Media Engineers Limited

16/12/2025

New test-kit day!

I was very please to receive the Media Engineers' demo BarnDr. unit from our friends Barnfind Technologies in Norway. It's intended as an evaluation unit for customers but showing it to my two fibre technicians this morning I could see them thinking "...that's going into our kit".

So, what does the BarnDr. do and who is it aimed at? Essentially if you have an estate of fibre infrastrucure this test suite centralises everything you need to confirm the proper functioning of;

1. Tactical cable drums,
2. Infrastructure fibre wiring,
3. Patch cords,
4. Patch panels and termination boxes.

With a clear and bright touchscreen you can quickly select test types - our evaluation unit has the visible-laser/light-source/measurement-input module as well as the OpticalCon DUO module. Future expansion modules will include SMPTE cable and so as well as application in venue comms rooms where fibre infrastructure terminates (sports stadia, events spaces etc) the unit has application in OB tailboards (it takes only 2RU is in only 200mm deep) or hand-carry in a Peli case.

The option I really like is the handheld inspection wand that allows you to confirm the cleanliness of patch-panel ports (these are harder to clean than cable-ends and so minimising that effort is welcome). I've also tested it with our existing hand-help optical meters and it works well - you can easily send the trainee off around the stadium/conference-centre to measure at all the end points the test signal genarated in the BarnDr.

I've often heard people say things like "well, everything you put down a fibre is digital - it either works or it doesn't" and that may be true for video and the like, but data over ethernet will hide a multitude of sins as TCP/IP will correct for very poor connectity and unless you can test the physical layer you may be left wondering why your ten-gig link is only managing gigabit performance - it's may be because most of the packets are having to be re-transmitted.

We'll be showing the BarnDr. at our our free optical-fibre open-week in February (DM me if you'd like to get in on a slot - still some available - see https://tinyurl.com/4ybekhhr) and it'll be availabe after Christmas for customer evaluation.

11/12/2025

Would you struggle to explain to your colleagues or customers the difference between single and multi-mode fibre?

Are you confused by the differences between short-range SFP and long range QSFP (or AOC) for 100Gig networking as well as all the other signal types that are carried over fibre wavelengths using either CWDM or DWDM multiplexing. We'll also show you how to deal with manufacturer lock-in with QSFP modules. We'll also be showing the BarnDr. test set; the ideal unit for fixed location (stadium and other event venues) as well as outside broadcast trucks.

This is the first time we've run this training-taster - it's a two hour cut-down of the one-day "Intro to fibre; best practise in termination, testing and networking" aimed at broadcast operators and engineers.

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 fibre standards used in contemporary film & TV production and post. We’ll illustrate using products from the Barnfind Technologies product range including the new BarnPalette Audio as well as the 18Gbit True4K HDMI parts from the BarnColor range.

Get in contact to book your two hour slot in Finsbury Park starting on Monday 9th of February.

04/12/2025

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (who watches the watchmen?)
OR, today's question; who calibrates the calibrators?
I spent a very pleasant morning at one of Soho's largest facilities building profiles for their Klein K10A calibration probe so their in-house engineers can be certain that the colours their probe reads are accurate.
"What, you s***k five bags-of-sand on the probe and it isn't accurate?" is a reasonable question, but what is not obvious is the fact that there are two types of probe - Photometers (AKA "tri-stim" probes) and Spectroradiometers (AKA "spectros"). Tri-stims are inherently inaccurate and spectros are inherently accurate.
"Who would buy a tri-stim, surely spectros are the way to go for a calibrator?" - you'd be right save for the fact that spectros are very slow; typically >10 seconds to read a colour because they are making hundreds of measurements across the visible band from 380'ish nm (deep blues) -> 720'ish nm (very saturated reds). BUT a probe where you have to wait many seconds between making an adjustment and seeing the change is not usable as a daily-driver. On the other side of the coin are the tri-stim probes (Klein K10A, Color Research CR100 etc) which can make many reads per second but since they only measure three values via coloured filters they suffer from observer metameristic failure (just like your eyes), but unlike your eyes Messrs Sony, Eizo, Flanders and the rest have not optimised the RGB response of their display panels to match your particular probe and so matching-profiles are needed to impose spectro-accuracy on your tri-stim probe for each model of monitor (well, for each model of panel).
If you're a calibrator-for-hire you have to have both types because you never know what kind of panel/projector/LED-volume you're going to encounter, but if you're a facility who only upgrades/aquires new displays annually then it's much cheaper to call the person with the spectro than s***king ten bags-of-sand on one.

26/11/2025

Over the last two week we have been very busy at the workshop - thirty-six customers came to do our "Intro to colour, calibration & HDR" training taster, supported by our friends at EIZO.
We're also fully up to speed as the manufacturer of eyePower intelligent PDUs (units shipped to Greece, Norway, The Isle of Man and even London last week). Additionally we sent out several kits of Barnfind Technologies demo stock (we hold evaluation units of the few brands we sell/support). We also finished the last of the Thompson DVB encoders we've been repairing/soak-testing. Add in a couple of designs for audio suite upgrades and we've barely had time to sweep the floors!
If you need broadcast engineering/equipment-repair/training then do get in touch.
"Greetings from Finsbury Park, North London"

21/11/2025

A busy week of running our training taster for "Colour, HDR & calibration for film & TV" at the workshop in Finsbury Park. Nineteen two-hour sessions and thirty-six attendees mean my voice is gone but it's been a very good few days drinking coffee and not eating pastries (I've been low-carb since the spring!)
Many thanks to the folks at EIZO for supporting the event.

05/11/2025

What's on the repair bench today at the Media Engineers workshop?

It's some Thompson EM4000 DVB transmission encoders. Whilst linear TV is still in action there will be a need for coding and mux and these venerable machines need maintenance. A variety of faults (video input cards, PSUs etc) mean we have to canablise parts machines to keep these ones running.

If you have any ad-hoc repair requirements for broadcast equipment do get in touch; we are happy to manage return/shipment as well as soak-testing once fixed and we'll happily hold onto your donor-machines for parts.

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.