Lightware UBEX-Pro20-HDMI-R100

Rowan Lee holds the position of Technical Support & Research at Adelaide’s Novatech Creative Event Technology. Starting out as a theatre tech student, he soon found work in live events. With a background in electronics and product engineering, and specialities in lighting, video, and comms, Rowan is involved in Novatech’s technical decisions and operations, and provides research, education, and ongoing support across all disciplines.

Review

At Novatech, we’ve been researching and demoing solutions for 4K video signal transport over the last couple of years, as we saw it as a developing need for our clients.

There are dozens of available options, but most are targeted at installation. There is a small subset that are rental-friendly, and a smaller subset of that which are no-compromise solutions.

When we compared the options with those criteria, there was nothing else but UBEX that had the feature set along with the robustness. UBEX checks all the boxes.

The journey to 4K has been interesting. We’ve seen a progression from most gigs being in HD or SD, then to screens at HD or greater. Over the past six years, 4K has become the norm and clients now expect it.

As such, we’re using our UBEX with big lumen, big pixel projectors, mainly from Barco. It’s often large blended walls but, at other times, individual screens, where more pixels are better!

The main UBEX range has install-oriented construction, like IEC power connections. The UBEX-Pro20-HDMI-R100 and other units made for the rental market come gig-ready, with extra corners on the metal case for protection, PowerCON True1 power connection, and rigging points for mounting on truss.

The model that stood out as most versatile to us has a single opticalCON DUO connection making space for an extra gigabit Ethernet.

Deployment and Operation

While the UBEX can be deployed on a network in conjunction with a Lightware Matrix Management unit, we’re usually using them in point-to-point applications.

We have a large stock of single mode fibre, with Neutrik opticalCON connections, so crew with no knowledge of how to handle fibre correctly can still plug and unplug without scratching it up.

There are three modes of operation for each unit in point-to-point mode – transmitter, receiver, or transceiver.

There are two completely independent video pipelines you can use on each unit, and both can run in either direction. If the unit is a transmitter, you can tell it which input is active, and set its local output to reproduce that signal.

In transceiver mode, you can scale on the receive end, so for example if you have a 4K source and have to swap out to a non-4K projector, you can scale easily without having to change your signal path.

In terms of set-up interface, both the front panel and the control software (Lightware Device Controller) are both usable. It is very easy to use only the front panel, which means you can just grab a pair of UBEX and go.

A really nice feature in point-to-point mode is that you can configure the unit on the other end from the one you’re on, so you don’t have to climb up a truss or pull out a computer.

There’s lots of nice features like EDID management, which is very important when dealing with dry hire events where we provide projection and someone else plugs in a source.

It guarantees that everything operates in the right colour space, resolution and bit depth.

Redundancy

The design of the unit means the two signal paths are redundant by default.

There are two physical HDMI input ports, and software-defined processing that changes that into data to travel over Ethernet. Two 10Gb Ethernet links travel over fibre, so if you’re transmitting a single signal that is under 50% capacity, it’s automatically redundant – if one of your fibre links dies it will continue operating.

You can set the UBEX to output the same signal on both output ports, too.

In terms of source redundancy, you can send two different sources into two different inputs and choose which it listens to. Power is not redundant, but Lightware have chosen a high spec power supply.

We pull apart any new gear to check that the quality of manufacturing is up to scratch, and UBEX certainly are, to the extent that all of the HDMI ports are on separate daughter boards, so if you trash a port you can replace it quite cheaply.

Learning Curve

The only teething issues we’ve had with UBEX has been our own ‘video learning curve’; one thing that’s newer to us is managing colour space.

When you deal with the high data volume of 4K it’s a relevant detail. For example, you can’t quite fit two full 4K 4:4:4 signals down the 20Gb of link capacity, but if you drop them both back to 4:2:2, which is just a bit of chroma subsampling which is industry-standard and used in SDI, then you can fit two full 4K 60Hz independent signals through one box.

• 

• 

Improvements and Suggestions

We’ve been in touch with the Lightware design team and they’re interested in the feature suggestions we’ve put in. They’re really committed to developing UBEX as a platform and expanding it based on customer feedback, which we appreciate.

When we’re sending 4K, we’d like to have the local output on the transmitter output a downscaled version so we can monitor it on a 1080 screen, so we don’t have to have 4K monitors for confidence checks.

We pull apart any new gear to check that the quality of manufacturing is up to scratch, and UBEX certainly are…

We’d also like a genlock input, which would require new hardware. We often use 4K projectors with a 4Kx1K output canvas to create super wide screens, so we’re asking for more flexible signal routing – like the ability to route a single 4K input to left/right or top/bottom splits across two separate half outputs, or the reverse, combining two 1080 inputs into one double-wide canvas output.

Conclusion

Our UBEX-Pro20-HDMI-R100s have performed flawlessly. They’re very well-thought-out products. It’s clear they’re built by people with experience in the production industry who have tested them on gigs, and the support from Lightware has been genuine and proactive.

THE SPECS – UBEX-Pro20-HDMI-R100

• Scaling of video signals to match the properties of the target display/sink

• Metal enclosure

• Ethernet extension (100 Mbps)

• Command injection on RS-232 and IR ports

• Supports all VESA and HDTV resolutions

• Advanced EDID Management

• Supports HDMI 4K signal formats (4K UHD @60Hz RGB 4:4:4, up to 18 Gbps)

• Breakaway audio and video switching (audio and video signals can be routed separately)

• HDR and Dolby Vision support

• HDCP 2.2 and HDCP 1.4 compliant with cross conversion capabilities

• 4096×2160@60Hz/4:4:4 maximum resolution (600MHz)

• Uncompressed video up to 18 Gbps datarate (600 MHz pixel clock)

• Mounting options for rack, furniture or truss

Product info: https://lightware.com/ubex-pro20-hdmi-r100
Distributor: Lightware Visual Engineering Australia https://lightware.com

CX Magazine – May 2020   

LIGHTING  |  AUDIO  |  VIDEO  |  STAGING  |  INTEGRATION

Entertainment technology news and issues for Australia and New Zealand
– in print and free online www.cxnetwork.com.au

© VCS Creative Publishing