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The Serial Digital Interface (SDI), standardized in ITU-R BT.656 and SMPTE 259M, is a digital video interface used for broadcast-grade video. more...

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A related standard, known as High Definition Serial Digital Interface (HD-SDI), is standardized in SMPTE 292M; this provides a nominal data rate of 1.485 Gbit/s. An emerging interface, commonly known in the industry as dual link and consisting essentially of a pair of SMPTE 292M links, is standardized in SMPTE 372M; this provides a nominal 2.970 Gbit/s interface used in applications (such as digital cinema) that require greater fidelity and resolution than standard HDTV can provide. A more recent interface, consisting of a single 2.97 Gbit/s serial link, is standardized in SMPTE 424M.

These standards are used for transmission of uncompressed, unencrypted digital video signals (optionally including embedded audio) within television facilities; they can also be used for packetized data. They are designed for operation over short distances; due to their high bitrates they are inappropriate for long-distance transmission. SDI and HD-SDI are currently only available in professional video equipment; various licensing agreements, restricting the use of unencrypted digital interfaces to professional equipment, prohibit their use in consumer equipment. (There are various mod kits for existing DVD players and other devices, which allow a user to add a serial digital interface to these devices).

Electrical interface

The various serial digital interface standards all use one (or more) coaxial cables with BNC connectors, with a nominal impedance of 75 ohms. This is the same type of cable used in analog video setups, which potentially makes for easier upgrades (though higher quality cables may be necessary for long runs at the higher bitrates). The specified signal amplitude at the source is 800 mV (±10%) peak-to-peak; far lower voltages may be measured at the receiver owing to attenuation. Using equalisation at the receiver, it is possible to send 270 Mbit/s SDI over 300 metres without use of repeaters, but shorter lengths are preferred. The HD bitrates have a shorter maximum run length, typically 100 meters.

Uncompressed digital component signals are transmitted. Data is encoded in NRZI format, and a linear feedback shift register is used to scramble the data to reduce the likelihood that long strings of zeroes or ones will be present on the interface. The interface is self-synchronizing and self-clocking. Framing is done by detection of a special synchronization pattern, which appears on the (unscrambled) serial digital signal to be a sequence of ten ones followed by twenty zeroes (twenty ones followed by forty zeroes in HD); this bit pattern is not legal anywhere else within the data payload.

Read more at Wikipedia.org