Aurora Multimedia has been delving into the world of digital video transport for at least four years. The company started with HDBaseT and continues to be a significant producer of products for the transport.
It has now expanded that to its “IPBaseT” transport solution, wowing visitors at ISE 2016 with its new IPX-TC1 IP streaming solution. According to Aurora’s literature, the IPX-TC1 has the ability to send 4K AV signals over IP with “zero compression and zero latency.” The way Aurora does this is with a chipset from AptoVision.
Aurora not only has its keystone product available, in the IPX-TC1, but also wall plate transceivers. The IPX-TC1 is a transceiver as well with two HDMI in and one out. This allows you to encode two separate digital signals into the stream and select which you would like to send to the network.
It also gives you the ability to embed IR or RS-232 commands down the stream as well so you can control whatever device is on the far end. Audio is also available locally or to be inserted into the stream if you are sending a video signal and need to couple that with a separate audio source.
The wall plates are a step into full systems integration and a way around needing full matrix switchers. A system design that incorporates this IPBaseT technology would not require a matrix switch at all. It would only need a 10-gig IP switch with enough ports to support the amount of sources and destinations.
Let’s say you had a typical classroom lecture hall containing a room computer, laptop connection, maybe a Blu Ray player and even a document camera. Then you have at least two displays and possible lecture capture system. In this design you would need a four input and three output matrix switch in a traditional AV system. With the IPBaseT you would only need a 10-gig switch that had at least seven or eight ports. No matrix needed.
