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Building The Broadcast Box

Posted by michael on from the not-getting-a-dell dept.

Mortin writes "The folks at Icrontic have a neat article up titled "The Broadcast Box." They unleashed a room full of designers to build an affordable system, and this 24-page article shows what they came up with, along with benchmarks, design specs, and cost analysis."

3 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. PASSWORD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Who's the genious who thought up displaying the connection string to end users, including the password??? Sure it makes it easier for the developer to debug, but displaying your db password to the entrire Slashdot community isn't the smartest thing to do.

  3. What Kind of Broadcasting... by aluminumcube · · Score: 2, Insightful
    are they talking about?

    If it's just standard NTSC video, like what comes out of a Mini DV camera, then a $2000 PowerBook G4 will be able to work with it easily. Apple (and many FinalCutPro users sites) will be happy to tell you stories of directors doing rough cuts of projects on the 'flight home' from the shoot.

    Now, if it's HDTV were talking about, that's a whole different ballgame. The really exciting HDTV format, 1080p/30 has a data rate of something like 121.5MB/sec, compared to 3.7MB/sec for MiniDV/NTSC. Working with this kind of video requires massive, fast SCSI hard drives configured in a RAID array, a huge monitor to see the output in full-rez (at least 1920x1080) and lots of horsepower if you want to work with video that has been compressed down for broadcast.

    Then again, while such workstations can be had for around $10,000 (check out Boxx Technology), HD1080 has a look that rivals 35mm film at a fraction of the cost. Think about it, 1 minute of recan (i.e. the stuff big studios don't use and sell to independent film dealers) 35mm stock costs around $36, and processing can run up to 3x the cost of the original film stock. So basically, you can own an HD editing system for the same cost as about an hour of 35mm film. Not really that bad a deal when you consider that both the new Star Wars films were shot in HD...