Valens was at the show to promote its new HDBaseT chips. We’re used to seeing these in digital signage, but they are very useful in industrial applications. The latest Colligo chip was being shown in a new industrial PC that could support remote displays completely powered from the PC. In a factory environment that can be really convenient. It’s especially useful as the Colligo receiver can correct and re-transmit the data, so that it can act as a repeater for daisychaining and mirroring over long distances. Staff also highlighted that the multistream capability can allow the use and deployment of HDBaseT “KVMs”.
The technology is also gaining some interest in applications where weight is a real issue. Although HDBaseT can support 4 twisted pairs, if you limit the bandwidth, you can run with just a single twisted pair. In applications such as automotive and aviation, that can be a real advantage. The auto makers apparently prefer the simple “Sink/source” topology, rather than having to deal with IP and networking protocols. The latest versions can support 1080 30P over just one pair.
