Cobalt Digital, designer and manufacturer of edge devices for live video production and master control, and a founding partner in the openGear initiative, has unveiled INDIGO ST 2110, an openGear-based uncompressed solution featuring multiple 25G interfaces and 4K support. The series was introduced by Suzana Brady, SVP Worldwide Sales & Marketing during a press briefing held virtually on October 6th. Joining Brady were Dr. Ciro Noronha, Cobalt Digital’s EVP Engineering, and the Company’s VP Engineering, Ryan Wallenberg.
Cobalt Digital’s INDIGO ST 2110 is a ST 2110 factory option that adds native SMPTE ST-2110 support to the Company’s 9904-UDX-4K and 9905-MPx audio/video processor cards. INDIGO includes multiple 25G Ethernet interfaces to support uncompressed 4K. Support for ST-2022-7 seamless redundancy switching is incorporated for improved network reliability as well as IS-04/IS-05 NMOS for automatic discovery and configuration. This included support makes interfacing to an existing network straightforward, as the devices are auto discovered by the network management.
The audio/video processing engines of the 9904 and 9905 are capable of up/down/cross conversion, audio routing, color correction, and 3D-LUT processing. Additionally, the 9904 platform has support for Advanced HDR by Technicolor. Now, with the INDIGO ST 2110 option, the door is open for the processing in these cards to be available with IP inputs and outputs, eliminating the need for any external gateways. When the two cards are combined into a single package, solution is created that is capable of natively processing HD, 3G and 4K IP streams without compromising quality.
“The transition from SDI to IP has been underway for a few years now,” explained Brady. “In most deployments, however, this is achieved with gateways; an SDI signal is ingested and converted to an IP stream by a gateway, traverses the network, and a gateway converts it back to SDI for processing (scaling, color correction, etc.). After processing, yet another gateway is used to convert the SDI to an IP stream. Adding native ST-2110 interfaces to the audio/video processing elements provides a cost-effective, integrated solution. Customers no longer need to put multiple boxes or processing elements in the data path switching between IP and SDI. By processing natively over IP, all this complexity is streamlined and costs are reduced significantly. The combination of INDIGO ST 2110 and our 9904/9905 card-based processing solutions provides a compelling high-density native IP processing solution.”
The compact openGear form factor allows customers to mix and match functions in the same chassis or achieve higher densities by using multiple cards in a platform that ticks all the boxes and features hot-swappable cards and redundant power supplies. INDIGO joins Cobalt’s existing ST 2110 solutions that include throw-down gateways (2110 to SDI and SDI to 2110), and the very flexible 9915DA 12G series with 2110 options.