special report fibre optics
To stay competitive in the market, both AV companies and broadcasters are faced with a need to upgrade their operational, control, and communication components on a regular basis. However, they do not necessarily need to upgrade all their production equipment so often. While this saves on budget the remaining challenge is that of integration. The elements of new and legacy equipment are often not designed to interact on friendly terms. Colin Clarke, senior technical sales & support manager, Bright Space Technologies, reports.
actually being used in the market. Consider how the ‘technology gap’ plays out within the AV/IT and broadcasting sectors. A piece of equipment is purchased in the mid
F
Moving forward withfibre
ollowing on from the introduction above, what results is a ‘technology gap’, defined as the gap between what is currently invented and what is available, and what is
Photo
©
iStockphoto.com/ melaniebetts.
1990s. It has a 20-year functional lifespan and is designed to communicate with the computers and displays of the day. Yet, within five years, CPUs, networks, interfaces, software components, and other technologies have taken a massive leap ahead and changed - in some cases, even down to the way they connect and communicate (eg the advent of HD-SDI 3Gb+
3D/DVI/wireless systems, USB, etc). Suddenly a ‘technology gap’ exists between this legacy hardware and the operational controllers and communication lines in use. A recent example of this was a desire to transfer large data rates on USB 2.0, 480 M/bps CAT5 would not provide this due to the bandwidth restrictions. As the speed of technological
inventions increases, the gap widens, causing a number of difficulties for business – particularly for industries like AV/IT & those that have become to rely heavily on technology. Trying to bridge this ‘integration’ gap presents some of the most significant challenges in the broadcast industry today. Fortunately, there is a sturdy bridge, which presents a permanent solution to the issue: fibre!
Fibre optics: advantages
Fibre optics have numerous advantages. First, fibre is lightweight, thin and therefore easy to install. Fibre only requires small form factor hardware to run it – therefore, saving valuable space and allowing for smaller, less expensive electronic components. Fibre can handle RS-232/422 and RS-
485 to physically connect to PLCs, I/O, and other hardware – connection
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