@General Lighting 701922 wrote:
a bank today would be more likely to upgrade its security systems and sacrifice something like the media centre; most CCTV is still analogue as todays CCTV cameras are as good as broadcast cameras of 15 years ago (I look after a few CCTV systems for work).
this media centre is or was a common fixture in many large corporate offices and it would indeed be used for monitoring TV news and recording it as well as making videos which got handed out free to TV stations to fill up airtime. It probably got set up in the mid 2000s before the economic crash when the banks and other corporates thought they could directly “own the media”
Except there isn’t much demand for non impartial programmes about banks; and such programmes really aren’t going to be very interesting; someone has had the sense to realise that by donating the equipment to your community project they can write off the failed project as a tax loss and gain more positive spin than making programmes no one is going to watch or trust (and they can get their employees or “deniable contractors” to spy on the internet from home or buy info from BBC Caversham like everyone else does).
A lot of this kit is just after the time I finished in broadcast engineering but it is essentially the same stuff I worked with crammed into smaller boxes and sold at a price point which was more amenable to non-creative industries who wanted to dabble in spin doctoring than the premium charged for “pro/broadcast” equipment; which TBH really isn’t much different from “consumer” stuff nowadays if there is any difference left at all. So feel free to post up any info on what it is (or send it to me via PM) if you are unsure or want it identified; I used to work on all sorts of obscure things (some of which appear to be still in use today by some TV channels).
Some of this equipment may be worth keeping and using for this youth media centre depending on how much space you have (I know this can be a problem as I had to help shift a entire community radio station in a week at the end of 2012 and they may well move again in the next few years).
I’ve already set up one PA system for them, and we are keeping hold of a load of cameras and the like for amateur film production stuff to do with the kids, but there’s way more stuff then we need, this is what we are selling off, in order to buy more appropriate things that we actually need.
Ta for the offer of helping me work out what some of it is, I’ll be sure to take you up on that offer!
