Uniguest MediaStar chassis and MultiStream transcoders — the single-slot 769 and 3RU multi-slot 770 blade housings, and the 700-482 and 700-485 transcoder appliances.

The chassis is not optional

MediaStar gateway and encoder blades — the 783, 784, 796, 797, 798, 799 — have no power supply or housing of their own. They mount in a chassis, which supplies both.

This is the most common omission on a first Uniguest quote: the blades are specified, the chassis is not, and the shortfall surfaces on the install date. Count the blades, work out the slots, and the chassis follows.

• 769 — single-slot with integral power supply, for one blade.
• 770 — 3RU multi-slot with integral power supply, for a populated headend.

The 770 is the cheaper route per blade once more than two or three are involved, and it keeps the rack tidier.

What a transcoder is for

A transcoder converts a stream that already exists into a different format, bitrate or resolution. That is a different job from encoding, which starts from baseband video.

It earns its place in three situations: endpoints that cannot decode the headend's format, a network link too constrained for the original bitrate, and estates where one high-quality source feeds several lower-bandwidth destinations.

The 700-482 is an appliance; the 700-485 is a 1U rack-mount version of the same function.

Specify it from the endpoints backwards

Transcoding is often avoidable. If every endpoint handles the headend format and the network carries the bitrate, it is cost that adds latency for no benefit. Confirm the decode capability of the player estate first — and if a transcoder is genuinely needed, size the channel count it has to handle concurrently.

Creation Networks sizes chassis, slots and transcoding against the actual headend and endpoint estate, so nothing is discovered missing on site. Call 888-230-3661 or email sales@creationnetworks.net.