Gennum Corporation, the leader in Serial Digital Interface solutions, announced production availability of the GS1508 HDTV Serial Digital Cable Driver, the video industry's first integrated HDTV Cable Driver.

The GS1508 HDTV Serial Digital Cable Driver will enable broadcasters to use their existing co-axial infrastructure for future HDTV requirements when used in conjunction with Gennum's GS1504 HDTV Serial Digital Cable Equalizer.

The GS1508 Driver provides differential cable driving outputs at 1.485Gb/s for HDTV video signals and is part of Gennum's HD-LINX product family which is fully compliant with SMPTE 292M.

The GS1508 HDTV Cable Driver was specifically designed to provide one differential output pair to drive two 75ohm co-axial cables at 1.485Gb/s with an 800mV peak to peak signal swing. The HDTV cable driver is suited for implementing co-axial transmitting interfaces for HDTV broadcast production equipment such as routers, distribution amplifiers, production switchers and other equipment.

It is difficult to understand the argument that a product such as this will "enable broadcasters to use their existing co-axial infrastructure for future HDTV requirements." Driving 1.485 Gbit/s into cable requires differential drives so that two coaxial cables will be needed for every routing path. It is totally impossible for an installation to achieve the same functionality with their existing investment in copper; it would need to be doubled.

That is not to say that the use of coax is invalid and one can understand a company pushing coax when they are in that business already, but the argument is spurious. Certainly the use of copper makes considerable sense for smaller stations or production houses though the original performance characteristics that are achieved need to be carefully monitored over time as connectors age or if the cables are subject to possible physical abuse. This is not an application where the initial installation should be marginal.  Any user will, however, be involved in laying new cable to achieve the operational results that are wanted.