InfoComm: Cobalt Expands Its Reach Into The AV Market

Cobalt Digital, provider of signal processing products, aims to strengthen its position in the Pro AV market by exhibiting at InfoComm for the first time, June 8-14 in Las Vegas. Cobalt, no stranger to AV, has had equipment in trucks, houses of worship, financial institutions, educational facilities and even cruise ships for years. The company now will feature a lineup at InfoComm that “brings broadcast-quality, cost-effective, integrator friendly and versatile technology to the Pro AV community.” Cobalt will be presenting solutions, many IPMX compliant, Booth C8483.

“Cobalt has been developing Pro AV solutions for many years,” says Suzana Brady, SVP of global sales and marketing. “Integrators, resellers, reps and end-users have been our customers for years but now it is time to bring the products to them at InfoComm, the largest Pro AV Trade Show in North America. We’re very excited to share the Cobalt experience with those that need to save space but require dense, yet quiet solutions.”

The Cobalt Sapphire Converter series accommodates a vast variety of applications with form factors ranging from the BBG series of palm-sized mini converters to rack mounted openGear cards. The Sapphire BBG mini converters are mounted directly behind the monitor, offer high-quality design, function, and reliability in a small package that frees up rack space. The units display received Baseband or JPEG-XS content on HDMI monitors in a simple and cost-effective way, including content from WAN connections. The incredibly quiet converters are ideal for trucks, educational institutions, corporate settings, or houses of worship. BBG units are offered in single, dual and quad channel models, are capable of fully asynchronous operation and are IPMX-compliant.

The Cobalt Sapphire feature-rich openGear converter cards maximize space for greater installation integrity. The Sapphire 9926 openGear HDMI-to-SDI converter cards provide either two or four independent paths of true 12G and HD conversions from HDMI to SMPTE 424M, 292M, or 259M. Each channel is equipped with frame sync as well as full input and output audio crosspoints and optional per-path color correction and scaler. Cobalt also offers the Sapphire 9927 dual-channel openGear® SDI-To-HDMI converter, and the Cobalt Sapphire BIDI-2H2S dual channel bidirectional HDMI to SDI / SDI to HDMI converter.

Wave Family of Multi-Format Routers and Control Panels — Cobalt Wave RTR-64×64 and Wave RTR-32×32 12G-SDI midsize routers offer unprecedented flexibility and are easily integrated into any variety of applications with support for signals up to 12G-SDI. The high density, crosspoint solutions are contained within a compact 4U chassis and controlled by Cobalt Wave control panels which are available in four models: CP-44, CP-42L, CP-78 and CP-84L.

The Cobalt ARIA OG-AUD4-Dante is a 12G 4-channel unit that simultaneously embeds and de-embeds audio between SDI, Dante, AES and MADI with flexible routing and mixing and built in Frame Sync capabilities. ARIA is ideal for managing audio in large studio facilities, sports venues, concert halls, and houses of worship where many audio channels must be carried, multiplexed, and combined with video.

Cobalt Pacific 9992-ENC software defined broadcast openGear encoders bring broadcast-grade technology to Pro AV. The software-defined architecture allows up to 4 channels to be added with HEVC video encoding for compression efficiency, while supporting existing MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC. The Pacific ULL-DEC card decodes H.262 (MPEG-2), H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC) and offers a full complement of audio decoding capabilities.

The Cobalt BBG-1300-FR openGear frame is ideal for remote applications. The enclosure can house two cards in a split width or 1 card in a standard width rear I/O module. Three units fit onto a single 1 RU tray for maximum.