Audio-visual company, Anna Valley, and manufacturer and distributor of technical equipment, Theatrixx, have worked together to design and produce a new SDI to fibre video converter. The Dual SDI to Fibre Reversible Module is the only product of its kind and provides significant efficiencies for delivering video over fibre for events, live entertainment and video productions.
SDI to fibre converters (and their opposite counterparts) have become essential pieces of kit on almost any projects that include video playback. When Anna Valley looked to replace their ageing stock of this type of converter in 2022, technical director David Mitchell observed that even though fibre cables contain two video channels, all the converters on the market at that time only used one of these channels. Mitchell recognised that a converter with two SDI inputs could feed the two separate channels of video in the fibre cable and significantly reduce the number of converters Anna Valley required. He approached Theatrixx with a proposal to develop the unique product in return for a significant order from Anna Valley.
“Converters that only use one video channel in a fibre cable are both expensive and wasteful for projects with dual-channel requirements,” says Anna Valley’s technical director, David Mitchell. “By creating a new converter that uses both video channels, we were looking to optimise efficiency, but we also needed a rock-solid product. The Theatrixx team are ex-technicians and share our ethos around innovation and reliability, making them the perfect partners to help develop this new converter.”
After a few meetings with Mitchell, the Theatrixx team completed the R&D and product development at their headquarters in Montreal, bringing the Dual SDI to Fibre Reversible Module to market just six months later. In addition to halving the amount of expensive fibre cable required for dual channel delivery, because the new converter is housed in a standard chassis and can be mounted on the same rack, it also doubles the number of SDI channels that can be in/output through an eight-bay rack to 16. Anna Valley recently took delivery of a £100k order of the Dual SDI to Fibre Reversible Module converters and racks and Theatrixx has subsequently received significant orders for the product from other technology service providers.
“Converters are one of our most successful global products and part of our international growth strategy for the future,” says Theatrixx’s chief technology officer, Gabriel Duschinsky. “Anna Valley is highly regarded throughout the events and broadcast community, and their proposal to develop this new product allowed us to expand our product range in a way that fit with our vision to develop products that satisfy real needs in the industry. Everybody has benefited from this partnership - we expanded our product range without commercial risk, Anna Valley got a product that fulfilled their exact needs without going through a costly R&D process, and the broader industry can now deliver dual-channel video over fibre more efficiently!”
