Motorola wants to help bring older cable headend gear into the IP video world.
The vendor's AGB240 ASI to Gigabit Ethernet Bridge is a one-rack-unit-high device that can take 24 Asynchronous Serial Input (ASI) ports and deliver them in an Internet Protocol (IP) format.
In a cable headend, "you have these islands of equipment that do not have a native IP interface," Olaf Nielsen, product manager in Motorola's video solutions group. "It's not terribly fancy but there's a lot of equipment out there -- and the cost of upgrading all that to IP can be quite substantial."
The AGB240 is scheduled to ship in May. The product has a list price of $8,995, which Motorola claims is less than half what typical ASI-to-IP solutions have cost. In addition, according to Motorola, the AGB240 consumes far less power -- 20 watts for a single 1RU device, compared with 200 to 300 for alternative solutions.
