We Hear You. Make Sure They Can, Too.

You can have the best production chain equipment in the world, but if you have overlooked ensuring that your comms and SPGs – both critical components of high quality productions – are just as good, the odds of creating and delivering a top quality production are long, says Ewan Johnston, Sales Director, Trilogy Communications.

It's still possible, if you're lucky, but who's willing to bet their LinkedIn profile on hearing a garbled, "This is going down well", when what was actually said was, "This is going down a well"?

This applies equally whether it's an outside broadcast or an in-studio production. Indoors or outdoors, if you don't have a comms system that enables you to hear precisely what's going on, you're sunk.

Luckily, we're called Trilogy Communications, so you can rightly deduce that we know a thing or thousand about comms. We have been at the forefront of the field, delivering high quality, low latency comms systems, now in their fourth generation, for more than 30 years.

But that's not to say we're old school. The rapid evolution, particularly in the recent years, of the broadcast industry, especially in terms of the opportunities offered by IP-based communications, may be relatively new and in some cases possibly daunting. Not to us. We've been working with IP-based comms systems for nearly 15 years. IP doesn't faze us one bit, and we're very excited that the rest of the industry has finally caught up so they can begin to exploit, for example, our new, patented VoiceFlow family of products. Its core engine delivers highly advanced IP capabilities including, but not limited to, peer-to-peer architecture and high communications channel density.

The fact that our experience integrates so deeply into our products and processes enables Trilogy customers to actually simplify, rather than complicate, their architectures, which has the dual benefit of vastly improving efficiency while lowering infrastructure costs. If you're talking about "achieving a perfect production", a cost-cutting, yet thoroughly modern, high-quality, low-latency comms system is most certainly a key component of reaching that goal, especially in an IP world.

However, we're fully aware that not everyone has jumped on the IP train just yet. Many are perfectly happy on analogue, or mixed analogue/IP, platforms, which will likely be around for quite some time to come.

So, to be honest, the infrastructure preference is almost irrelevant. What is relevant, however, is that the comms technology that runs on a platform of choice is just as modern and robust as the rest of the production technology. Our Gemini comms system, for example, continues to be class-leading, and we've just doubled its capacity to meet, or exceed, modern demands while maintaining compatibility with existing product ranges. There's no need to throw out the baby. Just add more bathwater.

There's no need to shoot the Messenger, either; the message here being that huge infrastructures are not for everyone. Many only require a few comms panels for a few users, especially for outside broadcasts where space is at a premium, and our small but powerful Messenger product absolutely continues to lead the way for that small but nimble market.

Lastly, but no less important, comms technology continues to improve in tandem with significant improvements in the many forms of wireless communication. It's only going to get better.

So, if you want to achieve a "perfect production", we hear you.

Just make sure your production team can, too.

This article is also available to read at BFV online.

www.trilogycomms.com

(JP)