British Broadcast: Bel Digital Group

To round off BVE week, Audio Media International is speaking to a number of UK pro-audio companies within the broadcast sector and quizzing them on several topics.

Barry Revels, director at Bel Digital Group carries a positive attitude toward the current climate: “From an equipment manufacturers point of view the UK fixed install market is quite healthy at present; there are several large scale infrastructure projects currently in construction and planned for the near future.”

But the situation is not as promising when it comes to other areas of the business: “The mobile market is not growing as fast. I believe this is partly due to major changes of ownership such as acquisitions and mergers, and to a degree there is some uncertainty in the direction of new technology.”

When asked where he believes the market is headed in, he replies confidently: “There is no doubt that IP transport is the focus and I believe the impact will result in the biggest single change in the equipment we supply, the workflows in which we support and the actual way in which broadcasters procure services that I and many of us have ever seen. This is being driven from the very top management and by accountants, the biggest cause for this change is the need to drive costs down. The new IP technology promises to deliver vast cost savings.”

“Bel is doing well in the changing environment; we believe we saw the change in both technology and market segment demands early and were quick to react. I think we were quick of the starting blocks in the race to bring out new products to meet the demands of the changing workflows. We also identified and are working with customers who are leading the way in delivering leading edge solutions.”

However, the company isn’t about to get complacent, and is focussed on the road ahead in order to stay ahead of the curve: “We have identified the need to bridge the gap between the traditional broadcast infrastructure and the new world. In order to do this much more information about the makeup and quality of data streams is required. Our MADI monitor has proven to be the choice of broadcasters because it not only gives access to the audio within the stream but also the data, which is the backbone that provides stability of a system.”

The MADI monitor is not the only product from its range that’s seemingly making waves.

”While our new MADI products are proving very popular and are providing us with new revenue and customers, our redesign of multichannel audio and audio video monitors has proved an even bigger success than we dared to hope for. We identified an ever-increasing use of freelance broadcast engineers working within our customers’ facilities. These engineers need to very quickly grasp how to control a huge range of boxes from many manufacturers. We have made this a reality by focusing on providing the clearest and most intuitive operation ever. The feedback we received from many of our customers means we will keep this a priority when we develop new products.”

The state of play is very clear in Revel’s view: “The IP race is on and we have brought on more R&D resources to compete and meet this challenge. At IBC we announced our IP intentions and we will launch the first of these products in Q2.”

http://www.beldigital.com