IBC 2014 Perspectives: Kevin Moorhouse, COO and Managing Director, Gearhouse Broadcast UK

As IBC buzzes about the Amsterdam RAI this weekend with visions clouds and IPs and software-based workflows, international mobile production giant Gearhouse Broadcast is in the – almost enviable – position of simply sitting back and waiting for the industry to sort itself out.

Gearhouse Broadcast’s Kevin Moorhouse

In the meantime, the company is falling right in line with a growing trend in the mobile truck business: smaller, lighter, cheaper facilities accessible to productions of all sizes. At its booth (Hall 10, Stand B39), Gearhouse is showing off its new OBPod, a lightweight, expandable solution.

Building on the concept of the flyaway pod that Gearhouse Broadcast has successfully supplied to Sky Sports for the past three F1 seasons, the new OBPod has been designed with weight in mind. This new lighter model will enable the end user to make significant savings on shipping it from location to location around the world such as race tracks for a motorsport application. Every component, fixture and material used within OBPod has been carefully selected to make it lighter, easier to ship and quicker to rig and break down on site.

SVG caught up with Gearhouse Broadcast’s Kevin Moorhouse for a quick chat on some of the trends he’s seeing throughout the industry and at this weekend’s show.

How are these new OBPods unique?

We’ve saved around one-and-a-half tons in these new pods. It’s made of just a different compound of products. The manufacturers used a sort of honeycomb system that makes it a lot lighter than our previous versions, and they actually ended up bigger; it allowed us to expand them.

What is Gearhouse’s position and strategy regarding the move from baseband to IP?

At the moment, we haven’t invested anything in that because we’re waiting for the market to sort it our first. It’s the same thing with 4K. We’re looking at it and we’ve done some tests with 4K cameras but we haven’t spent any money on it yet and we don’t intend to until we know what’s going on.

Saying that, our new truck for Australia – HD8 – is 4K ready, so all of the infrastructure can deal with Quad-3gig. So in those areas we’ve made some investments in 4K, but otherwise we haven’t really gone out and invested in 4K equipment anywhere. Same with IP technology. We’re going to wait on that.

None of your clients are clamoring for that yet?

Not yet, no. Obviously with EVS and 10gig and that sort of workflow we use it, but in the general production process and the general acquisition, no.