CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital, a provider of signal processing products and a founding partner in the openGear initiative, will highlight its expanding IPMX ecosystem at InfoComm 2026 in Booth N7163.

The solutions are designed to bring broadcast quality to Pro AV applications.

The lineup includes standalone signal processors, audio monitors, multiviewers, gateways, converters, encoders, and decoders that make SMPTE ST 2110 workflows easy to deploy, manage and scale.

Designed for systems integrators as well as end users, Cobalt’s interoperable IPMX certified product portfolio provides a straightforward migration path from SDI to IP — delivering the flexibility and scalability of ST 2110 without the complexity traditionally associated with high-end IP infrastructures.

“Pro AV customers are looking for practical ways to transition to IP without overcomplicating their workflows while protecting their legacy investments,” said Suzana Brady, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Cobalt Digital. “Our goal is to make ST 2110 and IPMX approachable for integrators and end users alike. We’re providing a complete solution that combines broadcast-grade reliability with the ease of deployment and operation the Pro AV market demands.”

At the center of Cobalt’s InfoComm lineup is the new COBALT blueCORE family of fully featured standalone signal processors designed to bridge SDI and ST 2110/IPMX environments. blueCORE combines the audio and video processing functions required for live production and AV signal management into a single 1RU device.

blueCORE’s self-contained architecture makes deployment fast and simple: power up the unit, connect signals, and it is ready to operate with or without a computer. A large touchscreen front panel enables fast, intuitive local configuration, and four illuminated control knobs allow functions (such as color correction) to be adjusted without an external control panel. blueCORE can also be deployed in traditional fixed installations and remotely managed through a Web GUI.

blueCORE capabilities include up/down/cross conversion, color correction, HDR processing, audio routing and mixing, per-channel frame sync, frame rate conversion, audio embedding and de-embedding, SCTE 104 insertion, logo insertion, and numerous additional base features — delivering extensive functionality in a single compact platform.

Cobalt will also demonstrate enhancements to the Cobalt Pacific compression platform including a new ST 2110/IPMX output option for the Cobalt Pacific ULL-DEC upgradeable software-defined decoder. The enhancement allows decoded content to be available simultaneously over SDI and ST 2110/IPMX. The device includes a built-in frame sync that can be configured to emit a PTP-locked signal for ST 2110 operation.

Cobalt also leverages the Pacific line to deliver a complete solution for interconnecting IPMX sites over the Internet. The Pacific 9992-ENC “IPMX-to-Internet” gateway appears as a destination within the NMOS controller at the sending site, enabling any patched content to be transmitted instantly to the corresponding Pacific ULL-DEC “Internet-to-IPMX” gateway at the receiving end. There the signal is visible in the NMOS controller as a sender and can be routed anywhere within the facility.

When using RIST, the Pacific 9992-ENC supports one-to-many distribution, allowing the same live content to be transported simultaneously to multiple destinations. This gateway acts as a bridge between IPMX on one end, and RIST/SRT on the Internet end, while also encoding or decoding audio/video at a reasonable bitrate.

Cobalt is also introducing new, entry level fixed-function openGear® cards designed to provide cost-effective entry points with license-based scalability up to four paths for expanding workflows.

The new 9925-FSx Frame Sync openGear card is a one-path frame sync card (field-upgradable to four paths) with optional audio processing support for AES, MADI, and DANTE 64. The new 9981-LUTx Color Processor openGear® card offers options including SCALER, BBC LUT, COLOR, 4K, LOGO, ANC, and is also field‑upgradable to four paths.

Cobalt’s ARIA Audio series includes the industry’s only fully IPMX-compliant audio monitor, giving AV facilities an easy way to incorporate professional audio confidence monitoring into IP-based workflows. The customizable touch-display front panel enables intuitive operation with eight individual volume controls for mixing, while remote control is available through a web interface.

The Cobalt UltraBlue MV-SW multiviewers provide a flexible monitoring solution for facilities operating in compressed (multiple protocols), SDI, ST 2110, IPMX, or hybrid environments. Available as either a turnkey solution with four HDMI heads or as a software package running on customer-supplied dedicated hardware, UltraBlue supports compressed and baseband audio/video over IP across multiple protocols and formats with highly flexible audio routing capabilities. Native IPMX support allows facilities to transition smoothly toward either ST 2110 or IPMX workflows while maintaining support for SDI inputs and outputs.

Cobalt will also showcase multiple models in the Cobalt Sapphire family of IPMX-capable standalone mini converters. Available in single, dual, and quad-channel configurations, select models can simultaneously transmit and receive signals while converting between IPMX/ ST 2110 signals and SDI/HDMI. Supporting both baseband video and ST 2110/IPMX, SAPPHIRE converters provide space-saving, low-latency tools for introducing IPMX into virtually any workflow.

The Cobalt Indigo gateway solutions provide a powerful on and off ramp between SDI and IP with support for both IPMX and ST 2110.

Designed specifically for hybrid infrastructures, Indigo simplifies interoperability, routing, and format translation while preserving image quality and low-latency performance — essential for organizations transitioning from traditional AV and broadcast infrastructures to modern IP-based operations.

“At InfoComm 2026, Cobalt Digital will demonstrate how our expanding IPMX ecosystem gives systems integrators and AV professionals a practical, interoperable, and future-ready path to ST 2110 — proving that high-end IP workflows are no longer difficult to deploy or manage,” Brady added.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—In a move that could make TV programming both accessible and engaging, Cobalt Digital announced a partnership with SineSix Media that will integrate SineSix’s vocalVision audio description solution into Cobalt’s 9922 frame synchronizer family.

The combined solution brings real-time audio descriptions of on-screen graphics directly into the broadcast workflow ensuring visually impaired viewers don’t miss critical information. Demonstrations of the collaborative solution will be conducted at 2026 NAB Show at Cobalt’s Booth # N 1340.

“By integrating vocalVision with our 9922 family, we’re enabling broadcasters to meet regulatory requirements while delivering a richer, more inclusive viewing experience,” said Suzana Brady, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Cobalt Digital. “This collaboration goes beyond regulatory compliance to provide an environment that supports greater audience engagement, trust, and promotes safety.”

Designed to help broadcasters comply with the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (21CVAA), vocalVision ensures that visually impaired audiences can fully access critical information that is often conveyed visually during live and recorded broadcasts.

The solution goes beyond traditional compliance tools by providing automated, real-time narration of graphical content such as lower-third headlines, weather radar maps, election data, sports graphics, and more. Integration with Cobalt Digital’s 9922 enables visual and audio accessibility tools to be combined into a unified workflow, ensuring that critical visual information is both seen and heard, improving accessibility for visually impaired audiences while enhancing overall viewer engagement.

The integrated workflow allows broadcasters to trigger audio description events directly from existing graphics systems via SineSix’s Watchman API, or through a user-friendly browser-based interface.

The system also provides flexible control options, allowing operators to manage alerts and descriptions manually, on scheduled intervals, or via automated triggers. Shared watch folders enable seamless ingestion of text and image assets, while Cobalt’s +TTS functionality converts text to speech and inserts audio into the program stream in real time. Cobalt’s +EAS option supports emergency alert delivery, and +LOGO enables on-screen graphic insertion, creating a unified and efficient accessibility solution.

Additional capabilities include AI-assisted image description for elements such as weather radar maps, customizable pronunciation dictionaries for accurate text-to-speech output, and multilingual support for broader audience reach.

“vocalVision was designed to make accessibility seamless and meaningful,” said Taylor Hightower, CTO for SineSix Media. “Working with Cobalt allows us to bring this capability directly into the broadcast signal chain, making it easier than ever for broadcasters to serve all audiences effectively.”

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Signal processing product provider Cobalt Digital has announced a 2026 NAB Show 2026 lineup that features numerous additions to its end-to-end IPMX and ST 2110 ecosystem, including new standalone processors, IPMX-native audio monitoring, multiviewers, gateways, and mini converters.

During the show, the company will be debuting COBALT blueCORE, a family of 1RU fully featured standalone signal processors, with more details to be announced closer the show.

In addition, the company will present the COBALT PACIFIC compression line with an ST 2110/IPMX output option for the COBALT PACIFIC ULL-DEC upgradeable software defined broadcast decoder.

The enhancement allows decoded content to be available simultaneously over SDI and over ST 2110/IPMX. For ST 2110 operation, a built-in frame sync will emit a PTP-locked signal. Cobalt is also introducing a DVB-S/S2 factory-installed demodulator option that allows decoding and pass-through of satellite signals, on ASI and over IP.

Additionally, as FCC regulations require the remainder of C-Band spectrum to be auctioned, Cobalt has responded by adding support for hybrid Satellite-Internet operation to the COBALT PACIFIC compression line, compliant with VSR TR-06-4 Part 7. In this mode, satellite is used for bulk distribution, and the Internet is used to recover any lost packets, allowing the use of Ku and Ka bands for distribution.

Cobalt, a founding partner in the openGear initiative, will also be introducing fixed-function openGear cards designed as cost-effective entry points with license-based expansion for scalability as workflows evolve.

The new 9925-FSx Frame Sync openGear card is an entry level one path frame sync card that supports license upgrades up to four paths per card, and an audio processing license upgrade for AES, MADI, and DANTE 64 support.

The new 9981-LUTx Color Processor openGear® card is an entry level color processing card that supports license upgrades up to four paths per card along with options including: SCALER, BBC LUT, COLOR, 4K, LOGO and ANC.

Cobalt will also be highlighting its portfolio of products that support end-to-end IPMX and ST 2110 workflows. The company described these as follows:

• The COBALT ARIA AUD-MON is the only fully IPMX-compliant audio monitor on the market. Built for any environment migrating toward IP-based operations, AUD-MON features best-in-class sound monitoring and 16 SDI or 64 MADI metering from a compact rack-mount form-factor. Sound is produced by an efficient Class-D amplifier with DSP and specially selected speaker components. The easy-to-use and customizable touch display front panel is designed for simple and intuitive operation with eight individual volume controls for mixing. Control can also be achieved through a web interface.
• Cobalt will also highlight the 9935-AUD4-DANTE, a quad-channel with up to 12G DANTE/AES/MADI/embed and de-embed functions with frame sync capabilities. The card features two gigabit Ethernet ports, a 64x64 configuration, and a full audio router mixer.
• The COBALT UltraBlue MV-SW multiviewers are available as both a turnkey solution with four HDMI heads, or as a software package that runs on customer-supplied dedicated hardware. COBALT® UltraBlue can receive compressed and baseband audio/video content over IP across a variety of protocols and formats with very flexible audio routing, bringing a multitude of options to suit every application, and now feature IPMX support for transitioning to either ST 2110 or IPMX workflows. The multiviewer also supports SDI inputs and outputs.
• Multiple models in the COBALT SAPPHIRE mini converter family of IPMX-capable standalone mini-converters will also be featured. Available in a variety of configurations including single, dual, and quad channel, with some models capable of simultaneously transmitting and receiving, these SAPPHIRE units convert between IPMX compatible (and SMPTE ST 2110 compatible) signals and SDI/HDMI, with support for baseband video and JPEG-XS.
• The COBALT® INDIGO gateway solutions provide a powerful on and off ramp between IP and SDI with support for IPMX as well as ST 2110. These versatile, high-performance solutions bridge the gap between traditional SDI workflows and modern IP-based infrastructures by simplifying interop, routing, and format translations while preserving image quality and latency performance—critical for transitioning to IP.

For further information visit: www.cobaltdigital.com.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital will feature its Aria series of audio solutions designed to simplify monitoring, embedding and routing at NAB Show New York, set for Oct. 22-23 at the Javits Center in New York City.

The company will showcase the Aria AUD-MON audio monitors alongside its full line of routers, multiviewers, converters and control panels. Cobalt Digital will also stage live demos of its new hybrid satellite solution built around its Pacific compression products working with the Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST).

The Aria family of Aria AUD-MON audio monitors provides sound monitoring in a compact, rackmount unit well-suited to places where space is limited.

ARIA monitors are available with either horizontal (AUD-MON-H) or vertical (AUD-MON-V) button layouts. The intuitive, customizable touch display front panel features eight individual volume controls for mixing. The series supports a wide range of inputs including ST 2110, 2xSDI up to 12G or MADI, 2xSFP for SDI over fiber, AES, balanced analog audio and GPI for automation, as well as external redundant power supplies for reliability.

An efficient Class-D amplifier with DSP and specially selected speaker components delivers clear, dynamic sound.

The Cobalt Aria OG-AUD-DANTE series consists of Dante cards in openGear form factor. They simultaneously embed and de-embed audio between SDI, Dante, AES and MADI with flexible routing and mixing.

Available as either quad- or dual-path units, these high-density, compact solutions offer built-in frame syncs, two gigabit Ethernet ports, with redundant hot-swappable power supplies and cards.

The company will also show its UltraBlue MV-SW multiviewer with support for all compressed and uncompressed IP/SDI inputs and scalable output options. This software-based multiviewer, available as a turnkey package or as software-only, is capable of receiving audio/video content over IP across a variety of protocols and formats with highly flexible audio routing.

Users can create fully customizable mosaic layouts with arbitrary sizes and orientations, graphic overlays, ancillary data, tallies, UMDs and IDs. PIPs can also be positioned, rotated and easily copied. Setups can be saved and restored. 

The company also will spotlight its Wave series of routers available as both standalone units and openGear cards as well as its Sapphire BBG compact converters offering low-latency IP conversion, 10G/25G Ethernet support, audio sample rate conversion, and asynchronous audio mixing.

Cobalt will also demo a new hybrid solution that combines satellite transmission with Internet recovery to bridge the gap created by C-band spectrum reallocation.

Built around Cobalt Pacific compression products and leveraging the RIST, this approach uses Ku-band and follows the recently released Video Services Forum Technical Recommendation (TR-06-4 Part 7). Satellite is used for heavy lifting, and the Internet is used to fix any drops.

See Cobalt Digital at NAB Show New York booth 607.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Monitoring audio and video content in today’s increasingly complex media environment requires more flexibility than ever. Fortunately, broadcasters’ adoption of IP and the cloud have brought that flexibility to a more reasonable integration level and price point.

As production environments evolve, the role of multiviewers continues to expand, according to Ketan Patel, product manager, multiviewer systems for Evertz. “Today’s multiviewers must handle a wide variety of signal types—compressed and uncompressed, IP and SDI—and operate seamlessly across both on-prem and cloud infrastructures,” he says.

With more operations adopting the SMPTE 2110 IP protocol, demand is increasing, Patel added. “Evertz has deployed over 600 SMPTE ST 2110 systems globally, many of which feature our high-density ev670-X30-HW-V2 modular platform and the ultra-high-density PREFEX multiviewer system.”

Michael Demb, vice president of product strategy for TAG, agreed that having flexibility across both cloud and on-prem is paramount in today’s multiviewer platforms.

“Multiviewers are evolving from passive displays into active operational hubs, central to how media teams manage software-defined workflows today,” he said. “As infrastructures decentralize and scale dynamically across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments, multiviewers like TAG’s are becoming the front line for real-time insight, signal integrity validation, and workflow control.”

Saving Money
Budgetary pressures are also driving broadcasters’ demands, and whether they’re deployed in a full-cloud scenario or hybrid on-prem, multiviewers are becoming more versatile, according to John Mailhot, senior vice president, product management, at Imagine Communications.

“Operational and cost efficiencies are top of mind in today’s dynamic production operations,” he said. “Whether signal processing is done in the cloud or on-prem, the multiviewer plays a critical role in enabling operations teams to make fast, informed, content-critical decisions.

“A robust multiviewer system allows operators to quickly identify and resolve issues in real time—ultimately enabling the team to manage more signals across more productions,” Mailhot added. “As a result, multiviewers will continue evolving from passive display systems to active enablers of efficient, scalable media operations.”

Erling Hedkvist, sales and business development for manifold, said his company’s platform can provide the best of both cloud and on-prem worlds.

“One of our big differentiators is that our customers get the flexibility of software and virtualization but with the performance of dedicated hardware that the live production industry demands,” he said. “This gives them subframe latency and uncompressed, high-quality processing but also a service-based architecture where they can spin services up and down on-demand and that is self-healing in case of an underlying hardware issue.”

Hedkvist touts the “secret sauce” of manifold’s cloud-based live production system: “The underlying design of manifold CLOUD is built around a shared memory architecture,” he said. “Media is first written into memory, allowing multiple services [such as multiviewers, format converters, color correctors and codecs] to access and process that data directly rather than relying on traditional signal paths. This architecture decouples processing from format and frame rate, as services work on pixel data in memory.”

Lower Latency
Monitoring live production often requires making split-second decisions, something that remains top of mind when dealing with latency. Suzana Brady, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Cobalt Digital, said that even though the company’s UltraBlue SW-MV multiviewer is implemented in software on a PC platform, “it was designed with latency in mind.”

“For baseband inputs, the latency is around three frames to a screen, and less than that for a streaming output,” she said. “Scalability is provided by the PC platform, from lower-cost units for simple multiviewers to large platforms for units with lots of inputs and heads. There is a full-featured modern API to ease integration in complex workflows.”

The importance of integrating software-based multiviewing into live production platforms has been demonstrated through the flexibility offered by the cloud and IP, according to Evertz’ Patel.

“All [Evertz] platforms are designed to be part of a unified system, enabling operators to build highly dense, format-agnostic monitoring solutions across 3G, UHD, compressed and uncompressed feeds,” Patel said. “Whether it’s for native IP, hybrid or SDI workflows, users can scale according to their operational requirements without compromising quality or latency.”

When it comes to the variety of high-resolution formats, including HDR, vendors have adopted a format-agnostic approach and upped their processing power.

Chris Scheck, head of marketing content for Lawo, says the efficiency of the company’s HOME Multiviewer—available as a standalone solution and as part of Lawo’s HOME Apps ecosystem—is architected to consume less power, making monitoring more efficient.

“In combination with a .edge Hyper-Density SDI/IP Gateway and Processing unit, which can simultaneously receive and output SDI signals and generate smaller-resolution versions of video input signals, the HOME Multi­viewer can be used in a so-called intelligent workflow that uses no more than the absolutely required amount of network bandwidth for each PiP [picture in picture], based on its size, thus ensuring that the input bandwidth never exceeds the output bandwidth,” Sheck said, adding that such proxies are important when operating in a bandwidth-
restricted environment.

“UHD streams, for instance, comprise a lot more data than is needed for a small PiP; not having to downscale such PiP footage therefore means that fewer CPU cores are needed to process the information,” he said. “The allocation of the relevant proxy to each PiP/tile is handled automatically while the multiviewer head is being configured with the intuitive theWALL app.”

New Features
While multiviewing continues to evolve, vendors are continually adding new features that take advantage of the flexibility offered by IP and the cloud.

At IBC this month, Mediaproxy is introducing Instant Replay for live incident review along with the ability to monitor HTML content directly within mosaic outputs. Designed to streamline the process of incident investigation, Instant Replay allows broadcast operators and engineers to instantly review incidents that occur during live broadcasts.

“Being able to have high-quality instant replay within our ecosystem of monitoring tools will significantly reduce the time it takes to investigate and clear on-air incidents,” says Erik Otto, Mediaproxy CEO. “The addition of HTML data panels in both our interactive server-side multiviewers further underline our commitment to solving real-world problems for customers today.”

Lawo is taking its HOME Video Monitor app out of the facility and making it more accessible to operators, according to Scheck.

“With its HOME Video Monitor app, Lawo is about to launch a solution that allows users to monitor video feeds on their laptops and mobile devices, which is extremely useful for busy operators who quickly need to check something on their way to a different location,” he says. “While this may not be a replacement for a full-blown multiviewer, it may be practical for certain workflows.”

What About AI?
Vendors are taking the same cautious approach towards implementing artificial intelligence into their multiviewing platforms as their customers are.

TAG is actively exploring the potential of adding AI as part of its long-term innovation road map. “We’re engaged in early-stage development to evaluate how technologies like Multimodal AI and agentic AI could support operational efficiency, simplify workflows, and enhance the monitoring experience,” Demb said, adding that “any future capabilities will be designed to augment—not replace—human decision-making, and to serve the real-world needs of our customers.”

There are no immediate plans for manifold to integrate AI into its multi­viewer line, the company says. In fact, “we recently signed a significant contract with a major U.K. broadcaster that explicitly prohibits the inclusion of AI in the deliverables,” Hedkvist says. “[This is] a clear sign that there’s still hesitation among Tier-1 customers when it comes to unsupervised AI in live production workflows.”

Scheck concurs that the jury is still out when it comes to adopting AI.

“Lawo’s HOME Multiviewer comes equipped with a flexible logic system for alarm and tally functions to allow users to catch errors in a timely fashion and remain in control,” he says. “Whether AI could play a part in this is certainly worth investigating, even though a deterministic approach based on algorithms and real-world experience may be hard to beat for some time to come.”

Scheck adds that some operators are taking multiviewing to another level.

“One of our customers now operates OB trucks that are no longer equipped with multiviewer walls; the screens have been replaced by Apple Vision Pro headsets,” he says. “From what we have heard, getting used to them was rather straightforward, and operators in those trucks like the thrill of working with flexible cutting-edge tools and increasingly consider multiviewer walls as somewhat ‘old-school.’ ”

Nevertheless, all the bells and whistles being added to multiviewers don’t take away the essential role of the technology, according to Cobalt’s Brady.

“We don’t see the fundamental role of multiviewers changing in live broadcast, their purpose has remained consistent since the early days of television,” she says. “What is changing is the scale, quality, and accessibility of multiviewing in modern, software-defined infrastructures.”

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital is heading to IBC 2025 with an expanded lineup of IPMX-compliant products and solutions that highlight its simple plug-and-play approach to SMPTE ST 2110.

Cobalt will showcase its lineup of converters, encoders, audio monitors and multiviewers available in a variety of form factors, ranging from openGear cards to standalone units, all designed to reduce complexity without compromising performance.

“Our IBC lineup is all about flexibility and scalability,” Suzana Brady, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Cobalt Digital, said. “Whatever our customers need—whether it's SDI, IP or compressed formats—our solutions are designed to integrate and adapt.”

At IBC, Cobalt will debut two new models within its SAPPHIRE BBG-2110 compact mini converter series: the SAPPHIRE BBG-2110-4Hi/4Sio and SAPPHIRE BBG-2110-2Hi2Ho/4Sio. Both IPMX compliant models feature HDMI inputs and the latter features two bidirectional signal paths.

Engineered for demanding workflows, these whisper-quiet SAPPHIRE devices deliver low-latency IP conversion with support for 10G/25G Ethernet, audio sample rate conversion and asynchronous audio mixing.

The company will also show its PACIFIC 9992-ENC flexible MPEG-2/AVC/HEVC encoder, which is now fully supports ST 2110-20 (baseband) and an ST 2110-22 option for JPEG-XS video. The encoder can be directly deployed in an IPMX facility for local encoding, low-latency internet transport using RIST or in traditional ASI workflows without having to deploy separate gateway devices.

Capable of handling up to four signals up to 1080p60, or one 4K signal, each channel can be individually selected between SDI and ST 2110. The card also allows for full asynchronous operation (IPMX-compatible) or IPMX operation via Cobalt’s INDIGO 2110-DC-02 factory-installed option for SMPTE ST 2110. This flexibility enables users to mix SDI, ST 2110 and IPMX feeds within a single platform.

Cobalt also will introduce a new base model of its ARIA AUD-MON audio monitor with a single-button interface for ultra-simple operation. The new model complements existing units, supporting the same input options, including: 2xSDI up to 12G or MADI, 2 SFP for SDI over fiber, AES, balanced analog audio and GPI for automation.

The company also will showcase the ARIA OG-AUD4-DANTE bidirectional audio embedder/deembedder router card with 12G, SDI, MADI, AES and Dante inputs and outputs.

Cobalt also will show its UltraBlue MV-SW Multiviewer with multiple new features. This software-based multiviewer supports all of the compressed flavors and uncompressed IP/SDI inputs and scalable output options, allowing the multiviewer to evolve alongside customers’ requirements. UltraBlue is also available as a turn-key server and features support for receiving audio/video content over IP across a variety of protocols and formats with flexible audio routing, bringing a multitude of options to suit every application.

See Cobalt Digital at IBC 2025 Stand 8.D83.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CHAMPAIGNE, Ill.—Cobalt Digital will feature IPMX-compliant products, including its SAPPHIRE mini converters and PACIFIC encoders enhanced with IPMX support, during the 2025 NAB Show, April 5-9, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The company will also unveil new tools for its UltraBlue IP-MV multiviewer, add ARIA AUD-MON audio monitor to its ARIA product line and unveil its PACIFIC 9992-ENC MPEG-2/AVC/HEVC encoder with support for SMPTE ST 2110-20.

The SAPPHIRE BBG series of mini converters provides a means to display incoming IPMX content on HDMI monitors, including content originating from a WAN connection. They can also be used to convert HDMI to compressed or baseband IPMX streams, the company said.

Available in single, dual and quad-channel configurations, the converters offer dual SFP cages with support for 10G and 25G Ethernet ports and audio sample rate conversion. Some models are capable of transmitting and receiving at the same time. Receiving units can mix-and-match audio channels without time base synchronization with the video, it said.

The COBALT PACIFIC 9992-ENC is a flexible MPEG-2/AVC/HEVC encoder that can handle as many as four signals up to 1080p60 or one 4K signal. At the show, the company will unveil full support for SMPTE ST 2110-20 (baseband) and ST 2110-22 for JPEG-XS video as an option. Each of its four channels can be individually selected between SDI and ST 2110, it said.

The company also has added support for full asynchronous operation (IPMX-compatible) or IPMX operation in the INDIGO 2110-DC-02 factory-installed option for SMPTE ST 2110, it said.

PACIFIC now offers support for up to two essences of ST 2110-30 (audio). Each essence can have up to 16 channels of audio. The encoder, which has dual SFP cages for ST 2022-7 seamless switching to support both 10Gb/s and 25Gb/s interfaces, also offers the ability to mix and match channels.

Cobalt Digital has also added support for asynchronous audio/video operation and for ST 2110-40 (ancillary data).

Its new 4-inch-deep, 4-pound COBALT ARIA AUD-MON audio monitor supports a range of inputs, including: 2xSDI up to 12G or MADI, 2 SFP for SDI over fiber, AES, balanced analog audio and GPI for automation. The monitor can fit in 1RU and can be powered from the control Ethernet port (PoE++), as well as external, redundant power supplies, the company said.

Features include a live video thumbnail, SDI output for monitoring and individual channel volume controls for mixing. Users can configure the new monitor from the front panel with a touch display or through a web interface, it said.

The company also will show the ARIA OG-AUD4-DANTE bi-directional audio embedder/de-embedder router card with 12G, SDI, MADI, AES and DANTE inputs and outputs, it said.

Cobalt’s new UltraBlue IP-MV multiviewer, a software-based solution for compressed and baseband streams over IP, is also available as a turnkey server. It includes support for receiving audio/video content over IP across a variety of protocols and formats and offers flexible audio routing, the company said.

UltraBlue IP-MV offers an intuitive web interface, supports compressed and baseband inputs and multiple outputs and easy-to-create mosaic configurations with arbitrary sizes and orientations. The interface offers graphic overlays, ancillary data, tallies, UMDs and IDs. PIPs can be placed and rotated arbitrarily, it said.

The multiviewer, which can drive multiple HDMI displays in any orientation, supports the most common types of ancillary data, including several types of closed-captioning display. It also features full audio support, with flexible output audio routing and fully configurable audio bars, it said.

See Cobalt Digital at 2025 NAB Show booth SL5123.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —Cobalt Digital, a provider of signal processing solutions and a founding partner in the openGear initiative, has announced that it will be exhibiting for the first time at ISE, which will take place Feb. 4 to 7 in Fira de Barcelona, Gran Via.

At Booth 5F600, Cobalt will show a cross section of products that address the wide range of pro AV applications, are IPMX compliant and feature the latest technology including support for ST 2110.

More specifically Cobalt will be demonstrating its IP-based multiviewer, multi-format routers/controllers, a series of ST 2110 mini converters, and audio monitors in Booth 4K700. It will also be supporting the AIMS Alliance with product demos.

Key product segments include:

• COBALT UltraBlue IP-MV Multiviewer - Scalable Software-Based Multiviewer Solution. Cobalt’s UltraBlue IP-MV multiviewers are available as both a turnkey solution with four HDMI heads, or as a software package that runs on customer-supplied dedicated hardware. Features include support for receiving audio/video content over IP across a variety of protocols and formats with very flexible audio routing, bringing a multitude of options to suit every application. Mosaic configurations are a snap with arbitrary sizes and orientations available on multiple HDMI screens with graphic overlays, ancillary data, and tallies. PIPs can also be arbitrarily placed and rotated. These software-based multiviewers feature an intuitive web interface and are designed to grow with a customer’s needs by incorporating support for compressed and baseband (ST 2110) IP/SDI inputs and outputs.
• COBALT WAVE Family of Multiformat Routers and Control Panels. The flexible, simple to use and easily integrated WAVE routers fit into any variety of applications with support for signals up to 12G-SDI. The recently released COBALT WAVE RTR 32x32 crosspoint solution fits into a 4U frame, same as the COBALT WAVE RTR-64x64. Both feature full-size BNC connectors, have a single 10/100/1000 Ethernet port for IP-based control, and offer RP-168 switching support. The web-based control allows full setup, salvos, monitoring, and preset management. This compact design is specifically optimized for 12G SDI operation but handles lower SDI rates with ease, as well as ASI and MADI. Cobalt routers feature an open modern control API for third-party integration, as well as support for traditional control protocols. Router control is accomplished via Cobalt’s growing line of control panels developed to accommodate the WAVE family in a variety of configurations: COBALT WAVE CP-44, COBALT WAVE CP-42L, COBALT WAVE CP-78, and COBALT WAVE CP-84L. The panels allow different setups to be stored and recalled from the browser to provide extremely flexible operations.
• COBALT ARIA AUD-MON—Audio monitoring. Cobalt’s ARIA audio products are a new addition to the platform and have already been recognized for excellence with a Best of Show award at NAB 2024. Various models from the ARIA line will be highlighted at ISE including the COBALT ARIA AUD-MON audio monitor, and the very popular COBALT ARIA OG-AUD4-DANTE, a quad-channel unit with up to 12G DANTE/AES/MADI/Embed and De-Embed functions with Frame Sync capabilities. The card features two gigabit Ethernet ports, a 64x64 configuration, and a full audio router mixer.
• COBALT SAPPHIRE ST 2110 Mini Converters. Cobalt Digital will be showing several units of its SAPPHIRE converter family of IPMX-capable standalone mini-converters that deliver high-quality design, function, and reliability in a small package and are ideal for Pro AV applications. These SAPPHIRE units, part of Cobalt’s Blue Box Group (BBG) series, are intended to be mounted behind the monitor and convert between IPMX-compatible (and SMPTE ST 2110-compatible) signals and SDI/HDMI, with support for baseband video and JPEG-XS. They include single or dual 25 Gb/s ports (for ST 2022-7 redundancy) and full NMOS support for ease of configuration. Models include the COBALT SAPPHIRE BBG-2110-H/S single‑channel unit with simultaneous 12G SDI and HDMI outputs, the COBALT SAPPHIRE BBG-2110-2H 12G dual-channel unit with independent HDMI outputs, and the COBALT SAPPHIRE BBG-2110-4Ho/4Sio quad channel SMPTE ST 2110-20/22 baseband to HDMI/SDI converter unit with four simultaneous HDMI and four simultaneous SDI outputs. This model is also available in other configurations with two HDMI inputs and two HDMI outputs or four HDMI inputs. The BBG-2110-4Ho/4Sio family also includes an optional, factory-installed audio board that can provide separate analog and AES input/output ports, thus adding additional flexibility where it is needed. These devices in this family are ideal for pro AV networks, corporate communications and traditional broadcast control centers, for monitoring, REMI and similar applications.

Cobalt Digital will also be supporting the AIMS Alliance with a presence in their booth that will shine a spotlight on the Company’s SAPPHIRE BBG line of IPMX-capable standalone mini-converters. Cobalt will be demonstrating an end-to-end low-latency fully compliant IPMX solution with HDMI devices using JPEG-XS compression to provide close to lossless quality with reasonable bit rates. Cobalt’s professional team will be available for one-on-one presentations.

For further information visit: www.cobaltdigital.com

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—Gene J. Zimmerman, founder, president and CEO of Cobalt Digital, has been named a fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).

SMPTE fellows are recognized for attaining an outstanding rank among engineers or executives in media and entertainment through their proficiency and contributions to motion pictures, television or related industries.

Zimmerman will be one of 10 newly named fellows who will be inducted at the Fellows Luncheon and Induction Ceremony and recognized during the annual Awards Gala during the 2024 SMPTE Media Technology Summit.

“Being a SMPTE member is an invaluable experience that shaped my career and influenced not only my vision for my own company, but also for the future of broadcast,” Zimmerman said. “I consider SMPTE to be the most important organization in our industry because it encourages people to work together and create standards that form the foundation of the new technologies that are moving our industry forward. I am deeply honored to be named a fellow and humbled to share this distinction with the brilliant thought leaders who drive our industry to greater excellence.”

Zimmerman launched his career as a broadcast engineer at WICD Champaign, Illinois, working on all aspects of technical operations while attending the University of Illinois, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering.

He has been a member of SMPTE since 1988, when he participated in the massive technology shift from analog to digital. He went on to design broadcast products for Odetics and served as a consultant for National Teleconsultants, Fox News in New York, Fox Washington, Fox Network Los Angeles, FS1 and FS2, Fox Business Network and Speed Channel. Other milestones include his work on the 1996, 2000 and 2002 Olympics, for which he received two Emmy Awards.

In 1997 Zimmerman founded Cobalt Digital, a designer and manufacturer of signal-processing products for live video production and master control. Under his guidance, Cobalt has grown into a leadership role across the industry, co-founding pivotal initiatives including openGear, the breakthrough development that allows processing cards from various manufacturers to be housed in one common frame, and the Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST) forum, an organization that promotes the adoption of open protocols for internet contribution. Cobalt technology has been the recipient of 53 industry awards and an Emmy Award.

CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, Ill.—Cobalt Digital will feature its newly released Cobalt Aria OG-Aud4-Dante cards, UltraBlue IP multviewer and SMPTE ST 2110 support in its encoders, decoders and converters during the 2024 NAB Show New York, Oct. 9-10 at the Javits Center in New York.

Well-suited for applications ranging from broadcast to Pro AV, the Cobalt Aria OG-Aud4-Dante cards are available in openGear form factor. Available as dual and quad-channel cards, they support up to 12G Dante/AES/MADI/embed and de-embed functions with frame-sync capabilities. The cards feature two gigabit Ethernet ports, a 32x32 or 64x64 configuration and a full audio router mixer.  Cobalt also offers the Dante capability on its 9904-UDX/9905-MPx processing cards for maximum functionality and flexibility, the company said. 

The new Cobalt UltraBlue IP-MV multiviewer can be provided as a turnkey solution with four HDMI heads or as a software package to run on customer-supplied dedicated hardware. Features include support for receiving audio/video content over IP across several protocols and formats with flexible audio routing, the company said.

Cobalt’s lineup also includes Serial Digital Interface (SDI) multiviewers in openGear form factor, including: the cascadable 5-input 9970-QS with support for resolutions of up to 3G; and the 18-input, 2-head 9971 with support for resolutions up to 4K, it said.

During the show, the company will also spotlight its:

• Cobalt Indigo OG-2110 BIDI4 Gateway, a bidirectional, quad-channel native ST 2110 interface to SDI I/O available in the openGear form factor. The gateway’s transmit and receive paths can operate simultaneously, and the card includes support for ST 2022-7 seamless redundancy switching as well as IS 04/05 NMOS for automatic discovery and configuration.
• Cobalt Indigo 2110-DC-01, a factory add-on option for openGear cards that adds native ST 2110 support with 25G Ethernet interfaces and a complete native ST 2110 stack (including NMOS IS 04/05) to audio/video processing elements. 
• Cobalt Pacific 9992-ENC-Indigo, the company’s newest software-definable encoding platform. The openGear card incorporates Cobalt’s Indigo 2110-DC-02 as a factory-installed option to support ST 2110 input. The option supports up to four inputs at 3G and lower resolutions or one input at 4K resolution with full NMOS support. 
• Cobalt Pacific ULL-DEC HEVC upgradeable AVC/MPEG-2 software-defined multistandard broadcast decoder designed for the most stringent REMI requirements. It supports MPEG-2 and AVC (H.264) (4K support available) and offers a full complement of audio decoding capabilities.
• Cobalt Sapphire ST 2110 mini converter family, which delivers high-quality design, function and reliability in a small package.

See Cobalt Digital at 2024 NAB Show New York booth 1005.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

AMSTERDAM—Cobalt Digital has announced that during the IBC Show it will be sharpening its focus on IP-based solutions by adding a scalable software-based multiviewer to its IBC Show line-up. 

The COBALT UltraBlue IP-MV multiviewer will join numerous other ST 2110 solutions on Cobalt Stand # 10.B41 during the show. 

The new multiviewer can be provided as a turnkey solution with four HDMI heads, or as a software package to run on customer-supplied dedicated hardware. Features include support for receiving audio/video content over IP across a variety of protocols and formats with very flexible audio routing, bringing a multitude of options to suit every application.

The company explained that the solution’s intuitive web interface incorporates support for compressed and baseband (ST 2110) IP/SDI inputs and outputs allowing the multiviewer to grow alongside customers’ needs. Multiple user logins are supported, as well as per-user access privileges for maximum security.

Mosaic configurations are also greatly simplified. PIP configurations can be easily copied, and setups can be saved and restored. UltraBlue IP-MV will drive multiple HDMI displays in any orientation (landscape or portrait, selectable per-display). PIPs can also be arbitrarily placed and rotated, the company reported. 

In addition, the COBALT UltraBlue IP-MV incorporates support for the most common types of ancillary data, including various types of closed-captioning display. The multiviewer features full audio support, with flexible output audio routing and fully configurable audio bars.

UltraBlue IP-MV will be able to use GPU acceleration if available. The number of inputs, streams, and heads will be a function of the available CPU/GPU, the company said.

Cobalt’s lineup also includes two SDI multiviewers in openGear form factor: the cascadable 5-input 9970-QS, with support for resolutions of up to 3G, and the 18-input, 2-head 9971, with support for resolutions up to 4K.

During the IBC Show, Cobalt is also spotlighting its ST 2110 support with its new INDIGO family at the heart of the Stand. The COBALT INDIGO 2110-DC-01 factory add-on option for openGear cards adds native SMPTE 2110 support with 25G Ethernet interfaces. When added to Cobalt’s 9904 and 9905 signal processing families, users benefit from a solution that supports ST 2110 and provides unparalleled density and unmatched functionality.

During the show, the company will also be showcasing the COBALT INDIGO OG-2110-BIDI4-GATEWAY, a bi-directional quad-channel native ST 2110 interface to SDI I/O available in the openGear form factor, and the COBALT PACIFIC 9992-ENC-INDIGO openGear card that incorporates the INDIGO 2110-DC-02 option into the PACIFIC 9992-ENC encoder. For ST 2110 support on the go check out the COBALT SAPPHIRE ST 2110 Mini Converters that range from single, dual, and quad channel units.

LAS VEGAS—Cobalt Digital has announced that “providing tools today for tomorrow’s broadcaster” will be the main theme at Cobalt Digital's NAB Show Booth # SU 4027, with the company showing off a host of new solutions that simplify operations, help broadcasters make the transition to ATSC 3.0 and provide support for ST 2110. 

Cobalt, which is a founding partner in the openGear initiative, also said that it will be presenting enhanced openGear cards comprised of cutting-edge technology that will bring broadcasters a simple path to ATSC 3.0 and closer to an IP infrastructure. 

In addition, the Company will be showing an expanded family of high-density routers and control panels and other numerous non openGear form-factor products on the booth. 

"We are incredibly excited to be at NAB 2024 with tools for today’s broadcasters that will allow them to seamlessly transition to tomorrow’s technology,” said Suzana Brady, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing.

More specifically, Cobalt said that it will be showing the high-density, efficient 9905-MPx openGear® card brings HDR to ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) that provides a simplified the path to ATSC 3.0 by offering an easy way to convert ATSC 1.0 to an ATSC 3.0 ready signal. This capability, being introduced at the 2024 NAB Sjpw is offered in Cobalt’s 9905-MPx fully featured, multi-function 3G/HD/SD Quad-Path Up/Down/Cross Converter/Frame Sync/Embed/De-Embed openGear audio processor. 

The 9905-MPx also includes the ability to convert four channels of 1080i SDR to 1080p HDR for ATSC 3.0 and support for 3D-LUTs as a standard feature for all paths with available color correction for downstream HDR systems.  This way, stations can get started in ATSC 3.0 by automatically generating a 1080p HDR feed from their existing 1080i or 720p SDR feed, and later switch to a native HDR signal. 

The company also reported that the COBALT INDIGO 2110 – ST 2110 interface is now available on multiple cards.  

The new COBALT INDIGO OG-2110-BIDI4-GATEWAY is a bi-directional quad-channel native ST 2110 interface to SDI I/O available in the openGear form factor. The transmit and receive paths of the GATEWAY can operate simultaneously. The GATEWAY includes support for ST 2022-7 seamless redundancy switching, as well as IS 04/05 NMOS for automatic discovery and configuration. Cobalt also offers the SMPTE ST 2110 interface as an add-on to COBALT’S 9905-MPx or 9904-UDX-4K popular openGear processing cards with the simple addition of the INDIGO 2110-DC-01 daughter-card option. 

For the first time, Cobalt will be showing a new factory-installed option for SMPTE ST 2110 input, the INDIGO 2110-DC-02, to its existing PACIFIC 9992-ENC openGear card.  The option supports up to 4 inputs at 3G and lower resolutions, or one input at 4K resolution, with full NMOS support. Each encoder channel can be individually configured for SDI or ST 2110 operation. 

The combination of the award-winning PACIFIC 9992-ENC with the ST 2110 input interface option creates a very powerful integrated solution that can be directly deployed in a ST 2110 facility for local encoding, low-latency transport over the Internet using RIST, or to drive a traditional ASI workflow, without having to deploy separate gateway devices.  The ability to mix traditional SDI and ST 2110 feeds in the same device and support for IPMX provides even greater flexibility, the company reported. 

Brand new for NAB 2024, Cobalt is introducing the COBALT ARIA AUD2-DANTE and the COBALT ARIA AUD4-DANTE– DANTE cards in openGear form factor that offer dual and quad-channel units with up to 12G DANTE/AES/MADI/Embed and De-Embed functions with Frame Sync capabilities. The cards feature two gigabit Ethernet ports, a 32x32 or 64x64 configuration, and a full audio router mixer. 

The DANTE capability can also be available on Cobalt’s 9904-UDX/9905-MPx processing cards for maximum functionality and flexibility.

It will also be showing the COBALT WAVE family of routers, which are flexible, simple to use and easily integrated into any variety of applications with support for signals up to 12G-SDI. 

At NAB 2024, the recently released 32x32 crosspoint solution is being highlighted, the company said. The new unit fits into a 4U frame, same as the COBALT WAVE RTR-64x64. Both feature full-size BNC connectors, have a single 10/100/1000 Ethernet port for IP-based control, and offer RP-168 switching support. The web-based control allows full setup, salvos, monitoring, and preset management. This compact design is specifically optimized for 12G SDI operation but handles lower SDI rates with ease, as well as ASI and MADI.  Cobalt routers feature an open modern control API for third party integration, as well as support for traditional control protocols.

Cobalt’s WAVE 9942-RTR 12x12 and 9942-RTR 24x24 routers in openGear form factor will also be shown.  

The company also announced that the COBALT WAVE Control Panels are now available in four configurations. 

Control of the COBALT WAVE routers is accomplished by Cobalt’s growing line of control panels developed to accommodate the WAVE router family.  At NAB the COBALT WAVE CP-44 and COBALT WAVE CP-42L are joining  the existing 78 and 84L button panels.  The COBALT WAVE CP-44 features 44 back-lit buttons while the COBALT WAVE CP-42L features 42 back-lit LCD dot matrix display buttons. The WAVE panels allow different setups to be stored and recalled from the browser to provide extremely flexible operations. After customizing the panel, simply upload the configuration to a different panel for rapid changes on the network.  The control panels are easily customizable for almost any application using Lua scripts.   

For further information visit: www.cobaltdigital.com. 

CHAMPAIGN, Ill—Live production will be the central theme of Cobalt Digital’s exhibit at the 2023 NAB Show New York where the company will showcase its recently launched ultra-low latency PACIFIC encoder/decoder solution and its new WAVE compact router series. NAB Show New York takes place at the Javits Center, Oct. 25-26.

The PACIFIC Compression line is a software-defined upgradeable openGear® based platform that offers support for MPEG-2, AVC, HEVC and 4K and provides the professional broadcast community with advanced network options. The PACIFIC ULL-DEC openGear card can decode with less than 10 milliseconds of latency (for properly encoded streams). The card can either decode one stream up to 4K, or two streams up to 3G (and four streams next year). It supports an extensive set of audio CODECs and network protocols, including RIST. When combined with the Cobalt PACIFIC 9992-ENC encoder, this solution can achieve an end-to-end latency of less than one frame.

The PACIFIC ULL Decoder and the PACIFIC 9992 Encoder are offered in a standard openGear form factor and draw less than 20W of power. If a standalone unit is required, these cards can be combined with the Cobalt BBG-1300-FR enclosure. 

Cobalt will also bring its new WAVE routers to the show. Designed to be flexible, easy to use and integrate, and accommodate any variety of applications with support for signals up to 12G-SDI, the routers also include an Ethernet port for IP-based controls that allow full setup, salvos, monitoring, and preset management. Packed into a slim 3.75-inch deep 4U frame with full-size BNC connectors, the routers are specifically optimized for 12G SDI operation but can handle lower SDI rates with ease, as well as ASI and MADI.

Developed to accommodate the WAVE router family, Cobalt is showing two new control panels: the WAVE CP-84L featuring 84 back-lit LCD dot matrix display buttons, and the simpler WAVE CP-78 with 78 back-lit buttons. The WAVE panels allow different setups to be stored and recalled from the browser to provide extremely flexible operations. Simply upload the customized configuration to a different panel for rapid changes on the network.

Cobalt is also bringing its new UltraBlue IP-MV software-based multiviewers to New York. These new multiviewers are available as both a software package and a cloud instance with a WebRTC output—making it an easy task to grow when customers’ needs change. UltraBlue can handle a variety of compressed and uncompressed IP inputs and an arbitrary number of outputs (including individual rotation to portrait), with very flexible audio routing, and an intuitive web interface. UltraBlue also offers support for a comprehensive set of protocols (UDP, RTP, RTSP, RTMP, RIST, SRT). 

Also being shown are the SAPPHIRE ST 2110 mini converters, which offer high-quality design, function, and reliability in a small package. The units, part of Cobalt’s compact Blue Box Group, are intended to be mounted behind the monitor and include single or dual 25Gb/s ports (for ST 2022-7 redundancy). The mini converters also include full NMOS support for ease of configuration. 

In addition, Cobalt will be showing the new HPF-MAX 20-slot frame compatible with all openGear cards and featuring 700W of available power, a built-in Gigabit Ethernet backplane, and intelligent power supplies; the trusted and true 9905-MPx & 9904-UDX-4K SDR/HDR conversion cards that offer Next-gen SDR/HDR conversion; and the incredible INDIGO 2110-DC-01 option for 9905-MPx or 9904-UDX-4K that circumvents the error-prone and expensive need for multiple devices in the data path.

Cobalt Digital will be in Booth 1126. 

A modern studio facility cannot function without a multiviewer, a device and product function that has come into its own in the past 20 years. Attempting to display today’s plethora of control room signals on individual monitors the old-fashioned way is unthinkable—only a properly configured multiviewer system can handle the task.

Multiviewers and large-screen displays are so economical and flexible that multiviewer technology is now often built into switchers. This makes assembling a simple control room faster than it was in the individual displays.

The twist today is that more signal types than ever are flowing through control rooms, and these disparate signals need to be displayed via the multiviewer system. Live video from cellphones? TikTok feeds? Drone shots? UHD? HDR? Every type of signal using every type of encoding and compression needs to be displayed.

“The requirements to handle these mixed signals are systemic—facilities need to be able to ingest, produce, transform, playout, and monitor signals that might originate in any of these formats,” said John Mailhot, CTO and director of infrastructure product management for Imagine Communications. “We approach this mix of signal types from a system design perspective, using intelligence in the broadcast control system to dynamically allocate transformation paths that conform the selected source to the requirements of the destination. This approach provides the most flexible workflow, as well as the best economics.” 

Every Imaginable Signal
In other words, making every multiviewer input capable of handling every imaginable type of signal gets unwieldy and expensive. There is a better way.

In anticipation of this growing trend towards mixed-format environments, Lawo’s HOME Multiviewer natively supports SMPTE ST2110, NDI, SRT, JPEG XS, H.265 and H.264, according to John Carter, senior product manager for media infrastructure at Lawo.

“Currently, each instance handles one of these formats,” he said. “For mixed sources and destinations involving ST2110, NDI and SRT streams, users have the option of inserting a HOME Stream Transcoder app before the Multiviewer to convert, say, SRT streams to ST2110 if this is the desirable format for a multiviewer head. This transcoding flexibility works in all directions and for all formats supported by the HOME Multiviewer app.”

Some multiviewer solutions leverage cloud computing to lower in-house energy and space demands.

“Evertz ev670-X30 hardware provides high-density signal monitoring for up to 64 3G ST2110 inputs with full audio, ancillary data and video monitoring. This uses less RU space, less power and less cooling,” said Ketan Patel, product manager for multiview systems at Evertz. 

“Evertz also provides a COTS-based sVIP product that allows compressed and uncompressed signal monitoring at high density, which can be deployed on an x86 platform with an accelerated PCI card. Evertz also offers cVIP, which is a cloud-based monitoring and visualization product that can be deployed in any public or private cloud, to allow signal monitoring of NDI, MPEG-2, H.264, H.265 and JPEG2000.”

What if There’s an Error?
A multiviewer system is, by necessity, filled with a variety of images, most of which are in some state of motion. With all that on-screen activity, it can be easy to miss if one of the signals disappears or gets scrambled in some fashion. 

Cobalt Digital has multiviewer options that help you keep track of dropouts, errors and loss-of-signal, said Ciro Noronha, CTO of Cobalt Digital. Noronha added that the company’s multiviewers can be configured with a range of options that include text overlays for arbitrary text, timecode, signal resolution, and even closed captioning. The systems can also add audio bars, a built-in router to simplify configuration, flexible inputs that can mix-and-match resolutions and frame rates, and tally insertion to indicate on-air signals or other status information.

“Cobalt’s baseband multiviewers are offered in the openGear form factor, so that they can be easily integrated with other devices in the same chassis, and benefit from the inherent openGear features such as hot-swappable cards, dual redundant hot-swappable power supplies, and the DashBoard control system,” Noronha said. “This flexibility is very important, since it allows the multiviewer to adapt to virtually any requirement.”

At the IBC Show next month, Cobalt will introduce its Ultra Blue multiviewer, with support for the more common compressed formats, with plans to add SMPTE ST 2110 inputs as well as other formats such as NDI in the future.

TAG Video Systems IP-based multiviewer line can be deployed with either a private or public cloud provider, such as AWS or Google Cloud. Through its RESTful API, the TAG Realtime Media Performance platform can be automated and integrated with third-party solutions and software-defined networking (SDN) controllers.

Only Pay for What You Need
With a cloud architecture, you can have nearly unlimited inputs. So how do you get only what you need? 

“You only pay for input licenses and have full access to all the product’s monitoring, probing, and display features,” said Robert Erickson, vice president for live production & sports at TAG Video Systems. “This means you can use any supported signal feed, resolution, compression, or transport format without worrying about paying for additional feature sets.”

Which raises the point: Should you consider a hardware-based multiviewer or software-based system? A lot depends on the complexity of your control room and the signals you deal with. A big-city broadcaster or a large sports arena will
have different needs than a cable distribution center.

Manufacturers have their own ideas.

“Modern multiviewers should firstly be software-based to provide running in any environment,” said Eric Otto, CEO of Mediaproxy. “They should also provide support for all common broadcast source formats, including access to remote sources (IP, TSoIP, NDI, HLS) as well as local sources (SDI, ST 2110).”

Scaling in Size
If you run a smaller system, you don’t have the needs of a big arena, and there are solutions that make sense for your needs.

“Our Smart Display Module multiviewers use a small board that slots directly into an SDM-capable display,” said Thomas Tang, president of Apantac. “These SDM boards turn a standard display into a monitor with an embedded multiviewer.”  

SDM is an Intel standard, and it can support SDI, 12G SDI, NDI and other video formats.

Apantac makes a range of multiviewers from small to large. At the top of the line is the T# system. “The T# is our flagship multiviewer line, which supports up to 128 inputs and 16 outputs, as well as supporting many different input formats that can be mixed and matched in the same frame,” Tang said. “These formats include 12G, 3G, HD, SD-SDI, CVBS, HDMI 1.4, HDMI 2.0, H.264, and most recently NDI. Customers can freely mix and match with the formats they need, and any inputs can go to any outputs.”

Multiviewers are clearly the better way of monitoring video in control rooms. The benefits of multiviewers were so obvious and powerful that some big old-line manufacturers of video monitors rapidly disappeared from the industry. Anyone remember Conrac?

There are multiviewer solutions out there for any size and need, so plan what you need carefully. Of course, the display you choose is an important part of the multiviewer system, so plan to get one that works properly with your system.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital will feature its UltraBlue IP-MV line of IP multiviewers, WAVE RTR 64x64 router optimized for 12G SDI, the new PACIFIC ULL decoder and a new 20-slot frame compatible with openGear during IBC 2023, Sept. 15-18, at the RAI Amsterdam.

The company will also highlight its recently launched Sapphire series of SMPTE ST 2110 converters.

“At IBC 2023 we are highlighting support for IP and 12G, presenting products that respect sustainability and space conservation, high density, automation, reliable video content transport and operation in the cloud,” said Cobalt senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing Suzana Brady. 

At its stand, Cobalt will show:

• UltraBlue IP-MV multiviewer, offered as both a software package and a cloud instance with a WebRTC output and capable of handling a variety of compressed and uncompressed inputs and an arbitrary number of outputs.
• WAVE RTR-64x64 router with support for signals up to 12G-SDI, an Ethernet port for IP-based controls.
• WAVE Control Panel Series’ WAVE CP-84L, featuring 84 backlit LCD dot matrix display buttons with RS-422 and RS-232 9-pin serial communication ports. Web-based controls allow full setup, salvos, monitoring and preset management.
• PACIFIC Ultra Low-Latency Decoder (ULL-DEC), an openGear card capable of decoding H.262 (MPEG-2), H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC) with less than 10ms of latency.
• HPF-MAX Frame, a 20-slot frame compatible with all openGear cards with 700W of available power, a built-in Gigabit Ethernet backplane and intelligent power supplies.
• Sapphire Converter Series, including: the 8JXS-8S ST 2110 JPEG-XS-to-SDI bulk gateway; the BGG-2110-H/S and BGG-2110-2H ST 2110 JPEG-XS-to-HDMI converter appliance; and BIDI-2H25 dual-channel bidirectional HDMI-to-SDI/SDI-to-HDMI converter.

See Cobalt Digital at IBC 2023 Stand 10.F42.

More information is available on the company’s website.

THATCHAM. U.K.—Cobalt Digital has purchased four PHABRIX QxL rasterizers, adding to its existing array of technology from the test and measurement innovator.

The newly acquired QxLs will support advanced SMPTE ST 2110 product development and testing as part of Cobalt Digital’s newly expanded production capacity, PHABRIX said.

With all of the JT-NM-tested features of its Qx forerunner, the QxL addresses the needs of professional broadcast media IP networks in a compact form factor. The QxL supports both generation and analysis of JT-NM TR-1001-1:2020, ST 2110-20 (video), up to four 2110-30 (PCM) or 2110-31 (AES transport) audio and a 2110-40 ANC media flow, all with 2022-7 Seamless IP Protection Switching (SIPS) together with AMWA NMOS IS-04 discovery and IS-05 device connection management, the company said.

“The new rasterizers have been purchased in direct response to the expansion of our operations, which includes additional offices and increased production requirements,” said Ryan Wallenberg, vice president of engineering at Cobalt Digital.

“PHABRIX equipment has been a part of our product development and testing processes for many years, and we have always found their products to be versatile, reliable and consistent," he continued. "The remote access capabilities along with APIs, deep analysis features and built-in generators have been especially invaluable to our engineers through the development of successive products. So, it was a logical choice for us to turn to them again for this expansion, with the QxL emerging as the ideal choice thanks to its significant flexibility and intuitive toolset.”

More information about PHABRIX and Cobalt Digital is available on their respective websites. 

CHAMPAIGN, Il—Cobalt Digital Inc. will be at NAB Show NY demo-ing its latest products for live video production and master control.

Cobalt, a founding partner in the openGear initiative, will be highlighting its 9904-UDX-4K card that has been enhanced with its Indigo 2110-DC-01, an option that offers support for high-density native 4K ST 2110 audio and video processing on openGear form factor. 

The company will also show its new version of the SafeLink Gateway as a virtual machine, and a higher-density solution of +MPx-DANTE-64x64, the industry’s first license-based quad-channel 3G-SDI bridge to Dante audio.

Cobalt will also conduct multiple demonstrations including ST 2110 processing, its line of compression products with a synchronized decoding demo of RIST (Reliable Internet Streaming Transport), and a new feature from Technicolor that allows reversible inverse tone mapping SDR to HDR, followed by SL-HDR1 in seamless fashion.

Cobalt will be in Booth #915 at NAB Show New York, Oct. 19-20 at the Javits Center.

CHAMPAIGN, Il—Cobalt Digital has announced the promotion of Dr. Ciro Noronha to CTO and the appointment of Anthony Tan as director of sales engineering for APAC. According to Chris Shaw, Cobalt COO, the changes reflect the Company’s growth and significant global expansion, especially in the important APAC region. Noronha and Tan will be at Cobalt Digital’s stand (10.B44) at the IBC Show at the RAI Amsterdam, Sept. 9-13 to greet friends, colleagues and customers.

“This is an exciting time for Cobalt as the company progresses both geographically and technically,” explained Shaw. “We’ve experienced record-breaking sales month after month for the past few years and much of that success can be linked to Ciro’s ability to identify an industry need and bring new technologies to market. Now it’s time to acknowledge Ciro’s skill and talent with a promotion to CTO and watch his leadership drive the engineering department to the next level.”

Noronha moves into the newly created role of CTO from his position as executive vice president of engineering. Noronha, a founder of ImmediaTV Corporation which was acquired by Cobalt Digital in 2016, has worked in the compressed video over IP space since 1995. He previously held engineering management positions at Optivision, SkyStream, Tandberg Television, and Ericsson, having led the development of several compression and networking products, including encoders, decoders, transcoders, gateways, and multiplexers.  A founder of the RIST Forum, Noronha currently serves as its president.  He holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica, Brazil, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of numerous academic papers and has seven issued patents. 

Cobalt has also announced that Anthony Tan has been appointed as director of sales engineering for APAC.  In his new role, Tan will work closely with both the sales team and the engineering department to identify technical requirements relevant to the region and deliver solutions to meet customers’ specific needs. Before joining Cobalt, Tan served as a broadcast consultant for Peregrine Broadcast Sdn Bhd. Tan also held the position of assistant vice president for Measat Broadcast Network Systems in numerous departments and held the same title at ASTRO All Asia Networks.

Tan will be based in Malaysia.

“We are so happy to have Anthony as part of the Cobalt team at IBC, the largest, most important international event of the year,” added Shaw. “Anthony’s experience in APAC combined with his technical knowledge will ensure that our customers receive the highest level of support and are matched with the most appropriate solutions as he helps grow the presence of the company. 

“Please stop by the Stand to congratulate Ciro, and to welcome Anthony as the newest member of the team.”   

For an area of broadcast operations that changed little over the course of TV technology history, the monitoring display has experienced a rapid pace of development in a relatively short time period. From a passive monitor based on, first, the cathode ray tube and then LED or similar technologies that was able to only show one image at a time, it is now the multiviewer, showing multiple images at once. Not only that, it is able to perform more functions than just displaying pictures.

This has made multiviewers an increasingly crucial element of master control rooms (MCRs) at broadcast and playout centers, providing tools for compliance logging and checking, among other things. On top of these, as Ryan Wallenberg, vice president of engineering for Cobalt Digital, observes, the growing trend is for these units to accommodate a multitude of signal formats simultaneously. “More multiviewers are going hybrid, allowing for a mix of SDI, uncompressed IP SMPTE ST 2022-6/2110 and compressed MPEG2, H.264, HEVC, J2K and JPEG-XS,” he says.

Mix and Match
The ability to mix and match formats also extends to image quality and resolution. Wallenberg adds that new viewing systems can accept both HDR and SDR, with the capacity to convert to a common format for mixing SDR, HLG, PQ and SLOG3 and then switch to the required monitor format. “There is still lots of demand for 3G signal monitoring but with UHD output for higher quality output vs. 1080p output resolutions,” he comments. “UHD for inputs is more common in Europe and China than in the U.S.”

Today, it is unlikely that people are able to buy a display that is not UHD, according to John Mailhot, CTO for networking products at Imagine Communications. “In a mobile there’s usually a requirement that they have to do UHD but it often involves a trade-off,” he says. “It could be having fewer replays if they are working in UHD. The vehicle will be set up differently for different events with varying workflows and probably not run everything in UHD.”

Something that Mailhot considers is becoming the minimum requirement—”table stakes” in his words—is 1080p but in HDR. “I think there’s going to be an interesting amount of broadcasters who produce that as their primary format and then turn it into 1080i or SDI or other things for distribution. UHD is four times the bandwidth but adding HDR to an existing workflow is a much easier lift and arguably more impactful. In the multiviewer world we’re really starting to see people asking about HDR more than they used to.”

Flexibility is Key
Ketan Patel, product manager of multiviewer solutions at Evertz, observes that customers are now looking for three main things in multiviewers: density, format flexibility and advanced features.

“Density of solution in terms of rack space and power are key for applications like OB trucks,” he says. “The number of inputs and outputs per RU is a metric everyone is trying to maximize. Unfortunately, we don’t have one format or standard across the broadcast chain, so flexibility is a big issue with all facilities.

“Ideally, people want to have a singular platform that can monitor the incoming contribution feeds, the production/in-facility signal flows and the distribution feeds,” Patel added. “Monitoring is then visually showing the video and audio bars, the health of the video, the audio and key items such as SCTE triggers.”

Because of this, Patel continues, multiviewers are no longer merely for visualizing video/audio/data sources as multi-images on displays; they’re real-time probes for those sources.

“The probes are also not just concerned with the video/audio/data but also the transport protocols and bandwidth,” he said. “This synergy has become more important as facilities have many more signals to monitor and not enough eyeballs to watch them all. 

“We developed the concept of monitoring by exception when customers found their operational staff were fatigued looking at hundreds of images for potential alarms,” he added. “With our ‘penalty box’ feature we can designate an area/display where only signals that have alarms appear so operators can focus on resolving those issues.”

Paul Briscoe, chief architect for TAG Video Systems, agrees that “monitoring hundreds or thousands of channels with human eyeballs is unreasonable,” which explains why probing, monitoring analysis, alarming and logging have become the norm.

“Visualization is still important,” he says, “and our Adaptive Monitoring allows any number of channels to be monitored but only those needing eyes on them in penalty boxes to be visualized.”

Move to IP and Cloud
A trend that Briscoe says TAG is also following is towards “pure software/IP-based monitoring platforms,” which will lead to the cloud. “That enables deployment in ground, cloud or hybrid scenarios on a global basis,” he explains. “Such a capability is almost infinitely scalable. Another important trend is integration with third-party systems, so we support open standards to enable orchestration and control interoperation with the widest array of other systems.”

At Lawo, Senior Product Manager of Media Infrastructure Stephan Türkay says the company is “absolutely moving to a cloud future,” with IP-based multiviewers being a prime candidate for that transition.

“Operational staff require multiviewers to be as low latency as possible,” he comments, “which can be tricky to achieve in an off-premise cloud deployment. We anticipate there to be an application-specific mix of deployments—on and off premise—as well as software and hardware technology to host the multiviewer function.”

Türkay adds that with the shift of traditional workflows for both production and playout to the cloud, there is the growing need to monitor signals as natively as possible. “Customers want to avoid the costly transcoding and transport costs of bringing signals back to the broadcast facility for monitoring using a traditional multiviewer,” he says.

While the general perception is that multiviewers will be installed in galleries or MCRs and cover the whole wall, Darren Gosney, technical sales manager for EMEA at Blackmagic Design, observes there is a growing realization that standalone screens can be placed anywhere in a broadcast or playout center.

“If they feature loop-throughs of each of their inputs, they can be located anywhere in the production chain,” he explains. This means different departments can each have a dedicated configurable unit in their space and the signals can be passed through to other parts of the facility, even being re-clocked to extend the signal distance further.``

Certainly a move on from the inert, dumb screens of the past.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital says it will demo its Indigo 2110-DC-01 SMPTE ST 2110 solution on its  9904-UDX-4K card at the 2022 IBC Show, Sept. 9-13. The new option offers support for high density native 4K ST 2110 audio and video processing on openGear form factor. 

Cobalt will also highlight the new version of the SafeLink Gateway as a virtual machine, and a higher density solution of +MPx-DANTE-64x64, the industry’s first license-based quad-channel 3G-SDI bridge to Dante audio, according to the company. SafeLink reliably transports any audio and video content over the Internet with low latency. Dante is Audinate’s combination of software, hardware and network protocols that deliver uncompressed, multichannel, low-latency digital audio over a standard Ethernet network. 

Cobalt’s Indigo 2110-DC-01 is a highly integrated factory option that includes dual 25G Ethernet interfaces and now supports uncompressed 4K on the Company’s 9904-UDX-4K card. 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 very straightforward, as the devices are auto discovered by the network management and made available for interconnection.

Indigo, already available on the quad path 9905-MPx openGear card, offers advanced processing with IP inputs and outputs and eliminates the need for any external gateways. When Indigo is combined with the 9904-UDX-4K openGear card a powerful and dense solution is created that is capable of natively processing HD, 3G and 4K IP streams without compromising quality. 

The 9904 platform offers up/down/cross conversion, audio routing, color correction, 3D-LUT processing and supports Advanced HDR by Technicolor. Adding native ST 2110 interfaces to the audio and 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, Cobalt said.

Cobalt will also highlight its SafeLink Gateway that provides protection for live video and audio data over unsecured networks for legacy devices. SafeLink, previously offered as a hardware solution on the Company’s OG-PC openGear card, is now being launched as a software-only form factor and includes support for UDP, RTP, FEC, and RIST Main Profile, with encryption and authentication.

“We’ve been developing new features for SafeLink all along, but our customers asked us to design a software version in addition to the PC-based hardware solution,” explained Suzana Brady, senior vice president for worldwide sales and marketing at Cobalt. “The timing was perfect, so we are happy to launch it at IBC to a global audience.”

Using Reliable Internet Streaming Transport (RIST) - a low latency protocol, SafeLink serves as a secure pipeline that ensures video is transported safely even in live production environments that may experience network delay. The lightweight software version can live on most computers or on Cobalt’s openGear OG-PC-x86-A platform. Control is handled with DashBoard, a free application that handles control and monitoring for all openGear broadcast products.

SafeLink can support up to 8 streams which in turn can be sent to 8 destinations for a potential of transporting content to 64 destinations. SafeLink can also support up to 8 tunnels each of which can support an arbitrary number of streams.

Cobalt has made Dante’s IP-based audio networking solution available to users on a license-basis in a much higher density scale by incorporating the functionality into the Company’s quad channel 9905-MPx in addition to the 9904-UDX processing card existing solution. 

Cobalt will also conduct multiple demonstrations including ST 2110 processing, its line of compression products with a synchronized decoding demo of RIST, and a new feature from Technicolor that allows reversible inverse tone mapping SDR to HDR, followed by SL-HDR1 in seamless fashion.

Cobalt will be in Stand 10.B44 at the RAI.

PITTSBURGH—NEP Group has outfitted Supershooter 6, one of its newest production vehicles, with 12 frames of Cobalt Digital signal processing, conversion and distribution gear.

The unit, which supports IP, 3G, 1080p, HDR and is 4K-ready, is equipped with 12 Cobalt HPF-9000 20-slot, high-power-frames packed with openGear form factor cards and the company’s OGCP9000 Ethernet remote control panel optimized for color correction use, Cobalt Digital said.

The configuration consists of 4K- and HDR-capable cards and supports up, down and cross conversion, audio processing and color correction. To maximize space, the system enables multiple capabilities, including multi-rate distribution, 3G/HD-to-SDI and analog down conversion, high-density-coax-to-fiber conversion and multipath up, down and cross conversion, in a small footprint.

The deployment also includes more than 100 Cobalt openGear distribution amplifiers, including the Cobalt 9910, 9501 and 9410, which enables Supershooter 6 to support 3G, HD, SD and ASI production requirements. The technology provides dual and multirate reclocking, analog video looping distribution with EQ and extensive downconverting and output crosspoint features, it said.

The 53-foot mobile studio has numerous Cobalt 9905-MPx software defined audio/video processing cards installed, which provide quad path 3G/SD/HD UHD up, down and cross conversion, frame sync, flexible AES and MADI embed/de-embed, 3D-LUT-PRO, advanced color correction and branding capabilities, it said.

Supershooter 6 also has the 9902-UDX 3G/HD/SD-SDI up, down and cross converter, frame sync, audio embedder/de-embedder with four analog audio and composite analog CVBS video input/output, it said.

Among the options deployed with the solution are presets to convert SDR to HDR and back, 3D LUTs, 4K color corrector software, RGB color correction with gain, lift and gamma chroma and luma clipping, it said.

The production vehicle, which hit the road in May, is being used to support live production of the NHL playoffs and the women’s and men’s College World Series.

“NEP was Cobalt’s first customer when the company launched 25 years ago, and we’re proud that they still come to us for the most advanced and reliable solutions for their fleet,” said Suzana Brady, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Cobalt. 

“NEP is globally renowned for bringing content to life, and those events must be flawlessly delivered for an exceptional viewer experience. There is no room for failure or compromised quality, and they’ve trusted Cobalt to deliver market-leading and technologically advanced solutions they can count on for over a quarter of a century,” she said.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

 LAS VEGAS—At the 2022 NAB Show next month, Cobalt Digital will introduce its +UDX-Dante-16x16, the industry’s first license-based 12G-SDI bridge to Dante audio, according to the company. Also on deck is Cobalt's new Indigo 2110-DC-01 SMPTE ST-2110 solution, as well as the company's line of compression products with a multilink demo of RIST, and new Technicolor features for reversible inverse tone mapping SDR to HDR incorporated into Cobalt products.

Dante is Audinate’s combination of software, hardware and network protocols that deliver uncompressed, multichannel, low-latency digital audio over a standard Ethernet network. Dante effortlessly replaces point-to-point analog and digital connections with software-based routing sending AV channels anywhere on the network with perfect digital fidelity.

Cobalt has made Dante’s IP-based audio networking solution available to users on a license-basis, which is field upgradable, by incorporating the functionality into the Company’s 9904-UDX processing card. +UDX-Dante-16x16 supports embedding and de-embedding all the way to 12G with full audio routing capabilities between SDI, MADI, and Dante, both input and output, adding up to 32 channels to existing 9904 cards for a high-density solution without the need for any new hardware. Users can ingest and process up to 16 audio channels from the network and output up to 16 channels back into the network using Dante and the Ethernet port. 

In addition to accessing Dante on Cobalt’s 9904 cards, users also have access to the card’s other functions such as UDX, color correction, 3D-LUT, frame-sync, audio mixing which are still available while embedding and de-embedding to/from SDI.

+UDX-Dante-16x16 users can also benefit from Cobalt’s BBG-1300 compact and portable frame by inserting a licensed 9904 card into a frame, converting it to a standalone chassis.

Cobalt's Indigo 2110-DC-01, is a new openGear-based SMPTE ST-2110 solution with dual 25G interfaces and 4K support. This highly integrated factory option offers best-of-class native ST 2110 audio/video processing to the Company’s 9904-UDX-4K and 9905-MPx audio/video processor cards. 

On the compression side, the 9992-ENC/DEC line has been enhanced with support for decoding Dolby AC-4 and Dolby E, as well as transport protocols such as SRT and soon, Zixi.

Cobalt will also conduct multiple demonstrations including ST 2110 processing, multilink RIST in seamless switching mode using SMPTE ST 2022-7, and a new feature from Technicolor that allows reversible inverse tone mapping SDR to HDR, followed by SL-HDR1 in seamless fashion.

Cobalt Digital will be in Booth N3713.

For more information on the NAB Show, April 23-27, visit nabshow.com/2022/.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital today announced its participation as a technology partner in NBCUniversal’s Ultra HD coverage of the Tokyo Olympic Games, which was recognized with IBC’s Special Award.

The award, presented during a virtual ceremony, honored NBCU for its technical proficiency that brought the Tokyo Olympic Games to its audience in 4K UHD HDR with Dolby Atmos sound.

NBCU covered the whole content pipeline from acquisition in HLG and distribution in PQ to a new version of its Skypath distribution system, ensuring the Ultra HD versions were made available to more than 50 local TV stations across the United States. This guaranteed that the full HDR Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos Ultra HD experience was available to 70% of the country.

NBCU used the 3D LUT processing feature on Cobalt Digital’s 9904-UDX audio/video processor cards as the engine for its own NBCU LUTS, which fed the broadcaster’s UHD playout system. Incorporating the Cobalt cards into its workflow allowed NBCU to achieve quality conversion of either SDR to HDR, or HDR to SDR, and cross-conversion from HLG to PQ, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CHAMPAIGN, IL—Cobalt Digital has unveiled the 9905-MPx, an openGear multiple video feed-multi-channel processor offering advanced scaler/frame openGear synchronizer functionality.

The 9905-MPx, developed in response to customer requests for increased density, multi-input support and enhanced flexibility, supports four independent signal paths in a single module, the company said. 

An audio/video processor for baseband digital signals, the 9905-MPx can handle up to four independent 3G signals in a single, dense and cost-effective package, it said.

The card includes individual up/down/cross conversion scalers that are specifically designed for broadcast video formats with full ARC control suitable for conversions to and from 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. The multi-path design offers discrete AES and MADI audio embedding, routing, mixing and de-embedding to any of the four processing paths, it said.

Standard 3D LUT features and available color correction accommodate SDR and HDR processing for downstream HDR systems on a per-channel basis.  The card also supports per-channel logo insertion, as well as ancillary data insertion/extraction, it said.

With its openGear form factor, the 9905-MPx can be integrated into existing broadcast frames. When used with Cobalt’s HPF-9000 20-slot chassis, customers can build a chassis with up to 24 channels (six cards) of processing in a single frame, it said.

The 9905-MPx offers flexible audio routing with MADI and AES support. It can serve as a full-featured audio router capable of cross-connecting any audio channel from any of the inputs to any of the outputs, as well as the MADI inputs and outputs.

“Every channel gets best-of-class processing without compromise and without channel-to-channel dependency,” said Suzana Brady, Cobalt senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing “Moreover, the openGear form factor allows for channels to be added as needed.”

More information is available on the company’s website. 

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital has introduced INDIGO ST 2110, an OpenGear-based uncompressed solution with multiple 25G interfaces and support for 4K.

INDIGO ST 2110 is a factory option that adds native SMPTE ST 2110 support to Cobalt Digital’s 9904-X-4K and 9905-MPx audio/video processor cards. It includes multiple 25G Ethernet interfaces to support 4K. The solution also includes support for SMPTE ST 2022-7 seamless redundancy switching and IS-04/IS-05 NMOS for automatic discovery and configuration, which makes interfacing to an existing network straightforward, the company said.

The audio and video processing engines of the 9904 and 9905 are capable of up, down and cross conversion, audio routing, color correction and 3D-LUT processing. The 9904 offers support for Advanced HDR by Technicolor. The INDIGO ST 2110 offers a path forward for advanced processing available in the cards to be available with IP inputs and outputs, thereby doing away with the need for gateways, the company said.

Using two cards in a single package creates a powerful, dense solution capable of natively processing HD, 3G and 4K IP streams, it said.

“The transition from SDI to IP has been underway for a few years now,” said Suzana Brady, senior vice president of Worldwide Sales & Marketing at Cobalt Digital. “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.”

More information is available on the company’s website. 

TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2021 NAB Show?

CIRO NORONHA: The big thing for the last 18 months has been remote work. Everybody wanted to work from home, and that includes broadcasters. In this context, “at home production” means “producing from people’s actual homes.”  A lot of the technology pieces required to make this happen existed already. What was missing was the drive to make it happen, and some “glue” to put the whole thing together. Any modern device is already managed through a network connection, typically a web interface—as long as you have connectivity, you can be at home, in another city or even across the globe and still configure/monitor it. Besides that, you need to be able to see what is happening in real time. A combination of low-latency encoding and decoding, widespread decent network connectivity, and advanced network protocols such as RIST give you this.

Another trend that is coming to fruition is moving baseband video to IP using SMPTE ST-2110, including 4K flows using 25G interfaces. Over the last few years, many have declared that “SDI is dead.”  Well, it isn’t, and it is still mainstream, but it is getting long in the tooth. New deployments are seriously looking at being all-IP. It is still more expensive, but we are getting there, and more native ST-2110 functions are appearing in the market.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

NORONHA: Cobalt Digital will have numerous exciting new products and upgrades on display at the NAB Show. We are unveiling an openGear-based SMPTE ST-2110 solution with 25G interfaces and 4K support. This solution can operate either as a standalone bidirectional gateway or can be coupled with the award-winning 9904-UDX-4K card for additional native processing functions, including up/down/cross conversion, audio processing, 3D-LUTs and SL-HDR support. 

We will also highlight our new 9905-MPx multichannel processor, which can handle up to four independent 3G signals in a dense cost-effective package with optional 2110 support using 10G interfaces. This multipath design offers four channels per card with flexible AES and MADI embed/de-embed for each path. When used with our own HPF-9000 20-slot chassis, it provides up to 24 channels (6 cards) of processing in a single frame, representing a new level of openGear packaging density and resulting in unprecedented multi-input support and flexibility.

On the compression side, the 9992-ENC/DEC software-defined line provides professional-grade support for compressed audio and video. The cards, designed to meet the stringent requirements of today’s broadcasters, provide an ideal platform for transitioning to state-of-the-art encoding and decoding capabilities. The range will be shown with a number of new exciting features, including support for decoding Dolby AC-4 and Dolby E, as well as transport protocols such as SRT and Zixi. 

And if you’re looking to take it with you, Cobalt’s BBG-1300-FR enclosure can transform any openGear card (from any vendor) into a portable, standalone device.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

NORONHA: Our ST-2110 product is unique in its feature integration: the same device can do scaling, color correction, static and dynamic HDR processing, and many other features, with native ST-2110 interfaces and 4K support (no gateways needed). This is offered in the openGear form factor, which 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, including hot-swappable cards and redundant power supplies. On our compression line, our 9992-DEC has the highest feature integration in the market, including audio and video decoding features and protocol support.

TVT: How has the COVID pandemic affected your company's business over the past year and half and how will it impact how you exhibit at this year's show?

NORONHA: At first, we were concerned, and we had a slow month or two at the beginning of the pandemic, but we’ve experienced several record-breaking months over the past year-and-a-half. We attribute that to our total dedication to finding out what our customers needed through constant communication in various new ways and adapting to meet the new types of requirements including changes in the manufacturing area. 

We did scale down our booth size a bit to adjust to the event’s overall downsize but will still have a very significant presence. We have lots of exciting new solutions to share with the industry and we sincerely look forward to seeing our customers, friends and colleagues in person.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital this week added HDMI-to-SDI and SDI-to-HDMI converter cards to its openGear family of products.

The new dual and quad-channel modules come with built-in per-channel frame synchronizers and features that maximize space to ensure greater installation integrity than throwdown devices. The new 9926 series is aimed at any application requiring signal conversion from HDMI-compliant devices, such as computer monitors or video projectors, to broadcast-quality SDI formats. The 9927 converts SDI signals to HDMI formats.

“The multiplication of formats mixed with the explosion of different delivery platforms has led to a new set of requirements for the broadcasting and pro AV communities,” said Suzana Brady, Cobalt senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing. “Supporting HDMI devices is of critical importance now, and so we’ve developed cards capable of conversion from HDMI to SDI and from SDI to HDMI.”

The 9926-2HtoS 3G/HD/SD dual-channel openGear HDMI-to-SDI converter provides two independent paths of true 3G and HD conversion from HDMI to SMPTE 424M, 292M or 259M, while the 9926-4HtoS 3G/HD/SD version provides four independent paths. 

Each channel is equipped with an independent frame sync for rate conversion (from 60fps to 59.94). Built-in proc amps allow signal components to be processed in real time.  Full input and output audio crosspoints enable program sourcing and distribution across the HDMI inputs and SDI outputs with different output formats for each path—either free-run or genlocked. Color correction licenses are available as options.

In existing openGear installations, the cards save space and provide installation integrity. Preset save/load settings allow custom configurations to be saved but reverted to factory settings with the click of a mouse. Layered presets permit changes to be implemented only when addressing a specific area of concern, such as audio routing, while not impacting any other processing settings or aspects.

Cobalt also has launched the complimentary 9927-2StoH 3G/HD/SD dual-channel openGear SDI-To-HDMI converter card that incorporates all the same features as the 9926 modules.

Both the 9926 series and the 9927 can be controlled across a standard Ethernet network by openGear DashBoard or Cobalt’s remote-control panel.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.— Cobalt Digital, promoted four team members noting that the multiple moves are due to the company’s growth.

Cobalt President Gene Zimmerman said in a company statement, “The industry, and the world, had to pivot overnight in 2020 and yet these four people not only made it work, they made it one of our most successful years ever, which has spilled into 2021.”

Chris Shaw moved into the position of chief operations officer from executive vice president of sales and marketing. He first joined Cobalt in 2006 to establish the company’s global dealer network and grow its presence through integrated sales, marketing and communication initiatives. Previously Shaw held leadership positions with Linear Acoustic and Wohler. In his new role Shaw will continue to oversee the sales team and marketing efforts, but also focus on all areas of business development including expansion of the company’s solution platforms and its growth in international markets.

Suzana Brady, formerly vice president of sales in the Americas has been named senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing. Reporting to Shaw, Brady will work closely with the executive team to define geographical and technical areas of growth and implement sales, marketing and operational strategies. Brady’s career has spanned over two decades and includes work in data networking, wireless, broadband and broadcast technology spaces. Brady also serves as Chairman for the RIST Forum (Reliable Internet Streaming Transport).

Nick Maag has been appointed vice president of manufacturing, a promotion from his former position as director of manufacturing. Also reporting to Shaw, he will continue to manage the day-to-day operations of Cobalt’s contract manufacturers, test department and shipping/receiving activities and interface with other senior members of the engineering, sales and accounting teams to develop and evaluate new processes to streamline manufacturing activities.

 Monte Variakojis, a software engineer and architect for nearly three decades, is now vice president of software, elevated from engineering manager, Software Products. He will be responsible for developing and managing Cobalt’s software strategy that includes evaluating and selecting the most appropriate system architectures and ensuring that the company’s platforms support all the latest formats including 3G/HD/SD and IPTV solutions. Reporting to Dr. Ciro Noronha, Cobalt’s executive vice president of engineering, Variakojis will also focus on creating advanced user interfaces and protocols to enhance the user experience for the company’s customers.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital has announced that its implementation of the Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST) Main Profile now includes full support for certificate-based authentication. 

The enhanced functionality gives users of Cobalt Digital's 9992 encoder/decoder family and 9990 decoder an added level of security by ensuring the identity of the remote site when transmitting content over the Internet with RIST. 

In addition, Cobalt Digital announced that it has also made full support for SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) available for the 9992 encoder/decoder family and that it will be adding the feature in the future to 9990 decoders.

“Security is an enormous concern today, especially with the dramatic increase in streaming due to the pandemic,” explained Dr. Ciro Noronha, executive vice president of engineering at Cobalt Digital, which designs and manufactures edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR and the cloud. “The RIST protocol enables greater choice and flexibility for broadcasters, allowing them to take advantage of the cost-effective internet for contribution feeds with top-of-the-line security, as well as the freedom to mix ‘best of breed’ products from different vendors. Cobalt is a strong supporter of open standards and is delighted to offer even greater security and reliability with full support of both RIST and SRT.”

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital has announced two new models to its lineup of distribution amplifiers. Part of the 9910DA 3G-RCK 3G/HD/SD/ASI series of openGear cards, the new models are the one-channel 9910DA-1Q and the two-channel 9910DA-2Q. These models were developed in response to customer requests, per Cobalt Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing Chris Shaw.

The new single and dual-channel Cobalt multirate distribution amplifiers offer the same features as the quad-channel card, including user enable/disable reclocking abilities and support for SDI and ASI/DVB on all inputs and outputs. 

Channels on all cards in the series can be crosspoint-routed to any of 16 DA outputs. Up to 10 cards can be installed in one frame to provide up to 160 outputs.

The flexible crosspoint, which is user-configurable via DashBoard GUI remote control, allows dual 1x8 or single 1x16 on the 9910DA-2Q-3G-RCK and quad 1x4, dual 1x8 or single 1x16 no the 9910DA-4Q-3G-RCK; other routing possibilities are available as well. Any of the multiple input channels can be distributed or duplicated across four groups of 1x4 DAs, and any of the inputs can be set to use an alternate failover input upon loss of signal.

Cobalt is also offering non-reclocking versions of all three cards: 9910DA-1Q-3G, 9910DA-2Q-3G and 9910DA-4Q-3G.

For more information, visit www.cobaltdigital.com.  

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital announced enhancements for its broadcast-grade 9992 encoder and decoder family of openGear card modules.

The company has enhanced the 9992-ENC encoder with a new built-in frame synchronizer to ensure the encoder continues to run, either with a flat field or the last good frame, in the event video is lost, it said Adding the frame sync to the HEVC encoder eliminates downstream glitches due to input signal loss issues, such as unsynchronized video switches. The feature is provided at no additional charge, the company said.

Cobalt Digital also has incorporated support for Dolby AC-4 (the audio codec specified for ATSC 3.0 deployments in North America) into its 9992-DEC decoder, a software-defined, multistandard decoder for MPEG-2, AVC H.264 and HEVC H.265 with resolutions up to 4K, the company said.

The 9992-DEC, which supports multiple audio decoding capabilities, is now equipped with the ability to decode and pass through Dolby AC-4 as well as display AC-4 metadata. Users may select which audio presentation to decode. If there is an associated channel, users can control how the 9992-DEC mixes the main presentation, it said.

The company also has added Dolby-E decoding support to the decoder. The card simultaneously decodes all programs from a Dolby-E stream, outputs them as SDI embedded channels and displays associated metadata.

More information is available on the company’s website.

YANG QUAN CITY, China—Yangquan TV, a government-run broadcaster, has rolled out a new outside broadcast (OB) truck optimized for 4K to meet the growing appetite among viewers for higher resolution sports coverage.

The truck, outfitted with a complement of Cobalt Digital 12G and HD openGear modules, will help enhance how viewers engage with sports programming, said Mr. Hu li, general engineer at Yangquan TV.

“The migration from 1080i HD transmission and acquisition to 4K and 3G HD is starting to gain traction all over China,” he said. “Cobalt’s solutions brought us the latest advances in these technologies for enhanced resolution, which leads to an elevated entertainment experience for our viewers and ultimately attracts better advertising prospects.”

The new OB truck uses Cobalt’s 9971-MV18 expandable UHD multiviewers for flexible 4K monitoring. It also relies on the company’s 9904-UDX-4K up and down converter. The device is a next-generation advanced scaler/frame synchronizer for the openGear platform, offering simultaneous HDR and SDR production from a single path. This approach offers operators a dynamic means to map HDR color space onto an SDR color space.

The truck also used Cobalt’s 9915DA quad-channel multirate reclocking distribution amplifier (DA) for crosspoint routing up to 16 DA outputs.

“We conducted a thorough evaluation of competing solutions for these significant projects and found Cobalt’s products provided the perfect solutions for us, both in the 4K truck and in the news studio,” said Mr. Hu li. “The 12G system in the truck addresses all the requirements of 4K production and is even compatible with legacy HD formats through the company’s up/down/cross conversion solutions.”

Yangquan TV tapped Cobalt solutions to migrate to 3G in its new news studio, which went on air at the end of last year.

The broadcaster installed Cobalt’s 9902-2UDX 3G/HD/SD-SDI dual-channel up-down-cross converter/frame sync/audio embed/de-embed in the studio as well as the 9903 universal format converter, and the 9910DA-AV analog video distribution amplifier. 

More information is on the Cobalt Digital website.  

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital is expanding its openGear product offering with the announcement that it has acquired the IP and manufacturing rights to multiple Ward-Beck openGear cards.

The Ward-Beck products being integrated into the Cobalt lineup include analog audio and video distribution amplifiers, audio analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog converters and single card rear modules in numerous three-pin terminal block configurations.

“We’ve always held Ward-Beck in the highest esteem and have respected the integrity of the company and quality of its equipment," said Chris Shaw, Cobalt executive vice president of Sales and Marketing. “We are honored that Kevin Lyver and his team have passed the mantle to Cobalt to keep these modules viable and available in the marketplace. We are delighted to add them to the Cobalt family of products and be able to serve an extended marketplace.”

Ward-Beck ceased operations on Jan. 31, but the company will provide support and assistance during the transition period, according to the Cobalt announcement.

For more information, visit www.cobaltdigital.com.  

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital has launched the new 9905-MPx next generation scaler, frame synchronizer and audio embedder and de-embedder for the openGear platform. 

Developed based on the response from the company’s customers, the 9905-MPx offers quad path up/down/cross-conversion as well as frame synchronization, the company said. 

“Cobalt has been building products since 1997 based not only on current industry demand, but also by anticipating requirements driven by emerging technologies,” said Chris Shaw, Cobalt senior vice president of sales and marketing.

“This time the customers asked for increased density, unprecedented multi-input support and enhanced flexibility, and we happily complied with the 9905-MPx.”

The 9905-MPx, which supports 480i, 576i, 720p, 1080i, 1080pSF and 1080p, offers four independent signal paths of UDX, frame sync and audio embedding and de-embedding in a single openGear card. Each of the card’s four audio channels supports AES and MADI embedding and de-embedding, Cobalt Digital said.

Used with the Cobalt HPF-9000 20-slot chassis, the 9905-MPx provides up to 24 channels (six cards) of processing in a single frame, the company said.

The unit’s independent up/down/cross convert scalers are designed for broadcast video formats, with full ARC control suitable for conversions to or from 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. Discrete AES and MADI audio embedding/routing/mixing/de-embedding to any of four processing paths is supported. Color correction and 3D LUT functions provide accommodation of SDR and HDR processing for downstream HDR systems, the company said.

Card control and monitoring is available via a DashBoard user interface or Cobalt’s RESTful-based Reflex protocol. The 9905-MPx can be software-converted to a 4K Quad-Link Input SDM/2SI 4K UDX/Frame Sync card with an optional software license.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt announced the release of an ultra-low latency mode for its 9992-ENC software-defined broadcast encoder card series.

The new mode combines parallel processing with GDR (Gradual Decoder Refresh) and a suitable CPB (Coded Picture Buffer) to achieve encoder latencies as low as 10 milliseconds, which makes the device well-suited for broadcast applications, such as sports and news, Cobalt Digital said.

“In any sort of video compression, there is a tradeoff between three variables: latency, quality and bitrate.  Essentially, any two of these can be optimized at the expense of the third,” said Cobalt Executive Vice President of engineering Ciro Noronha.

The Cobalt 9992-ENC has always offered users a way to select the desired operating point that best meets their needs. Most relevant to latency are CPB delay and the use of GDR, which before the new mode enabled a range of latencies from as little as 100 milliseconds to more than one second for high-quality at a low bitrate, said Noronha. 

The new ultra-low latency mode reduces latency to as little as 10 milliseconds, he added, noting that this latency is lower than the intrinsic latency of the audio encoders typically used. As a result, the 9992-ENC offers LPCM audio support to bypass them.

Cobalt also has released updated firmware for its 9992-DEC with tunable latency.  When combined with the 9992-ENC, end-to-end latencies of about 100ms are achievable in HEVC mode, and about 300ms in AVC mode.

More information is available on the company’s website.

WASHINGTON—The explosion in content availability spurred by the OTT revolution over the past decade has only made the monitoring of such content more challenging. Mix in new concerns over social distancing and the increased demand for remote productions in less than ideal environments and it’s no wonder that production staff are looking for simple, fast responsive solutions.

Developments in multiviewers have been spurred on by ever-expanding screen sizes, higher resolutions and, perhaps most importantly, the industry’s move to the cloud and IP. However, adding or altering the pathways from signal to monitor can introduce new concerns that can negatively impact the production workflow.

SWISS ARMY KNIFE

Top of the list of concerns is ensuring production staff can get a reliable, low-latency multiviewer signal, regardless of whether they’re in a master control facility, OB truck or their basement, according to TAG’s Zer0 Friction Officer Kevin Joyce.

“Remote production and the ability to view their facilities and the streams in their homes of course has become the number one priority,” he said. “In a multiviewer, you have to be able to work in every single environment. And by environment, I mean across all four of the primary broadcast applications: live production, playout, delivery, and OTT.

“If you’re going to work across those four applications, your multiviewer has to have quite a lot of features to be the best in class across all four of those, where the multiviewer for live production has to be super-high resolution. And it has to be very low latency,” Joyce added.

Joyce describes TAG multiviewers as the “Swiss Army Knife” of multiviewers because of the product’s ability to handle a vast array of formats in uncompressed and compressed mode, plus the ability to analyze the signals.

“Customers are demanding more and more probing capabilities for us to detect more and more errors as different types of formats go into the different applications,” Joyce said. “A multiviewer needs to do more than just be able to visualize the errors. If you could actually detect the errors, then you get a ‘bigger bang for your buck,’ using probing and visualization.”

Expanded support for industry standards, along with “extreme” low latency are among the new enhancements in the company’s multiviewers, according to Joyce.

“And we’ve increased the density of our system by 50% in the last six months,” he added.

BIGGER SCREENS, HIGHER RESOLUTIONS

John Mailhot, CTO, networking and infrastructure with Imagine Communications said customers have become more focused on using higher UHD resolutions in their multiviewer products.

“Our latest crop of multiviewers are based on our Selenio Network Processors [SNP], so they’re really designed around the sort of low-latency, high-touch production—people who historically were very fussy about latency. Now whether that fussiness is still there—in the post COVID world, will they have realized that maybe a little latency didn’t hurt anybody—we’ll see,” he said.

In the early days of higher resolution displays, if a customer wanted to use a UHD signal for example in their multiviewer, they had to deal with a trade-off in capacity, according to Mailhot.

“So one of the things we really focused on in the SNP MV was just making all the displays rendered in UHD to begin with,” he said. “So every display is done in UHD and then we make an HD version of it if you need that. But we’ve sort of sized and scaled and built the whole product around creating UHD displays.”

The ability to monitor HDR is also on the customer’s wishlist as well, Mailhot said.

“We deal with HDR in a very intelligent way—you can choose whether to display it and you can pick whether it’s HLG or PQ or SLog3, of course. But then equally each of the inputs then gets harmonized into that format so that if you have an HDR production, maybe the TD wants to really see his stuff in HDR, but maybe for the replay operator who’s close to the screen, pushing HDR into their eyeballs from that distance isn’t such a good idea. “So you want to have SDR for some people on the truck and HDR for others,” he said. “And so that was a key design driver for the SNP MV.”

UNCOMPLICATED SOLUTIONS

With live sports now returning to the screen, Cobalt Digital has seen increasing demand for its multiviewer products, according to Chris Shaw, executive vice president of sales and marketing.

“We are seeing this market move forward, both in government and in the sports truck environment,” he said.

For 2020, Cobalt has added numerous features to its 9971-MV18-4K Multiviewer, including support for timecode burn for each PiP as well as multilanguage capabilities. The industry’s demand for UHD multiviewing solutions is helping drive new developments for Cobalt’s multiviewers.

“4K production is here, and broadcasters and OB truck operators need to be able to monitor content at a glance,” said Shaw. “Not only does the 9971 Series support full UHD resolution, it can handle multiple asynchronous signals simultaneously and provide full resolution display on consumer 4K monitors. It’s an uncomplicated multiviewer solution for facilities with a complicated blend of HD and 4K sources.”

There are also plans to add ST2110 support in the near future.

“With the hardware that we’re scheduled to roll out at some point next year, our existing multiviewer will be expanded to support ST2110 on all inputs and have the output as well,” said Kyle Wilken, vice president of firmware for Cobalt Digital.

MORE INTEGRATION, BETTER PERFORMANCE

Lawo’s vm_dmv is a virtual module app for the company’s V__matrix IP routing & processing platform, complementing the existing vm_mv16-4, vm_mv18-4 and vm_mv24-4 multiviewer lineup. It turns the V__matrix C100 software-defined processing blade into a distributed, flexibly expandable, true IP multiviewer. The vm_dmv is based on a distributed architecture where multiple modules network together. These modules could be hosted together in the same V__matrix frame, in different frames or even at different geographical locations. Basically anywhere as long as they are networked together via IP. 

As a relatively recent entrant into this sector, Lawo had the advantage of approaching it through the lens of all-IP, according to Stephan Türkay, senior product manager, media infrastructure at the company. Providing that offering as part of the company’s V__matrix platform allowed for a more integrated product, he added.

“Our customers coming from the baseband world are used to thinking in terms of compartmentalized multiviewer and routing solutions, which may very well be standalone offerings purchased from vendors that focus on a specific application,” Türkay said. “The move towards IP turns the overall infrastructure into a tightly integrated system with one-stop, intuitive control over switching, routing and multiviewing. In addition, virtualizing multiviewers not only expands the control and viewing options—it also allows operators to use idle resources for other processing tasks at short notice. People can do more with less by scaling up and down without adding or disconnecting physical units.”

A NEW UNIVERSE

Grass Valley has been concentrating on latency and IP for its Kaleido multiviewer product line, according to Martin Jolicoeur, director of product management for the company.

“We’re working on making processing latency on par with purpose-built FPGA-based hardware,” he said. “Obviously processing latency is important for live production staff when they’re making decisions. Another new thing is that we’re providing the ability to process up to 64 HD sources on a single server running Kaledio IP software, where considering the bandwidths of uncompressed signal formats, it’s pretty amazing.”

Kaleido is now part of the company’s new GV Media Universe, a microservice solution for SaaS and cloud-based solutions powered by Grass’s AMP (agile media processing platform).

“This multiviewer offers low bit rate, low latency streaming, which accommodates for live remote production,” Jolicoeur said. ”It includes ‘intelligent timing’ which compensates for the different streaming latencies you can have from the venue to the control room or even your home office.” 

Recent changes in remote production mean customers are streaming multiviewer signals to new and more locations, adding stress to latency, according to Jolicoeur.

“They’ll still use multiviewers in the truck, for example, but they’ll take the multiviewer output and they’ll stream that over cloud to the home or the facilities so that the creative staff is not on site and use that for making decisions, so that’s a main driver for making decisions,” he said. “And that latency has to be as low as possible.”

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—High End TV has selected Cobalt Digital’s card-based solution for a 4K HDR multiviewer and high dynamic range (HDR) conversion in Symphony, its newest production vehicle.

The truck, which will deploy the Cobalt Digital 4K-in-and-4K-out 9971-MV6-4K multiviewer and 9904-UDX-4K HDR processor, will be outfitted with 4K cameras and a 60-input HDR monitor wall.

“People want 4K, and they want HDR,” said Adam Mills, High End TV’s president. “Cobalt’s 4K HDR multiviewer solution also has TSL protocol and HDMI built-in on the same card, making it the perfect product to drive what I'd say is the best monitor wall in existence. This truck is built to be future-proof first and foremost, and capable of shoots with full 4K throughput. Cobalt makes that possible.”

The Cobalt 9971-MV6-4K 12G/6G/3G/HD/SD UHD multiviewer solution is an openGear card. It represents the company’s next generation of advanced UHD high-capacity channel multiviewers. Simple setup and ease-of-use are achieved with one-button template presets. Configurations can be changed on-the-fly, which is particularly important for a production truck.

The multiviewer card allows users to view the monitor wall in full-resolution even if the production isn’t being shot in 4K. “You can have a 4K consumer monitor coming out of the HDMI with 1080p inputs and a quarter of that screen shows you all 1080p lines. Once you see it, everything else just looks blurry,” he explained.

The truck is also being equipped with Cobalt’s 9904-UDX-4K for SDR/HDR and HDR/SDR conversion card, which incorporates Technicolor’s Intelligent Tone Management (ITM) and single layer HDR (SL-HDR) technology.

Mills reports the truck is attracting the attention from the industry. “We were getting interest from ‘A List’ entertainment acts before Symphony even rolled out from the truck fabricator’s floor,” he said.

More information is available on the Cobalt Digital website. 

LAS VEGAS—Cobalt Digital will showcase a new card-bases router series, a mini frame that saves space without compromising functionality and a range of distribution amplifiers with 12G-SDI signal support to address the rise of 4K at the 2020 NAB Show.

The new 9942-RTR series of 12G/3G/HD/SD-SDI/ASI/MADI routers for openGear are optimized for 12G support and fit into a compact 2RU frame. Besides standard openGear DashBoard support, the new router series includes built-in Ethernet ports for IP-based protocols like Cobalt’s ReFLEX and SW-P-08. The routers, available in 12x12 and 24x24 configurations, also support serial and GPIO interfaces.

Designed for applications in which space is limited, the new BBG-1300-F is a 1/3-rack-width, 1RU openGear compatible frame that can house two cards. A built-in network card is included.

Control and monitoring of openGear cards is supported via DashBoard. The openGear 3.0 chassis offers looping reference, redundant power supplies and high-power delivery (60W usable) support.

Up to three BBG-1300-FR units can fit on a single 1RU tray. The mini frame can be used in remote locations as a standalone. LCD buttons and control knobs make simple work of status monitoring and network setup.

Cobalt’s new 12G-SDI openGear distribution amplifiers for 4K signals are available in a variety of configurations. They include:

• the 9915DA-1x16-12G 12G/6G/3G/HD/SD-SDI 1x16 reclocking distribution amplifier; 
• the 9915DA-1x16-12G with optional SFP support for fiber input and DA outputs; 
• the 9915DA-2x16-XPT-12G, a 12G/6G/3G/HD/SD Quad-Channel multirate reclocking DA with x4 output crosspoint that supports two input channels, which can be crosspoint-routed to up to 16 DA outputs; 
• the 9915DA-4x16-XPT-12G 12G/6G/3G/HD/SD Quad-Channel multirate reclocking DA with 16 DA outputs; and 
• the 9915DA-4x16-XPT-12G and 9915-2x16-XPT-12G, which include optional SFP support. 

See Cobalt Digital at 2020 NAB Show booth SL3308. The 2020 NAB Show runs from April 18-22 in Las Vegas.

More information is available on the Cobalt Digital website. 

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Oct. 28, 2019 – Cobalt Digital today announced Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting Co., which owns and operates stations in nine markets in addition to MeTV and other digital multicast networks, is using Cobalt’s software defined 9922-FS-DSP platform for openGear® frames to provide microservices for Emergency Alert System local insertion and CALM compliance for its terrestrial stations. Most recently, the company purchased five cards in March for KTLN, a Heroes & Icons and MeTV affiliate serving San Francisco (DMA #8).

“It’s one of the few cards of its kind that is flexible,” explained Kyle Walker, vice president of technology for Weigel Broadcasting. “It’s the Swiss Army Knife of cards. This card can literally do it all at the right price point.”

Weigel has deployed dozens of 9922-FS-DSP cards, which offer a combination of rich broadcast connectivity and flexible microservices that make them cost effective options for many applications. The +EAS option allows Weigel to key EAS text crawls into active video and insert station logos. Some stations also add the +TTS option, which provides Text-To-Speech conversion of EAS text.

The 9922-FS-DSP also assists with compliance with the CALM Act, which requires commercials to be broadcast at the same volume as programming. Walker said a simple addition of a microservice for the 9922-FS-DSP makes it easy for Weigel to maintain CALM compliance for new digital subchannels and other broadcast properties.

For select remote locations, where an entire openGear frame is not necessary, Weigel uses Cobalt’s BBG-1022-FS-DSP, a standalone version of the 9922-FS-DSP. For installations that require cards from multiple vendors, Walker praised the openGear modular system. “It’s a great platform that allows several different vendors to play in the same sandbox,” he noted.

The 9922-FS-DSP offers a software defined platform that supports multiple microservices such as automatic audio leveling, upmixing, Dolby encoding and decoding, automatic SAP generation, EAS insertion, logo insertion, Text-To-Speech, and more. The base platform includes advanced frame sync features with per-channel audio delay and routing, as well as audio/video offset adjustment. Presets allow custom card setup, while layered presets allow changes related only to a specific function. Access to full control and monitoring is available through Cobalt’s DashBoard™ software or remote control panels.

About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR, the cloud, and beyond. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative and proud member of SMPTE, Cobalt also offers a best-of-breed interoperability platform that simplifies technological adoption. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. Learn more at www.cobaltdigital.com. 

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Oct. 15, 2019 – Cobalt Digital is pleased to announce the appointment of Ciro Noronha, Ph.D., as executive vice president of engineering. Noronha joined the Cobalt team in 2016 when ImmediaTV was acquired. He will work closely with Ryan Wallenberg, vice president of engineering, and Kyle Wilken, vice president of firmware, managing the engineering team and providing valuable resources for Cobalt Digital as the company continues to offer the highest quality, latest technological solutions to meet the needs of the broadcast industry.

Noronha was responsible for the development of ARQ technology, which was instrumental in enabling a cost-effective means of live, low latency contribution and distribution of broadcast content over the internet. As a result, Cobalt was one of the companies selected to receive the Emmy® Award for "Pioneering Reliable Transmission Method for Live Contribution and TV Links."

“Dr. Noronha has extensive engineering knowledge and management experience that will assist in guiding Cobalt to an increased successful future,” added Gene Zimmerman, president and CEO of Cobalt Digital. “We are pleased to have him on board to strengthen our engineering management team."

Contact Noronha at 217-344-1243 or via email at ciro.noronha@cobaltdigital.com.

About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR, the cloud, and beyond. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative and proud member of SMPTE, Cobalt also offers a best-of-breed interoperability platform that simplifies technological adoption. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. Learn more at www.cobaltdigital.com.

NEW YORK—Cobalt Digital will showcase a number of its card-based solutions for openGear frames, including its new 9992-DEC Series of HEVC/AVC/MPEG-2 decoders. A companion technology to the company’s 9992-ENC Series of encoders, the flexible 9992-DEC Series supports up to 4K resolution with audio decoding capabilities. Plus, its pay-as-you-go licensing means users only pay for required features when needed. The series includes the 9992-2DEC dual-channel decoder, as well as the 9992-DEC-4K-HEVC with single-channel 4K or dual-channel 2K and support for H.265.

Cobalt also will demonstrate its new SafeLink software, which protects the transport of live video and audio data over unsecure networks. Through the use of the RIST protocol, the company says SafeLink eliminates video glitches and provides reliable video transport, even in live production environments that may experience network delay. SafeLink supports a variety of compression standards and up to eight discrete transmit and receive paths. The software can be installed on most computers or Cobalt’s openGear OG-PC-x86 platform, and is controlled through Cobalt’s DashBoard control and monitoring application.

For HDR content, the new SL-HDR Decoder feature for the 9904-UDX-4K provides SDR-to-HDR conversion using SL-HDR technology, which allows broadcasters to distribute SDR and HDR content over the same signal. Once an SDR signal has been processed through Cobalt’s SL-HDR Encoder, the SL-HDR Decoder software uses the metadata within the signal to reconstruct an HDR picture for compatible devices.

Attendees will find Cobalt in booth N531. NAB Show New York runs Oct. 16–17 at the Javits Center.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Oct. 3, 2019 – Cobalt Digital will showcase a number of its card-based solutions for openGear® frames, including its new 9992-DEC Series of HEVC/AVC/MPEG-2 decoders, at NAB Show New York (Booth N531), which runs Oct. 16-17 at the Javits Center. As part of its continued adoption of RIST, the Reliable internet Stream Transport protocol for low-latency video transport over the internet, Cobalt will also demonstrate SafeLink, an openGear solution that uses a RIST wrapper to protect multiple transport streams through existing encoding/decoding infrastructure. Plus, the company is announcing a new feature for its 9904-UDX-4K up/down/cross converter and image processor to simplify HDR content contribution and distribution.

A companion technology to the company’s 9992-ENC Series of encoders, the flexible 9992-DEC Series is designed to meet the most stringent requirements for today’s broadcasters. It supports up to 4K resolution with a full complement of audio decoding capabilities. Plus, its pay-as-you-go licensing means users only pay for required features when needed. The series includes the 9992-2DEC dual-channel decoder, as well as the 9992-DEC-4K-HEVC with single-channel 4K or dual-channel 2K and support for H.265.

“Our new 9992-DEC joins our popular 9992-ENC to create a complete transport solution for broadcasters at whatever resolution they need,” said Chris Shaw, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital. “With its support for 5.1 audio, the 9992 Series is a cost-effective solution for contribution-level transmission.”

Cobalt will also demonstrate its new SafeLink software, which protects the transport of live video and audio data over unsecure networks. Through the use of the RIST protocol, SafeLink eliminates video glitches and provides reliable video transport, even in live production environments that may experience network delay. SafeLink supports a variety of compression standards – including MPEG-2, AVC, and HEVC – and up to eight discrete transmit and receive paths. The software can be installed on most computers or Cobalt’s openGear OG-PC-x86 platform, and is controlled through Cobalt’s DashBoard control and monitoring application.

For HDR content, the new SL-HDR Decoder feature for the 9904-UDX-4K provides SDR-to-HDR conversion using SL-HDR technology, which allows broadcasters to distribute SDR and HDR content over the same signal. Once an SDR signal has been processed through Cobalt’s SL-HDR Encoder, the SL-HDR Decoder software uses the metadata within the signal to reconstruct an HDR picture for compatible devices. The technology is similar to the card’s Technicolor HDR Intelligent Tone Management option, but with a scaled down feature set.

Cobalt has also announced new ordering options for the 9904-UDX-4K that combines all the Technicolor HDR options. The +HDR-TCHCLR and HDR-TCHCLR-4K options provide access to all three available firmware builds, including ITM, SL-HDR Encoder, and SL-HDR Decoder.

About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR, the cloud, and beyond. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative and proud member of SMPTE, Cobalt also offers a best-of-breed interoperability platform that simplifies technological adoption. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. Learn more at www.cobaltdigital.com.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Sept. 3, 2019 – Cobalt Digital today announced it has signed a master distributor agreement with Plura MEA for sales and support in the Middle East and Africa region. Plura MEA will provide sales and support for Cobalt’s extensive product line of video and audio conversion, processing, and monitoring standalone modules and card-based solutions for openGear® frames.

“This is a major step in the continued expansion of our efforts to provide Cobalt Digital product sales and support across the world,” said Chris Shaw, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital. “Plura MEA is an ideal company to promote the Cobalt brand in the Middle Eastern region, and we are pleased to work with them to expand our global footprint in this growing market.”

Based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Plura MEA is a subsidiary of Plura Broadcast, Inc., which also has offices in Germany, South Korea, and the United States. Plura is a leading international manufacturer of high-performance video monitors, sync and timing, and calibration solutions for professional media markets.

“This is a tremendous addition to the Plura MEA portfolio of products, backed up with more than 30 years of market experience,” said Hassan Salamah, business development manager, Plura MEA. “Our new alliance with Cobalt presents substantial opportunities for both companies to offer extensive and interconnected solutions to a wide spectrum of market segments.”

“As a big advocate of long-term strategic alliances, I’m convinced this agreement will lead to collaborative prosperity and market development,” added Ray Kalo, president and CEO of Plura. “Our work with Cobalt will provide strength and cohesion in our international business philosophy.”

Cobalt’s product line, including a number of new 4K and HDR card-based workflow solutions, will be displayed next week in Stand 10.B44 at IBC2019 in Amsterdam.

About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR, the cloud, and beyond. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative and proud member of SMPTE, Cobalt also offers a best-of-breed interoperability platform that simplifies technological adoption. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. Learn more at www.cobaltdigital.com. 

AMSTERDAM—Cobalt Digital has a handful of new products in its openGear line that offer support for 4K and HDR that will be shown during the upcoming 2019 IBC Show in Amsterdam. Among its products include decoders, encoders, RIST Main Profile, bi-directional SDR/HDR converters, multiviewers and distribution amplifiers.

One of the highlights from Cobalt will be its new 9992-DEC series of HEVC/AVC/MPEG-2 decoders for openGear. Similar to the 9992-ENC encoders, the 9992-DEC features pay-as-you-go licensing. It also features support for resolution up to 4K and has a complement of audio decoding capabilities. The 9992-DEC series includes the 9992-2DEC dual-channel decoder and the 9992-DEC-4K-HEVC with single-channel 4K or dual-channel 2K and support for H.265.

Cobalt will also use the IBC Show to debut its support for the RIST Main Profile, which adds features such as encryption (DTLS or PSK), tunneling, NAT traversal, point-to-multipoint distribution, low bit rate optimization and ST-2110 transport.

Additional products that will be on display at the Cobalt stand include the 9904-UDX-4K up/down/cross converter for generating dynamic metadata when converting HDR to SDR and back to SDR to preserve full HDR picture information; new versions of the 9971 series of multiviewers with added dual outputs and user controls; the new 9915 series of DAs that support 4K 12G-SDI sources; a new 12G-SDI openGear routing card with a 12x12 routing matrix; and SafeLink, an openGear system that can take in multiple transport streams and provide a RIST wrapper to protect video links between two points.

The 2019 IBC Show will run from Sept. 13-17. Cobalt will be located at stand 10.B44.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Aug. 13, 2019 – Cobalt Digital will showcase its card-based 4K and HDR workflow solutions for openGear® frames next month at IBC2019 in Amsterdam (Stand 10.B44). Product highlights will include its new decoders and encoders, RIST Main Profile, bi-directional SDR/HDR conversion solution for live production, and new multiviewers and distribution amplifiers. Plus, the company will debut a new 12G openGear router and RIST gateway solution.

The new 9992-DEC Series of HEVC/AVC/MPEG-2 decoders for openGear frames will be introduced at the show. Like the company’s 9992-ENC series of encoders, the flexible 9992-DEC features pay-as-you-go licensing, so users only pay for required features when needed. Designed to meet the most stringent requirements for today’s broadcasters, the 9992-DEC supports up to 4K resolution and offers a full complement of audio decoding capabilities. The series also includes the 9992-2DEC dual-channel decoder, as well as the 9992-DEC-4K-HEVC with single-channel 4K or dual-channel 2K and support for H.265.

Earlier this year, Cobalt was one of several companies to receive an Emmy® Award for its collaborative work on ARQ, the underlying technology powering RIST. At IBC, Cobalt will debut support for the RIST Main Profile, which adds features such as encryption (DTLS or PSK), tunneling, NAT traversal, point-to-multipoint distribution, low bit rate optimization, and reliable ST-2110 transport.

New advancements in HDR at the show include a complete end-to-end HDR workflow within Cobalt’s 9904-UDX-4K up/down/cross converter. Utilizing Technicolor’s suite of HDR tools, which can be bundled into a single ordering option, the 9904 can generate dynamic metadata when converting from HDR to SDR and back to HDR, preserving the full HDR picture information.

Cobalt continues to develop its popular 9971 Series of multiviewers, adding dual outputs and user controls. Delivering uncomplicated monitoring of asynchronous 4K and HD signals, all three models accommodate a variety of signals and applications. All models also include HDMI outputs for economical viewing on consumer-grade 4K monitors. One-button template presets simplify setup, but users can also create and save customized layouts. Up to five 9971 can be installed in one 2 RU openGear frame – and multiple cards in a cascaded chain can provide multiviewer layouts of up to 64 sources.

The new 9915 Series of DAs support 4K 12G-SDI sources and allow for copper runs long enough to reach most equipment within master control. One of four models in the series, the 9915DA-4x16-XPT-12G, includes four input channels that can be crosspoint-routed to 16 DA outputs in several configurations. Up to 10 cards can be installed in one openGear frame, allowing for up to 40 channels of input and distribution to up to 160 outputs.

“Broadcasters now accept 4K as the production norm, and Cobalt has an extensive menu of openGear-based solutions for studios and mobile production,” Chris Shaw, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital. “Our products provide flexible and affordable ways to process, monitor, and distribute 4K and HDR content.”

Other products at the Cobalt booth will include a new 12G-SDI openGear routing card with a 12x12 routing matrix. Designed to fit into legacy frames, the card helps customers use 4K islands cost effectively. Demonstrating leadership of RIST technology, Cobalt is also launching SafeLink, an openGear solution that can take in multiple transport streams and provide a RIST wrapper to protect video links between two points.

About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR, the cloud, and beyond. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative and proud member of SMPTE, Cobalt also offers a best-of-breed interoperability platform that simplifies technological adoption. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. Learn more at www.cobaltdigital.com. 

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Kyle Wilken has a new title courtesy of Cobalt Digital, as the company has announced it has promoted Wilken to vice president of firmware. Wilken originally joined Cobalt in 2013 as a senior FPGA engineer and previously was promoted to embedded systems development manager.

“Over the past six years, Kyle has become an invaluable member of the Cobalt Digital engineering department,” said Ryan Wallenberg, vice president of engineering. “His contributions to the development of Cobalt equipment in many groundbreaking technologies, specifically HDR, are seen by millions of viewers across the world.”

Wilken, who is based in the company’s Champaign office, will continue to provide vision and engineering management to help continue the product line’s development.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – June 10, 2019 – Cobalt Digital today announced the promotion of Kyle Wilken to vice president of firmware. Wilken joined the company in 2013 as a senior FPGA engineer, and was previously promoted to embedded systems development manager in 2015.

“Over the past six years, Kyle has become an invaluable member of the Cobalt Digital engineering department. His contributions to the development of Cobalt equipment in many groundbreaking technologies, specifically HDR, are seen daily by millions of viewers across the world,” said Ryan Wallenberg, vice president of engineering. “In this position, Kyle will continue to provide the vision and engineering management required to help drive our amazing product pipeline and bring our designs to market.”

“Kyle is a strong team player and provides the strength in engineering that is vital for the future of Cobalt,” added Gene Zimmerman, president and CEO of Cobalt Digital. “We are pleased to promote from within and have him as part of our engineering management team.”

Wilken is based in the company’s main headquarters in Champaign. Contact him at 217-344-1243 or via email at kyle.wilken@cobaltdigital.com.

About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR, the cloud, and beyond. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative and proud member of SMPTE, Cobalt also offers a best-of-breed interoperability platform that simplifies technological adoption. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. Learn more at www.cobaltdigital.com. 

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – April 18, 2019 – Cobalt Digital today announced its 9992-ENC series of HEVC/AVC/MPEG-2 encoders for openGear® frames received the Future Best of Show Award presented by TV Technology magazine last week at the 2019 NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nev.

Now in its sixth year, the Future Best of Show Awards at NAB program recognizes products based on innovation, feature set, cost efficiency, and performance in serving the industry. All nominated products are evaluated by a panel of engineers and industry experts, and are featured in a special Best of Show Awards Program Guide, which will be distributed digitally to more than 100,000 readers of seven Future publications.

“The program focuses attention on superb innovations in technology as seen around the million-square-foot exhibit floor of the industry’s top trade show,” explained Paul McLane, Future managing director, content for media technology titles. “The list of 2019 winners and nominees shows where media technology businesses are headed.”

“We are very proud to be recognized by TV Technology for our new 9992-ENC series of encoders,” said Chris Shaw, Cobalt executive vice president of sales and marketing. “We think it’s the Swiss Army knife of professional grade encoders, because it is flexible enough to be used in almost any broadcast application.”

A cost-effective choice for contribution, distribution, ENG, IPTV, and OTT solutions, the flexible 9992-ENC series offers customized I/O options and extensive audio support. It offers low-latency 8-bit and 10-bit 4:2:0 encoding, with optional license keys for HEVC and 4:2:2 encoding. Its pay-as-you-go licensing structure means users only pay for required features when needed. The 9992-ENC base model includes an 3G-SDI input, but can be upgraded to support four 3G-SDI (1080p60) signals or one 12G-SDI signal (4Kp60).

About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR, the cloud, and beyond. As a founding partner in the openGear initiative and proud member of SMPTE, Cobalt also offers a best-of-breed interoperability platform that simplifies technological adoption. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. Learn more at www.cobaltdigital.com. 

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – April 3, 2019 – Between its 4K and HDR workflow solutions, as well as promotion of a new internet transport protocol, Cobalt Digital will demonstrate a number of technologies for broadcasters next week at the 2019 NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nev. The company will showcase its full complement of card-based solutions for openGear® frames for 4K and HDR workflows at Booth SL9111. Plus, on April 7 in Las Vegas, the company will receive an Emmy® Award for “Pioneering Reliable Transmission Method for Live Contribution and Distribution TV Links.”

The Emmy was awarded to several companies for their collaborative work on RIST, the Reliable Internet Stream Transport protocol, which allows for low-latency video transport of MPEG-2 content over the internet. Cobalt is also a founding company of the RIST Forum, which was established in late March to promote the standard. The RIST Forum will host a free panel discussion about the protocol on April 9 at NAB, and attendees are encouraged to register for the panel at www.rist.tv/register-for-nab-2019-panel.

“We are encouraged by the positive reaction to the new RIST protocol, and we are excited to share our new solutions for 4K and HDR production at NAB,” explained Chris Shaw, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital. “4K has become the production norm, whether or not 4K is actually being distributed by broadcasters and other content providers, and interest in HDR continues to grow. Our openGear-based solutions provide affordable and flexible ways to process, monitor, and distribute 4K and HDR content.”

A cost-effective choice for contribution, distribution, ENG, streaming, and other broadcast applications, the flexible 9992-ENC series of HEVC/AVC/MPEG-2 encoders for openGear® frames offers customized I/O options and extensive audio support. It offers low-latency 8-bit and 10-bit 4:2:0 encoding, with optional license keys for HEVC and 4:2:2 encoding. Its pay-as-you-go licensing structure means users only pay for required features when needed. The 9992-ENC base model includes on 3G-SDI input, but can be upgraded to support four 3G-SDI (1080p60) signals or one 12G-SDI signal (4Kp60).

For uncomplicated monitoring of asynchronous 4K and HD signals, Cobalt offers the new 9971 Series of multiviewers. There are three models in the series designed to accommodate a variety of signals and applications. Up to five 9971 can be installed in one 2 RU openGear frame – and multiple cards can be included in a cascaded chain to provide multiviewer layouts of up to 64 sources. One-button template presets simplify setup, but users can also create and save customized layouts. All models also include HDMI outputs for economical viewing on consumer-grade 4K monitors.

Also at NAB, Cobalt will demonstrate its new 9914 Series of distribution amplifiers, which support 4K 12G-SDI sources and allow for copper runs long enough to reach most equipment within master control. The 9914DA-4x16-XPT-12G, one of four models in the series, includes four input channels that can be crosspoint-routed to 16 DA outputs in several configurations. Up to 10 cards can be installed in one openGear frame, allowing for up to 40 channels of input and distribution to up to 160 outputs.

Cobalt’s 9904-UDX-4K up/down/cross converter and image processor provides an economical SDR-to-HDR and HDR-to-SDR conversion for 4K ad HD live sports. The card allows production truck operators to convert legacy cameras, servers, graphics systems, and other SDR sources for HDR productions. As a result, the 9904-UDX-4K reduces the need for new equipment purchases to produce HDR footage, and eliminates the need for separate SDR and HDR cameras and processing paths.

About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR, the cloud, and beyond. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative and proud member of SMPTE, Cobalt also offers a best-of-breed interoperability platform that simplifies technological adoption. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. Learn more at www.cobaltdigital.com.