The Link Electronics Orion is a three gigabits, high definition, or standard definition serial digital interface closed caption encoder (3G/HD/SD-SDI CC Encoder) with audio and captions over IP. It accepts 3G/HD/SD-SDI transport streams and gives four closed caption encoded outputs of the same format as the input, with the option of two of them being decoded. The SDI outputs are re-clocked, making the SDI output eye pattern generally better than the input. It is a better re-clocker than most re-clocking Distribution Amplifiers (DA). The unit will pass ANC data untouched including audio to the output.
The Orion will take the user selected channel pair of AES audio that is embedded on the SDI input and send that audio to a Captioner via IP. A free audio over IP player is provided to monitor the audio. The streaming audio is low latency and low bandwidth, so no special Internet services are required. The unit will also receive caption data via IP from the Captioner. This allows the removal of the traditional two phone line setup without having to be connected to a captioning server. This device allows true IP captioning. The audio from this device can also be used as an USB microphone input for other streaming services (Zoom) or speech recognition software.
The Orion will encode line 21/22 CTA-608 waveform and/or encodes SMPTE 334 Caption distribution packet (CDP) for SD. The Caption distribution packet will contain a header, CTA-608 data, CTA-708 data, caption service descriptor, and a footer. For HD it will encode the caption distribution packet. It has RAM that is reserved for XDS packets, the packets will be inserted into CTA-608 field 2 based on XDS packet priority and field 2 availabilities. The unit also has XDS menus for Parental Guidelines (V-Chip) and Transmission Station Identification (TSID) packets. The RAM can be filled using V-Chip software.
The Orion has a menu that allows you to select, resend, or redirect data from the Ethernet port to the serial ports. It has a GPI remote activated Legalizer, also called Weather Lift, with a menu that allows you to select the number of lines to be lifted. The FCC has mandated that captions are not to be displayed over things like people's names, school closings, and so on. This has become a major issue with broadcasters. The Orion also has a decoded output and caption data recovery for quality monitoring. USB connection allows for web GUI to PC. Remote monitoring/controlling is also possible through the GUI.