MRV Debuts High-Definition Video Transceivers That Enable Any Fiber Optic Network to Transport HD Video
5/22/2006
[FAC: Just a word on the two terms "uncompressed" and "digital". By definition, anything that is digitally encoded is compressed (and lossy). Digital encoding consists of sampling a potentially infinite number of continuously variable analog states and assigning those samples codes corresponding to only a finite number of quantizing levels, and smoothing over the differences - the remaining near-infinite number of analog states that were never sampled - at the receiving end. The two terms digital and uncompressed combined, therefore, constitute an oxymoron. The error factor in this case is known as quantizing noise.]
Chatsworth, CA - MRV COMMUNICATIONS, INC. announced a new family of digital video fiber optic transceivers that allow transport of uncompressed high-definition video over standard fiber optic networks.
The new Digital Video SFP family enables post-production facilities and rich-media studios to transport HD-SDI video over dark fiber using networking gear from any vendor that supports the small form factor pluggable (SFP) standard.
One market opportunity is to allow post-production facilities to share uncompressed baseband HD and SD video throughout a metropolitan area, a possibility now under consideration at Broadway Video. "I was impressed at how easy it was to transport HD & SD video in the same system that offered GigE and Fibre Channel connectivity," said Dirk Van Dall, General Manager, Broadway Video Digital Media Services, one of New York's leading design and post-production services companies and a major independent producer of television and film entertainment. "With MRV equipment, a high speed data link between diverse operations can do 'double-duty' as an uncompressed HD baseband connection. We can even set the system up to have both high-speed data and HD/SD baseband concurrently. It's seamless and well integrated into their system, and an extremely versatile way to link locations."
In customer tests, MRV Digital Video SFPs were used to transmit uncompressed SDI and HD-SDI between Sony HDW-F500 (HDCam) and Panasonic HD3700H (D5) tape deck pairs over 21 kilometers of single-mode dark fiber. The benefit is both flawless fidelity and a dramatic cost savings for HD video distribution from both lower network building, transmission infrastructure costs and from a reduced need for HD decks that used to shuttle tapes between locations.
Each MRV Digital Video SFP has a coaxial cable connector that takes a Digital Video feed from a camera or production system, and feeds it into an SFP-based system that converts the sight into a fiber optic signal. The MRV's SFPs are available for the DVB-ASI (270 Mbps) standard, the SDI (270 Mbps) standard, and both the PAL/SECAM (1.485 Gbps) and NTSC (1.4835 Gbps) standards of HD-SDI.
"As HD content becomes the norm in more industries, the limitations to transporting it on a network have a bigger impact on budgets and on turnaround time for projects," said Noam Lotan, MRV President and CEO. "We wanted to mark MRV's debut into the video networking marketplace with these SFPs because they so strongly change the equation making transporting video over a fiber network as easy and cost-effective as any other protocol."
MRV's Digital Video SFPs use a patent-pending encoding algorithm based on the EG-34 industry standard to transport SDI (SMPTE 259M and 344M) and HD-SDI (SMPTE 292M) data. Both SDI and HD-SDI create pathological data signals -- long series of either 1 or 0 data -- that cannot easily be transported over enterprise -- and telecom-class fiber optic equipment that requires a more balanced data flow.
SOURCE: MRV Communications, Inc.
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