Media Engineers Limited

23/10/2025

Really looking forward to joining the team at Mediaspec for their event in Glasgow next week - I'll be demo'ing the EIZO range of colour accurate monitors for film & TV (including the mighty CG1 Prominence; the gold standard for mastering) and I'll be doing a little presentation/Q&A on the state of broadcast displays.

(I fear Eric has been more gracious than I deserve in the bio he wrote for me!)

MAVE

14/10/2025

Would you struggle to explain to your colleagues or clients what the difference is between rec.709, DCI-P3, DolbyVision, and HLG?
Are you confused by the huge difference in costs between an HDR mastering monitor and cheaper options that do “HDR emulation” and where you could deploy them outside the grading suite?
The last couple of times we've run this training-taster it has been much over-subscribed and so Media Engineers would like to invite everyone to a session at our workshop in leafy North London.
Come and eat pastries and drink coffee with us and we’ll go over the various display standards used in contemporary film & TV production and post. We’ll illustrate every price point with demos from the EIZO product range from the remarkably-valued CG2400SV rec.709/SDR SDi monitor all the way up to the mighty CG1 Prominence which is the gold standard for HDR grading and finishing.
Get in contact to book your two hour slot in Finsbury Park starting on Monday 17th of November.

28/09/2025

Last week I had a chance to visit the two contractors who provide PCB and metalwork for our intelligent power-distribution product eyePower.
Dy-tech Ltd (https://dy-tech.co.uk/) are our contract PCB manufacturing house - they specialise in everything from prototyping to medium-run quantity PCBs and have been a fantastic partner for us. Having a chance to see their pick & place machines in action as well ovens and hi-res analysis rig was a joy for me.
Then it was on to Screencraft (http://screencraft.co.uk) to see where our metalwork and front panels are made. What struck me was how many small factories and workshops on industrial estates are doing high-quality, innovative work for the rest of UK industry. I know everything is meant to be social-media-enabled and AI-powered in 2025 but it's the physical work of making things that gets a grey-haired engineer's juices flowing!
As ever we hold evaluation stock of all products re-sold and manufactured by Media Engineers Ltd; just get in contact to arrange a demo.

24/09/2025

The Barnfind Technologies BarnMini05 is a fantastically useful little box that allows you to extend serial and GPI/Os over distance either via a network or over fibre wavelengths. I've used them to extend tallies and EVS control panels. Here's a little blog-post/video showing how the wire the cables/set the UARTs etc.

Here's a little video showing how to use the Barnfind BarnMini05 to extend serial control over very long distance using wavelengths on a sin...

01/09/2025

Looking forward to joining my friends from Barnfind Technologies on booth 8.D87 at the RAI in Amsterdam from next Friday.
We have a couple of new additions to the BarnColor range (so new they haven't made it onto the website yet) - the audio units can carry hundreds of channels on a single fibre without being encumbered with the problems of latency and cost you suffer with IP.
Come and see the whole range and discover why Barnfind has broken out of broadcast and is being used widely in theatre, AV and event-spaces for synchronous (SDi, audio, HDMI, etc) and asynchronous (ethernet, fibre-channel, serial etc) signal transport.
(oh, and I'll also have an eyePower intelligent PDU to show after you've had a Barnfind demo!)

30/07/2025

Our "Fundamentals of Networks for Broadcast Engineers" has proved very popular. We always did an hour at the end of that day showing fibre cable types, splicing methods, testing etc. but we've decided to expand that to a full course.
Get in contact if this or our electrical-safety or colourimetry/calibration courses are of interest. By engineers, for engineers.

12/06/2025

What value-add should resellers bring to hardware sales?
Media Engineers are pleased to represent a small number of manufacturers and as part of that we keep demo stock which we will bring to you so that you know exactly what you're buying and if it fits well with your needs. If it's a £1,500 Barnfind Technologies fibre unit or a £30K EIZO mastering monitor you can only really check it out if you've used it in anger - a half hour demo at a trade show or in a dealer's offices is not adequate.
We have recently formed a closer relationship with eyePower because for many years I found it to be the best intelligent PDU available. If you need to remotely control and monitor power usage in your MCR or data centre racks I have yet to find anything better (and I've tried them all). Media Engineers are now the contract assembly/test house for eyePower and my wiring guys are loving the more structured/disciplined process of assembly wiring.
So, in an effort to "know your enemy" I contacted a couple of resellers to ask about purchasing the big name competing product (bear in mind this unit is £1,000 more expensive than the eyePower) and I was met with complete dissinterest - our relationship was going to go no further than them taking a purchase order off me. No suggestion of a conversation with an engineer who knew the product or (heaven forfend) see a demo unit.
Now we have one and we're tearing it down to see how well they've done current monitoring (the eyePower uses current-monitoring transformers with such precision that they accurately read instantaneous current draw to 1mA over 60A range) along with all the other environmental monitoring and how well it exposes all that data over the network.
So, if you need intelligent power control/monitoring we'll bring one over in the Peli case for you to assess. If you're going to buy one it's because you're convinced it's the product you need.

20/05/2025

This photo is a genuine example of a Commando C16 connector I found in a London facility when fault-finding an "Edit 1 has lost power..." type complaint. It was wired by the staff engineer.
If you are any kind of support-tech/engineer you will often find yourself as the most technically qualified person in the studio/set/edit-facility and it behoves you to have at least a passing familiarity with electrical safety and even the 18th Edition. Mains voltage is one of the few things left in film/TV that can kill people by electric-shock or fire and if you were in court M'Lud would take a dim view of an engineer who had not done everything to protect their colleagues from danger.
Media Engineer's one-day electrical safety course can be run at your studio/facility or at our workshop in leafy Finsbury Park.

16/05/2025

What a fantastic couple of days at meeting old pals and new customers.
However, the highlight of the week was realising I've joined an illustrious cohort of industry colleagues who have come under the steely gaze of the master caricaturist Mike Watson - Mike has been a good friend since our days in BBC TV News back in the 1980s....!

09/05/2025

It's arrived sooner than you thought! Next week Wednesday and Thursday is the Media Production and Technology show at Olympia. Media Engineers will be there on booth G.23 - come and talk to us about;

- Barnfind Technologies complete product range - we will have BarnOne, BarnMini and BarnColors on demo.
- EIZO monitors - including the CG1 Prominence, the gold standard for film and TV mastering,
- System Design and wiring
- Equipment service and repair
- Colour Calibration

We also have the best giveaways!

29/04/2025

What's on the repair bench today? It's a Dell Precision 3930 Rack Workstation which (although obsolete by Dell's standards) is still a very powerful 1u rack server. This one had a minor fault on the motherboard that meant it was stuck in a boot-loop never making it to Windows.

If your reseller/tech-support provider does not offer electronic repair/rework then maybe give us a call.

Media Engineers - keeping equipment out of landfill (and money in your Capex-budget!) one server at a time.

25/04/2025

Media Engineers Ltd are very pleased to be at on booth G.23 - we'll be showing the full Barnfind Technologies range of products as well as talking EIZO monitors and display calibration services.
In addition we can discuss installation projects as well as training.
We also have the best giveaways!

https://www.mediaproductionshow.com/exhibitors/media-engineers