Harman Partners with Netgear on AVB Switches
Harman International Industries announced an agreement between its BSS division and Netgear to launch the companies’ first AVB switches for networking multichannel audio and video over standardized Ethernet.
Harman International Industries announced an agreement between its BSS division and Netgear to launch the companies’ first AVB switches for networking multichannel audio and video over standardized Ethernet. The announcement, made this week at InfoComm, encompasses the immediate introduction of a pair of 16-port and 24-port co-branded switches featuring specialized AVB hardware and software for use in a variety of fixed installation AV applications.
According to Harman, standardized multichannel audio and video over Ethernet, enabled by AVB, provides AV professionals and their customers with 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 several technology leaders 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.
Co-branded as BSS Audio/Netgear the new switches are available through Harman Professional’s global distribution network and will complete the signal chain between Harman Professional’s new pre-standards AVB-enabled products, including Crown Audio CTs amplifiers and dbx processors.
“Today’s introduction is 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,” said Robert Urry, Harman Professional chief technology officer in a statement. “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 [to] 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.”
“We foresee the market potential and benefits of AVB switches to our customers,” said Sanjay Kumar, Netgear’s director of product management for switching. “Working with Harman Professional enables Netgear to prove this high-performance and rugged technology in the most demanding professional-grade applications before migrating it to other markets. “
