At NAB in April, Ensemble Designs launched an innovative new routing product, the BrightEye NXT 430. At first glance, it may not appear to be much, but there is a lot going on in this little box the size of a short stack of CDs.
As you would expect from any modern router, it can accept SD, HD and 3G SDI signals on BNCs, along with embedded audio. The unit has two fixed inputs and two fixed outputs. But this is where things start to get interesting.
First, both of the fixed outputs have frame synchronizers, meaning you can switch asynchronous sources without any image breakup. Both audio and video are switched cleanly. But there's more. There are an additional seven BNCs on the back that can be configured as inputs or outputs. Two additional slots—SFPs, or Small Format Pluggables—can add fiber or other connections; and again these can each be configured as inputs or outputs. There is also a reference BNC so the unit can be genlocked for clean switching without a frame sync delay (assuming your other sources are all genlocked).
But wait, there's more! The front of the unit sports a full-color, full-motion LCD monitor to display your selected source before you switch it to the output. They thoughtfully included a black, bars and pattern generator so you don't have to burn an input on a test signal generator. About the only thing the unit doesn't do is scale or cross-convert video formats. And all this power fits into a third of a rack space.
A final connector on the back is unexpected and most welcome. An RJ-45 allows the unit to be put on your network and controlled remotely from a computer. The front buttons change color depending on whether they are inputs or outputs, and the unit has a rugged, easy-to-use appearance.
The obvious market for this is television news and live production trucks that are taking in a variety of sources that may or may not be genlocked. They may need seven inputs and three outputs one day and four inputs and seven outputs the next. To that end, this fills a real need in a crowded OB van.
However, I can see this as a great solution for a portable church or satellite campus that needs to switch between a variety of sources to a projector (or three). While it's possible to use the input source select on your projectors to change from local video to playback, it's not ideal (and certainly not seamless). You could use a production switcher, but those are fairly big and require at least one monitor. This gives you everything you need for simple switching in a small package, including a QC monitor.
Miniaturization doesn't come cheap (the list price is $4,400), but given what you would be able to replace with this, and the limited amount of space it takes up, it could certainly fill a need in the right setting.
