ORLANDO — Harman International Industries announced an agreement between its BSS division, and Netgear to launch the first AVB (IEEE Audio Video Bridge) switches for networking multichannel audio and video over standardized Ethernet.
The companies introduced a pair of 16-port and 24-port co-branded switches featuring AVB hardware and software for use in a wide array of fixed installation audio video applications at InfoComm ’09, noting that standardized multichannel audio and video over Ethernet, enabled by AVB, allows for cost-per-node savings in deploying complex AV systems while advancing integration, ease of use and system functionality and control.
The IEEE 802.1 Audio Video Bridging Task Group is an IEEE initiative comprising engineers from companies in the semiconductor, enterprise computing, automotive, professional AV, consumer electronics and networking solutions markets. The group has developed protocols to allow vendors to build a standards-based network with the appropriate quality of service for high-quality audio performance and production.
Robert Urry, Harman Professional CTO, called the introduction “a game-changing moment in AV integration that immediately makes advanced AV networking simpler, more affordable, more effective and more compelling to a broader market than was ever before possible.
“I am confident that AVB will grow the market for professional-grade AV products and services by enabling a new, wider variety of AV applications from distance learning in education and corporate training and communications, to digital signage in retail, hospitality and municipalities countless other uses in medicine, banking and, of course, entertainment and infotainment. We’re very pleased to work with Netgear in leading the industry by being the first to launch an AVB-capable switch.”
Sanjay Kumar, Netgear’s director of product management for switching, cited “market potential and benefits of AVB switches” for Netgear customers. “Working with Harman Professional enables Netgear to prove this remarkably high-performance and rugged technology in the most demanding professional-grade applications before migrating it to other markets. We’re confident that the new BSS Audio|NETGEAR switches will provide the professional community with plug and play standardization coupled with great sound and video.”
The companies said the IEEE 802.1 Audio Video Bridging standards provide three major enhancements for 802-based networks:
- Precise timing to support low-jitter media clocks and accurate synchronization of multiple streams
- A simple reservation protocol that allows an endpoint device to notify the various network elements in a path so that they can reserve the resources necessary to support a particular stream
- Queuing and forwarding rules that ensure that such a stream will pass through the network within the delay specified by the reservation
The enhancements enabled by IEEE 802.1 standards require no changes to the Ethernet lower layers and are compatible with all the other functions of a standard Ethernet switch (a device that follows the IEEE 802.1Q bridge specification).
For more information, please visit www.harman.com, www.bssaudio.com and www.netgear.com.
