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Industry

Broadcast and professional AV

SDI, NTSC/HD decoding, genlock PLL, and multi-FPGA video routing for equipment that fails in public if it fails at all.

Scope

What we build in this sector

Product types we have designed, not a list of everything the sector contains.

  • Camera adapters and control units
  • SDI to IP gateways and format converters
  • Genlock and sync distribution
  • FPGA video processing boards
Why it is hard

What separates this sector

The constraints that decide the design here, and that a general-purpose electronics supplier tends to meet for the first time on your project.

A video interface board on the bench with an eye diagram and a frequency response on the instruments behind
A link that locks on the bench, against formats written years apart.

Latency is a specification, not a target

A processing chain that averages well but occasionally stalls is unusable in a live gallery. The pipeline has to be deterministic at rate, which is why the video path is FPGA rather than software.

Interoperability is judged against other vendors, not against itself

A gateway that works on the bench with its own counterpart proves nothing. It has to lock to hardware from vendors we do not control, on formats written years apart.

Sync is unforgiving

Genlock and PTP errors do not degrade gracefully; they show up as a visible artefact in front of an audience. The margin has to be engineered rather than discovered.

Detail

How we approach it

Broadcast work has an unusual property: the failure mode is public and immediate. A dropped frame during a live international feed is not a support ticket, it is an incident, and the verification bar is set accordingly.

Our team grew up serving Japanese and Korean broadcast equipment manufacturers, which means documentation discipline and traceable design reviews are not something we added for process reasons — they were the price of entry with those customers.

What this usually involves

  • Multi-FPGA video distribution where one device cannot carry the fabric
  • SDI and HD decoding, genlock PLL, and the timing discipline both demand
  • Boards dense enough that stack-up and escape routing have to be settled together
  • Thermal and power design for equipment that runs continuously rather than in bursts
Compliance context

What the product is judged against

We design against these and produce the evidence a submission needs. Certification is held by whoever owns the product, not by us — any supplier who tells you otherwise is describing a different arrangement than the one you are buying.

  • SMPTE ST 292 / ST 424 (HD/3G-SDI)
  • SMPTE ST 2110 (professional media over IP)
  • AES67 (audio over IP)
  • CISPR 32 / EN 55032 (emissions)

Published work

No case study is published in this sector yet. We have delivered work here — ask us and we will talk you through it directly.

Capabilities

Services most often used here

The same six capabilities, in the combination this sector usually needs.

Building something in this space?

Tell us what the product has to do and where it has to survive. We will come back within one business day with an honest read on feasibility, risk and timeline.

Start a projectSee published work