Avocent is an interesting company. They made their name in KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switching for large enterprise clients - command and control centers and the like. From there it wasn’t too much of a “switch” to the broadcast world. After all, what facility wouldn’t want the power to grant access to any computer system (editing, graphics, etc.) from any suite? Flexibility is always nice.

The company also has an interesting line of products that are a bit peripheral to the broadcast industry. The Emerge WMS series are “wireless media streamer” products that send video images from source to display without messy wires.

At NAB, however, Avocent’s theme is “KVM switching for broadcast.” The company was touting its KVM switching support for Avid (Avocent is an Avid technology partner). At its many demo sites at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Avid is using Avocent switching to allow its presenters to use any keyboard, monitor, and mouse location to access any Avid system across a 16×64 matrix. New for the show is support for dual-head switching, which covers the many editors who need dual monitors. And within Avocent’s control software is integrated baseband audio/video switcher. Using an Nvision router at NAB, Avocent is showing how its KVM switching infrastructure can be tied directly to audio and video switching. If an editor switches workstations, the preview monitor switches AV as well with no latency.