JACKSON, MO.—Link Electronics has introduced its CBE-493 3GB/HD/SD-SDI captioning bridge and encoder. The third unit in Link’s Chameleon series, and nicknamed “The Bridge,” CBE-493 is capable of taking captions from a SD input and encode them onto an HD input, or vice versa. It can also re-encode captions after they have been removed by another device.

CEA-608 captions from the bridge input are transcoded to CEA-708 captions; both 608 and 708 captions and then wrapped into a Caption Data Packet. The CDP is then embedded into the encoder output. CBE-493 outputs two closed caption encoded outputs of the same format as input with an option to decode one output.

The new system features four communication ports, including two serial RS-232 ports with adjustable baud rates and two ports that are tunneled to an Ethernet connector. This allows the CBE-493 to host two IP connections at one address. A menu is also available to allow users to resend or redirect data from the Ethernet port to the serial ports.

Additional features include re-clocked SDI outputs to perform re-clocking Distribution Amplifiers; field configuration from the front panel; XDS packet menus for V-chips and Transmission Station Identification; a GPI remote. The new unit also has the ability to raise the lower four lines up to the top four lines in order to comply with FCC mandates.