years – almost to the day – since the very first Inte...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 19 October 2017