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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Topic: Datasat Digital Entertainment acquired by ATI
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 09-28-2017 09:26 PM
The term "broadcast standard" or "broadcast quality" is in such widespread use that there is nothing even close to a universally understood definition. In many cases, the phrase is used in the marketing of high end consumer gear in order to claim that it is in some way "better" than cheaper competitors in the same market sector, in order to persuade the gullible to pay more for it. My favorite example of this is gold-plated, and/or fancy fabric covered HDMI wires that are sold for $50-100 each in elaborate packaging, adorned with claims that it'll give you a better picture and sound. It's digital, right? Either the ones and zeros will make it through the wire, or they won't. Try telling the people who buy these things that a $3.99 Amazon Basics one will do just as well, and the look on their faces will be priceless.
Same thing in the analog domain. I remember back in the 1990s giving a booth tour to a hi-fi nerd who wouldn't stop going on about his phono cartridge that cost five figures, etc. etc. He asked me what we used for speaker wire, to which I replied that it was regular, 13-amp (this was in England) mains cable. He couldn't have looked more horrified if I'd just told him that I enjoyed sodomizing horses! But surely I would "realize so much more potential" from the standard issue JBL power amps and speakers if we'd installed whatever cable he used in his "listening room" at about GBP50 a foot? No we wouldn't, I replied, and engineers who have investigated this very thoroughly concluded that these cables would deliver a minuscule audio quality gain (if any) for about 100x the price of the stuff we used.
And broadcasting itself can range from the small, volunteer run operation within my church to live stream its services (which uses plenty of HDMI connections) to NBC and Fox News, which probably wouldn't even buy a blank videotape or memory card that costs less than three figures.
The bottom line is that HDMI is fundamentally a consumer technology, the use of which, just like it did with 16mm, has crept into lower budget professional a/v operations over the years. I'm not sure that trying to define what "broadcast" means as an adjective to describe a/v gear is either possible or helpful.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 09-29-2017 03:55 AM
The term "broadcast grade" is as flexible as "enterprise grade" or "production grade", it's more marketing and emotion than something with a set of outlined specifications.
My mobile phone (the Galaxy S8, not my Blackberry ![[Wink]](wink.gif) ) shoots better videos than any broadcast camera of a mere 15 years ago. Yes, there are plenty of other factors to what constitutes a good broadcast camera, but I guess the point is clear.
For me, *-grade is more an indication of the expected reliability than anything else. You'll see an increased convergence of "consumer" and "pro", simply because it's the only way to keep up with the fast pace in which technology is evolving.
You need only to look at DCI. Cinema technology used to be totally disjoint from almost anything else. It didn't even come close to what you had at home. It even was so disjoint from "broadcast", the conversion between formats was an art in itself.
Nowadays, we're using essentially the same stuff everybody else does. A cinema server is nothing other than some industry standard PC hardware with some task-specific interfaces. The projectors we use are the same digital projectors everybody else uses, with the differences only in the details.
BlackMagicDesign might be a "borderline" brand, yet they bought some companies you traditionally would find in professional production environments, including broadcast. Since broadcast isn't the fairyland it used to be and budgets are becoming increasingly tight, you'll see them and other "non-broadcast" brands making their way into the broadcast market.
quote: Leo Enticknap
Same thing in the analog domain. I remember back in the 1990s giving a booth tour to a hi-fi nerd who wouldn't stop going on about his phono cartridge that cost five figures, etc. etc. He asked me what we used for speaker wire, to which I replied that it was regular, 13-amp (this was in England) mains cable. He couldn't have looked more horrified if I'd just told him that I enjoyed sodomizing horses! But surely I would "realize so much more potential" from the standard issue JBL power amps and speakers if we'd installed whatever cable he used in his "listening room" at about GBP50 a foot? No we wouldn't, I replied, and engineers who have investigated this very thoroughly concluded that these cables would deliver a minuscule audio quality gain (if any) for about 100x the price of the stuff we used.
Well, what about $1000 Ethernet cables? Although, according to this review, the Amazon Bulk Cat5e cables are more euhm... musical.
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