Lawo unveils new IP platform

German IP broadcast manufacturer Lawo has unveiled its new .edge IP video infrastructure platform at NAB Show 2022 in Las Vegas. .edge’s compact 2RU housing accommodates up to four 25/100 GbE .edge processing blades and rear I/O plates with best-in-class signal conversion density.

Each rear I/O blade provides 48 HD-BNC connectors for SD/HD/3G/UHD SDI interfacing, resulting in 192 SDI/IP conversions per 2RU. .edge provides full support for the SMPTE ST2110 suite of standards with ST2022-7 redundancy built in, providing advanced essence-based handling and ensuring seamless protection switching of audio, video and ancillary data streams in both local and wide-area network operations. 

“.edge complements Lawo’s established V__matrix video processing and multiviewer solution with a hyper-density SDI/IP gateway,” explains Phil Myers, Lawo’s CTO. “It’s designed from the ground up to be a HOME-native client. It is automatically discovered and registered within our HOME network environment, and benefits from all of HOME’s next-generation management features: user access control, quarantining of unknown devices, network security, parameter tweaking and real-time health monitoring.” 

.edge’s board design is unique: it doesn’t have an audio TDM bus nor a video matrix in the middle of its architecture. Video is switched on the IP packet level in one of two ways: “make before break” and “break before make.” Audio signals are switched in MBB mode using a V-fade curve for clean and quiet transitions. .edge’s local loop support allows users to route local inputs to local outputs, while the packet replication capability allows a packet received once can be used many times without additional stream management or logic operations: packets in the packet buffer are available to any SDI output.