One of the most interesting new products at Essential Install Live, UK’s home-technology show, is nothing too sexy, but it’s something every installer will want in their vans: the 4K-9000 HDBaseT Tester from Smart-e.
The compact handheld tester estimates cable length and measures signal integrity, including bit error rates and HDCP 2.2 compliance.
“Every engineer can pop it into their toolbox,” suggests Smart-e operations manager Adam Lehane.
There is at least one other HDBaseT tester on the market today from Quantum Data, but it’s bulky and expensive, costing several thousand dollars. The Smart-e product will retail for about £499 ($650) when it ships this fall. Smart-e will also provide a 4K/60 Hz HDCP 2.2 signal generator for testing.
Lehane says Smart-e worked with Valens Semiconductor, the developer of HDBaseT technology, to “unlock the information for installers.”
The data does exist in the Valens chipsets (VS100 and VS010), he explains, “but it takes some doing” to extract it.
Smart-e offers a mobile app to log data from the tests.
The 4K-9000 HDBaseT Tester is so new that Smart-e doesn’t have information available online yet, but the spec sheets can be found in the gallery here.
