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Interesting, what exactly does the Decimator do? (Side note: I don't think it is a particularly clever idea of Decimator Design to fill their logo and homepage

by lqet 2y ago

Interesting, what exactly does the Decimator do? (Side note: I don't think it is a particularly clever idea of Decimator Design to fill their logo and homepage with images of large spiders. They are effectively eliminating around 10% of the population with arachnophobia as customers, and are making the experience of visiting their website slightly uncomfortable for large parts of the remaining population.)

draw_down 2y ago
[dead]
mschuster91 2y ago
> Interesting, what exactly does the Decimator do? A multitude of things, depending on how you configure it: - signal boosting of low-voltage or otherwise problematic HDMI or SDI signals, including reclocking. That's imposing virtually no latency and if you're running in a TV broadcast environment with centralized clocking it makes work easier for the downstream mixer. Primarily, it avoids issues with mis-designed sources such as cheap-ass adapter dongles that have signal integrity issues - as long as it's "good enough" for the Decimator to recognize it will output a clean and high-strength signal. - format conversion from HDMI/DVI to SDI and vice versa. That imposes a tiny bit of latency and allows the usage of "consumer" equipment with broadcast equipment, or if you use two Decimators linked by SDI, you can "just" go for far longer cable runs than you could ever do with HDMI - up to 100m, in practice way more. - up and downscaling as well as framerate conversions. This is where things really get interesting - no matter what kind of source and sink you use or what their limitations are, the scaler engine can make them talk. That includes color space conversions and bandwidth as well, and it's particularly useful if you, say, have a 12G SDI link from the source to the sink, and you want to use an older display for additional monitoring. Splice a Decimator in there and it will output the full quality signal on one output while providing a scaled-down signal on the second output.
wruza 2y ago
Yeah, that’s the perfect case of a good product overrun by a questionable design idea. And its name sounds 13yo too, tbh.
deleted 2y ago
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Scaevolus 2y ago
Decimator Design excluding 10% of the population is a historically accurate decimation.

by lqet 2y ago

draw_down 2y ago

[dead]

mschuster91 2y ago

> Interesting, what exactly does the Decimator do? A multitude of things, depending on how you configure it: - signal boosting of low-voltage or otherwise problematic HDMI or SDI signals, including reclocking. That's imposing virtually no latency and if you're running in a TV broadcast environment with centralized clocking it makes work easier for the downstream mixer. Primarily, it avoids issues with mis-designed sources such as cheap-ass adapter dongles that have signal integrity issues - as long as it's "good enough" for the Decimator to recognize it will output a clean and high-strength signal. - format conversion from HDMI/DVI to SDI and vice versa. That imposes a tiny bit of latency and allows the usage of "consumer" equipment with broadcast equipment, or if you use two Decimators linked by SDI, you can "just" go for far longer cable runs than you could ever do with HDMI - up to 100m, in practice way more. - up and downscaling as well as framerate conversions. This is where things really get interesting - no matter what kind of source and sink you use or what their limitations are, the scaler engine can make them talk. That includes color space conversions and bandwidth as well, and it's particularly useful if you, say, have a 12G SDI link from the source to the sink, and you want to use an older display for additional monitoring. Splice a Decimator in there and it will output the full quality signal on one output while providing a scaled-down signal on the second output.

wruza 2y ago

Yeah, that’s the perfect case of a good product overrun by a questionable design idea. And its name sounds 13yo too, tbh.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Scaevolus 2y ago

Decimator Design excluding 10% of the population is a historically accurate decimation.