John Luff

Television Technology Consultant
SMPTE Fellow

John Luff is an independent consultant in television technology and facility design. He has 42 years of experience in broadcasting, post production, facilities management, remote production, project management, technical consulting and system design. He is a consultant and lecturer on emerging media technologies, and is a graduate of the Honors College of Ohio University. In his broadcasting career he has been an editor, master control operator, cameraman, maintenance technician, manager, business owner, and consultant. Luff founded Synergistic Technologies in 1984 as one of the first full service system integration firms, based in Pittsburgh and serving a global client base.

After selling STI to AZCAR in 2000 he remained with AZCAR as a senior member of the management staff responsicle for business development in North America. Luff returned to private consulting practice in 2006.

He has been active in SMPTE since 1973 and has served the society on various engineering committees, and was elected a Fellow of the SMPTE in 2005. Luff currently serves as SMPTE Conference Vice President.

Mr. Luff has also served SMPTE as the chairman of the Journal Award Committee twice, Chaired the Sarnoff Award Committee, and has been a session chair at numerous conferences. He has presented papers to several chapters of the Society in the US and Canada on technology and system integration issues. He is a past Chair of SBE Chapter 20 in Pittsburgh where he has resided since 1971.

For over 10 years he managed the coverage of large news events worldwide for the European Broadcasting Union. These efforts took him to Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas for summits and elections and such notable events as the Pro‐democracy uprising in China in 1989, the Hong Kong Handover in 1997, numerous summits in Moscow, elections in East Berlin, Prague, Johannesburg, Havana, Budapest, and Malta, as well as coverage of 10 American political party conventions beginning in 1980. In 1986 he was part of the management team deployed to Moscow by Turner Broadcasting for the inaugural Goodwill Games, where he was responsible for the Technical Operations Center during the live broadcast shift.

As a designer, consultant and project manager he executed facilities across North America, and built several mobile units, including the first progressive scan HDTV mobile unit, which was built in 129 days for Panasonic and ABC for inaugural coverage of Monday Night Football in HD in 1999. Mr. Luff was the project manager for the design and integration of ABC’s HDTV Release Center that fed 720p HDTV to ABC affiliates on the first day of regular US HD service, 11/1/98.

He written well over 120 articles for Broadcast Engineering magazine and contributed two chapters to the latest revision of the NAB Engineering Handbook. He has spoken at numerous technical conferences in Europe, North and South America, on topics including HDTV implementation issues, file based work flow, and project management for technology implementation.

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