SOUTHWICK, MA, April 3, 2024 – Hitachi Kokusai Electric Comark LLC (hereinafter “COMARK”), a manufacturer and supplier of DTV transmitters, encoding systems, and associated field services for over 50 years, has announced the release of the LEX-2000 ATSC 3.0 Upgrade Solution.  The LEX encoder has been available for many years and is currently used by broadcasters for LPTV and disaster recovery market segments.

The LEX‐2000 is a powerful yet low-cost ATSC 1.0 encoder/multiplexer, that can be configured with all the necessary functions to get a DTV station on-the-air with up to 8 video programs.  It uses a compact 2RU dedicated hardware platform and includes many built-in source connections to support HD-SDI, SD-SDI, and NTSC Analog, as well as an ASI input for MPEG2 transport streams.  The encoder also supports PSIP ingest, EAS, and top-of-the-hour station ID.  The LEX-2000 platform is an extremely versatile product that now has a simple upgrade path to support ATSC 3.0.

The LEX 3.0 Upgrade pairs the LEX-2000 with the DTV Innovations Medusa product for a simple and cost-effective upgrade path to NextGen TV.  The consolidated solution includes HEVC-DASH encoding, ROUTE, and the Broadcast Gateway functions with a very simple user interface for system configuration.  Additional video programs can also be licensed on an as-needed basis.  The upgrade uses a single, space-efficient 1RU commercial high-availability server incorporating hot-swappable redundant power supplies that has a simple interface to existing LEX-2000 encoder platforms.

The LEX 3.0 Upgrade also accommodates ESG, AEA/AEI, and NRT ROUTE data encapsulation for ATSC 3.0 “Datacasting” of related and unrelated IP Data for broadcast.  The solution provides an ATSC 3.0 A/324 compliant STLTP output that integrates seamlessly with the EXACT-V2 ATSC 3.0 compliant DTV exciter that is used throughout the company’s DTV transmitter product line.

Additional information on this solution will be available at Comark’s NAB booth C4516 later this month.