Overview and Setting Up

The Cinegy Route virtual destination functionality is a useful mechanism to achieve the simulation of SDI switching with IP flows. A virtual destination is actually best considered as an URL rendezvous-point, which can either be used as a key when listening to the multicast broadcast of the system state, or as a resource to access via the HTTP GET. While the mechanism is not a standard, it is open and accessible to any third-party devices that wish to inter-operate with Cinegy Route.

One class of third-party devices are network stream receiver boxes (or set-top-boxes / STBs), and Cinegy Route comes with out-of-the-box support for a particular, popular box – the Amino A140. While other boxes, devices and software can easily be extended to support the virtual destination rendezvous, the A140 can be used instantly with just a shipping copy of Cinegy Route.

The benefits of using an off-the-shelf STB for stream decoding is largely that any commercial TV can instantly be turned into a broadcast monitor, with just an inexpensive box mounted near with only power and an Ethernet lead connected. Customers can build complete gallery walls running without major expense, or can drop fully routable monitors all around the office or the newsroom.

The Amino A140 STB is designed to be managed at scale, and is quite capable of being set up just by registering the MAC address centrally in DHCP and plugging in. For this reason, they can seem a little daunting to set up quickly for a small setup with a single screen.

However, starting with just a single unit is the easiest way to get familiar with the process. The Amino website has a huge amount of information to help you get started, including configuration and installation guides. These contain details of how to set TV formats, perform firmware updates, access management menus and perform troubleshooting. All customers are recommended to review this information before attempting integration with Cinegy Route.