Axon Playing Host to Historic AVB Networking Demo

In addition to exhibiting 15 new products and enhancements to existing products, Axon is showcasing a demo that proves it is now possible to distribute uncompressed video over an IP infrastructure using IEEE802.1 Audio Video Bridging (AVB) technology. An abiding theme of industry debate over the past few years, AVB heralds the arrival of a comprehensive standards-based approach to audio/video networking.

To highlight this latest advance, Axon has built a demonstrator incorporating a 10Gb Ethernet switch courtesy of Extreme Networks. On the Axon Synapse platform, one endpoint acts as a master unit and sources uncompressed 3-Gbps SDI. This is then converted to packetized data and transmitted to a second endpoint (a slave on the network). This endpoint converts the packetized video to traditional 3G-SDI and shows this on a monitor. This second endpoint also has a 3-Gbps SDI input and transmits a second 3G-SDI stream over the Ethernet back to the master unit, which converts this back to 3G-SDI.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is a world-first demo of its kind,” says Axon CEO Jan Eveleens. “We believe it to be a significant moment in the history of the AVB project.”

Meanwhile, new products on show at the Axon stand include the GIX100/110 dual-channel high-performance 3-Gbps/HD/SD-SDI video and embedded audio probes with clean–video-switchover functionality; the HLD100, a video-delay system that can delay up to six hours of HD-SDI video by using a high-quality JPEG 2000 compression to ensure visual lossless transparency; and the GMA100/110/120/130/140 dual SDI (up to 3-Gbps) embedded domain audio shufflers with a 64-channel MADI input or output.