Broadcasting House, Salford Quays & TVC

Indeed, it seems I am a lot less informed about broadcast engineering than I thought. As I said above, it was my impression that LED screens are just an array of regular LEDs that are used to to directly produce a picture, and as such are not suitable for close-up use. I know you can get LED-backlit LCD screens, but such technology is not scalable to the size seen in the image without visible bezels.

I realise Generic has provided quite a bit of insider information in the past and I'm aware how presumptuous telling them they're wrong seems, but the only LED technology I can think of that fits what we see in the image are LED-lit rear projection cubes (as opposed to the more traditional lamp-lit variety).
Generic , I'd really appreciate some more detail if you're able to provide it - before I confuse/embarrass myself further.

The screens in question are not designed for ultra sharp images as they are a background and having a sharp background isn't natural. They are an array of LEDs with an opaque screen around 2 cms away from the LEDs themselves. The other screens are intended for high quality images such as dtls and graphics.
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Interesting, thanks for your response. I've never heard of them being used in such a way before, and a quick look around a few industry websites reveals nothing. Is this an approach being pioneered by the BBC?I can't spot anything similar in BDA Creative's portfolio, if they are responsible for the design.

I'm sure that R4 have perfectly valid reasons for wanting to move back to BH (not least that it was built for radio) but the whole "centre of London" angle has always amused me given that BBC TV news have always seemed to manage from White City (and Ally Pally before that), Sky News do a perfectly good job from Osterley and they've just moved two daily news programmes (Breakfast and Newsround) and a news radio station to Salford making a great deal of noise about how the location won't affect the content.

It's the same system used by Sky News on their newswall.

You sure? Thought they had barco type cubs to make up their newswall. It's certainly made of blocks rather than one continuous 'screen' like the new BBC World one is.

They are cubes, but they're LED cubes, with the opaque screen. There's a YouTube video of a weather presenter knocking one of them down.

Well they're not really cubes - they're tiles, maybe 1-2" deep max. All LED screens are tile based. But, LED screen tiles can be tiled seamlessly with no border, unlike projection or display based devices.

The only reason you can see the Sky News one is tiled is because of the curve, and that could be solved by using a single solid diffuser rather than individual ones.

Also, using a diffuser on an LED screen is really not that unusual. Really the only time you don't use one is when you're needing a sharp image.

For some reason the word "tiles" escaped from me.

This article from Barco explains about their "unique diffusers" used on Sky News's backdrop.

Here's a picture of the track cam for the TOTHs in Broadcasting House. Courtesy of our very own @chrisckmedia



http://p.twimg.com/Av2XkoVCMAIWevk.jpg:large

Sorry for size of image!

https://twitter.com/#!/chrisckmedia/media/slideshow?url=pic.twitter.com%2FP3eVY6Ib

Well, that certainly answers the question of whether there'll be a camera in the newsroom! Judging from the size of the space, it looks like a camera has been planned for there from the outset.

Looking forward to seeing how they use all those 'track cams' on screen. It'd be great if they could integrate live shots of the newsroom and the studio into the traditional TOTH countdown.

Taking a break from BH matter for a moment, worth noting that Countdown has finished fimling in Quay Street and will be moving to MediaCity in the summer, so it looks rather likely that University Challenge and Jeremy Kyle could be heading over that way aswell.