buying tv broadcat equipment

afatbollix

so where is the best place to buy broadcast equipment?

im looking at building a small ob truck... so will be buying monitors, cameras cables ect...

would be willing to buy 2nd hand if there are sites out there.

ive found a few things for sale ive found it hard to find drums of B and C cables.


cheers

watty

HD or SD or WS SD?

How many cameras?

Unless it's for RTE/TV3 etc, consider consumer HD Camcorders and HD Wireless links.

Satellite uplink?

Join this group and get better advice.
http://www.mediauk.com/

Best Broadcast orientated forums I know. This site is consumer and Anorak enthusists.

More Music

Best of luck with that.

You're going to build an OB truck and don't know where to buy the necessary equipment!

watty

Maybe it's a hobby?

afatbollix

i do know... but they ae very expensive in ireland. ive done a rough guide from websites but its not that acurate. id like to get info from people about it.. you know get as much information about it even if i know most of it allready...

Boardsbud

Not surprised you're having trouble sourcing drums of B and C cable. U sure its not BNC connectors, commonly used for video you're looking for ?
It'll be one expensive hobby build. Proper OB trucks can cost several million to build / equip !!!!!

afatbollix

no i know what they are but i know you can get drums of 75 meters, now even just the cable at that lenght would work as i would be able to get the drums.

Boardsbud

You need to buy video cable and you cut / install it and then put the bnc connectors on.
Don't mean to knock your idea but I saw your thread elsewhere about your bus/van and power generator and plug boards etc. Have you ever seen and OB truck ? The don't just plug into a socket and away you go. They are extremely complicated designs involving highly specialised broadcast standard equipment, not just a few tv monitors thrown up on a desk in the back of a van. What about Vision Mixer ? Cameras ? Audio ? VT area ? EVS ? Comms ? HD/SD or both ? And the aforementioned generator would need to be a bit more elaborate than a tow along trailer, OB's require huge amounts of power (3 phase) and need to be fully redundant and run silently, quite elaborate designs in themselves, see cine-electric.ie.
Don't waste your money:)
In Ireland check out TVM (television-mobiles.com)and Observe (observe.ie), they cover pretty much 95% of the OB's in the country for all broadcasters and they use state of the art trucks that are coachbuilt and technically commissioned by specialist companies. No broadcaster will contract anybody with a home made lash up to televise their live / precord event.

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Hi anto-t,

Hope mods don't mind the link. These Canford boys have everything and have an office in Ireland. They are used by nearly every radio and TV station in Ireland and the UK (including RTE and BBC). Sometimes not the cheapest though!

http://www.canford.co.uk/commerce/categorybrowse.aspx?TreePosId=2000000

You can get empty cable drums, cable in any length or type, connectors and crimp tools. Triax for your cameras, headsets, monitors, mixers ,19" racks, bulkhead connectors, patch panels and power distribution. Wow, that'll cost!

That's before you get your OB truck, generator, satellite uplink and somebody to install the whole thing.

Boardsbud

Good call on Canford, is the Dublin office still there ?

Was the lotto won tonight ? If not it might be about 6 mil on Sat !! Get buying Anto

SRB

Odd as it may seem, ebay and tvbay are quite good for decent second hand gear, as it's quite specialised, the stuff which comes up from time to time is usually ex-broadcast and well serviced. Quite a lot of the BBC equipment from Queen Margaret Drive, (former HQ of BBC Scotland) was online not so long ago. An uplink trunk ain't cheap though, a friend of mine has an indie one he hires out and believe me a four bedroom house would cost less than it cost to fit out !

watty

Canford catalogue / site a starting place.
I saw a not bad 2nd hand OB truck go and cheap. The seller suggested it could be stripped and used as a horse box.

Unless you want to DIY as a hobby or DIY a cheap consumer/prosumer based HD truck, I simply look for a 2nd hand truck. All the professionals at changing to HD. An SD 2nd truck will not cost much more than similar size 2nd hand empty van!

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The Dublin office is still there, scroll down to the end.

http://www.canford.co.uk/contactus.aspx

I designed and installed an OB unit for radio not long ago and there wasn't much change out of €300k. TV always costs more.

You won't get a TV station hiring a sub-standard OBU, not with so much depending on it. Might get some recording work maybe.

Check out some of the OBSERVE units. In a word, class. Their HD unit even has a door at the back with a Burko boiler behind it for making the tea. I've seen the boys huddled around the rear of unit drinking tea and no mucky shoes in the unit!

afatbollix

ive worked with observe a few times... i dont want a tv broadcast truck.. the new observe hd truck cost 2 million to build. Im looking for small events that would like a screen or dvds of an event or even web streaming... we would do it cheep... we arent looking for the big bucks of RTE etc but small sports events, conferances or concerts. so you wouldent need the big expensive equipment of observe or tvm.. we will have it as this

camera > bnc > monitor > vision mixer and then to vt to record onto a external hard drive or a dvd hd recorder.. no tapes!

at the moment i am doing tv production corse in dublin. we do small obs as part of the corse we use 5 monitors a vision mixer and a dvd recorder and our clients are very happy with the end result. Every event we do we are allways asked to cover more concerts / plays /small sport events but cant due to being too busy... so thats the market im after.
we could allways buy a ob box like this but we think a bus would be better:
http://www.planetdv.net/Content/Video_Output_Monitors/Datavideo.asp
we can also for the price of this box pay for the bus and equipment... ( as i said CHEEP)

watty

If you are making a DVD, simply get a few HD Camcorders and edit later.

You going to use multicable or just composite? Composite Video camera capture is really poor. My Sony WS Digital 8 via DV does better quality than Analogue Composite. Only Security cameras use composite these days.

Using a decent Software 2 pass VBR encoder from DV format or MJPEG to MPEG2 and then DVD authoring is x2 quality at least of any direct DVD recorder. I use direct DVD recording only for "time shifting" etc.

Editing in DV or 5:1 Compression MJPEG, never in MPEG2 or MPEG4.

Of course when I started learning this stuff we used timecodes and Analogue 2" video tape

afatbollix

ok them i think im letting myself down with these cables between the cameras. if you know any cheepish cable then tell me..

about the recording we are going to use a avid mojo to record it stright through avid. and use the dvd hd as a back up. and if the customer wants we can play vts out of avid aswell.
and we can also have tx coming out to tv screens, big screens etc etc...

watty

Prosumer HD Camcorders and these for cable less HD?
http://gizmodo.com/343892/wireless-hdtv-proliferates-across-ces-show-floor