Optocore has unveiled the Festival Box – based on the BroaMan Repeat48WDM media converter, which uses Repeat48-2Fiber modules at its source.
Having already proven fibre-based technology in the broadcast industry – marketed through its technology partner BroaMan – Optocore has responded to the growing demand from the live sound community for a more elegant and efficient signal transport system.
‘We have called it the Festival Box because it is perfect for festival situations when multiple bands are appearing, each sound engineer bringing different consoles, and running different protocols to the stagebox,’ says Optocore Applications Engineering Manager, Maciek Janiszewski. ‘‘All can now be transported using just a single duplex fibre, thereby saving a tremendous amount of cabling between FOH and stage.’
The Festival Box provides several specific models with different conversion options, such as: 12 duplex SFP slots multiplexed into a quad fibre; six duplex SFP slots multiplexed into a duplex fibre; six duplex SFP slots plus 12 BNC (which can be used for 3G-SDI and coax Madi) ports; 24 BNC ports; and 12 BNC ports.
The standard SFP modules allow any protocol to tunnel over the same fibre, and because the SFP optical module transceivers are hot-swappable they can be exchanged to meet any demand.
‘What makes this so perfect for the rental market is that the Festival Box supports all fibre protocols as well as Cat5 Ethernet-based standards or even HDMI – it doesn’t need to “know” the protocol, it will just pass it transparently,’ Janiszewski summarises. ‘The customer can use the SFP flavour of choice to achieve simple connectivity.’
More: www.optocore.com
