Cobalt: Discover Cobalt’s Plug-and-Play ST 2110 Experience
Posted on May 2, 2025 by FEED Staff
With an expanded line of IPMX-compliant products, other Cobalt NAB Show highlights include more tools for IP multiviewer and ARIA audio monitors
Cobalt Digital, the leading designer and manufacturer of award-winning signal processing products, and a founding partner in the openGear initiative, is expanding its platform with numerous new IPMX-compliant solutions shown for the first time at NAB 2025.
The company’s SAPPHIRE mini converters and PACIFIC encoders have both been enhanced with support for IPMX and enriched with an array of new functionalities. Additionally, Cobalt’s UltraBlue IP-MV multiviewer is sporting exciting new tools, and the ARIA line now includes ARIA audio monitors. These enhancements join Cobalt’s extensive platform of products that represent the latest technological advances, including support for ST 2110. These innovations are being showcased in NAB, booth SL5123.
SAPPHIRE shines bright
The SAPPHIRE BBG series of mini converters deliver high-quality design, function and reliability in
a small package. The units are the ideal choice for directly displaying incoming IPMX content on HDMI monitors, including content which originates from a WAN connection, or for converting HDMI to compressed or baseband IPMX streams.
The converters are available in single-, dual- and quad-channel configurations, with some models able to simultaneously transmit and receive. They feature dual SFP cages with support for 10G and 25G Ethernet ports, as well as audio sample rate conversion, and the receiving units can mix and match audio channels without time base synchronisation with the video. The space-saving converters can be mounted directly behind the monitor and are very quiet, making them ideal for small editing or control suites.
Padding out PACIFIC
New for NAB 2025, PACIFIC now offers full support for ST 2110-20 (baseband) and an ST 2110-22 option for JPEG-XS video. Each of the four channels can be individually selected between SDI and ST 2110. In addition, support is included for full asynchronous operation (IPMX-compatible) or IPMX operation in the INDIGO 2110-DC-02 factory-installed option for SMPTE ST 2110.
PACIFIC now offers support for up to two essences of ST 2110-30 (audio); each essence can have up to 16 channels of audio, and the product offers the ability to mix and match channels. Support for asynchronous audio and video operation has been added, as has support for ST 2110-40 (ancillary data). There are dual SFP cages for ST 2022-7 seamless switching, supporting both 10Gbps and 25Gbps interfaces.
The combination of the award-winning PACIFIC 9992-ENC with the ST 2110 input interface option creates a very powerful integrated solution that can be directly deployed in an IPMX facility for local encoding, low-latency transport over the internet using RIST, or to drive a traditional ASI workflow, without having to deploy separate gateway devices. The ability to mix traditional SDI, ST 2110 and IPMX feeds in the same device manages to provide even greater flexibility.
Flexible monitoring
The new ultra-flexible Cobalt ARIA AUD-MON audio monitor supports a wide range of inputs, including 2 SDI up to 12G or MADI, 2 SFP for SDI over fibre, AES, balanced analogue audio and GPI for automation. Features include a live video thumbnail, SDI output for monitoring, individual channel volume controls for mixing, and it’s configurable from the front panel with a touch display or through a web interface.
The four-inch-deep, four-pound monitor fits in 1RU and can be powered from the control Ethernet port (PoE++), as well as external redundant power supplies.
Enhancing UltraBlue
Cobalt is introducing exciting, new features for the UltraBlue IP-MV multiviewer, a software-based multiviewer for compressed and baseband streams over IP that can also be available as a turnkey server. Features include support for receiving audio/video content over IP across a variety of protocols and formats with very flexible audio routing, bringing a multitude of options to suit every application.
The intuitive web interface incorporates support for compressed and baseband (ST 2110 and/or SDI) inputs and multiple outputs, allowing the multiviewer to grow alongside customers’ needs.
Mosaic configurations are a snap with arbitrary sizes and orientations, graphic overlays, ancillary data, tallies, UMDs and IDs. PIPs can also be arbitrarily placed and rotated, PIP configurations can be easily copied, and set-ups can be saved and restored. UltraBlue IP-MV will drive multiple HDMI displays in any orientation (landscape or portrait, selectable per display).
The UltraBlue IP-MV incorporates support for the most common types of ancillary data, including various types of closed-captioning display. It features full audio support, with flexible output audio routing and fully configurable audio bars.
This year’s NAB Show saw a whole host of tech and innovation. Discover the companies present in our NAB Show 2025 guide.
Find out more about Cobalt at cobaltdigital.com
This article was first published in the Spring 2025 issue of FEED.
