BVE North is expected to attract more than 3,000 visitors this year, a 20% increase on the inaugural 2011 event.

Manchester’s Central Complex will house 100 exhibitors, including 35 vendors new to the show, which takes place on 13-14 November.

“BVE North is about bringing together regional content and local talent with the latest industry information,” said marketing manager Amanda McCarthy. “Last year, 87% of visitors to BVE North did not visit the London event, so we are catering for a whole new market.”

She added: “The BBC is settled into MediaCityUK and more people are moving to the region to support local production. BVE North is about supporting that endeavour.”

A new series of informal round- table discussions, dubbed Skills Zone, are intended to aid the region’s freelance community in topics ranging from rights protection to job hunting.

Among the commissioners in attendance are UKTV commissioning editor for entertainment Helen Cooke and multiplatform commissioning lead at Channel 4 Louise Brown.

Several products will be making their debuts at the show, including the global launch of a trio of portable wireless technologies from Intratec, distributed by Holdan.

Bridge is a miniature on-camera Wi-Fi device that streams video up to 450Mbps over dis- tances of 250m; Bridge Duo is a radio unit capable of delivering live data streams over 500m; and WiFi Anywhere aggregates data from mobile networks to create a remote wireless hotspot.

“We’ve seen wireless encoding and streaming take off in the past 12 months,” said Holdan technical manager Richard Payne. “We are also making BVE North the UK launchpad for the Teradek Bolt, which is a £1,300 transmitter and receiver of uncompressed HD SDI for wireless working up to 100m.

“The delay is just 2 milli- seconds and it supports 1080p. There is nothing comparable on the market.”

Other products making their UK debut at the show include NewTek’s TriCaster 8000, a live production and streaming system for up to eight cameras; Studer by Harman’s compact audio console Vista 1; the Solaris LED energy-saving spotlight from Ianiro; and the Photron SA-X from Slowmo, which can record 1K res- olutions at 20,000 fps.

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