In addition, manufacturers of PC-based broadcast equipment, including software-based video encoders, constitute a crucial market segment.

“At DekTec, we pride ourselves on constantly improving our designs to meet the evolving needs of our customers,” said Sito Dekker CEO and Owner of DekTec. DekTec was founded in 2000 by Dekker and Maarten Ghijsen, both former Philips Broadcast employees.

“We have mastered the art of designing hardware and SDKs that are both efficient and cost-effective,” he said. “As a result, we have gained a reputation for excellence in the market, and supply some of the largest equipment builders in the industry. This success has enabled us to produce high-quality hardware at competitive prices, making us a successful provider for cost-effective and reliable PC interface cards.”

The company specializes in two key product lines, both of which leverage Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) hardware.

The hardware product line is a range of PCI Express interface cards and USB-based interface devices that enable high-speed capture and transmission of digital video signals to and from a PC. The PCIe cards are mostly used in PC servers, while the USB devices are often used with a laptop for portable test and measurement.

The company supports a number of interface standards, including ASI and SDI, as well as modulators and receivers for a wide range of modulation standards including ATSC 3.0, DVB-S2X and DVB-T2.

DekTec is currently developing its next-generation cards and devices, which will support both uncompressed and compressed video over IP using SMPTE 2110 and SRT over standard high-speed Ethernet networks.

The second product line consists of PC-based test and measurement software that works in conjunction with DekTec's PCIe interface cards and USB devices. These software applications include StreamXpert, a universal analyzer for all types of digital television streams, and StreamXpress, a playback and test-signal generator. Both applications are highly regarded in the industry for their versatility and ease of use.

Manufacturers of PC-based broadcast equipment, including software-based video encoders, constitute a crucial market segment for DekTec as well.

Dekker said there are currently two key challenges facing its customer base today. The first is simply the need to lower the cost per channel in order to be more competitive. The second challenge is the increasing complexity of audio and video interfacing technologies such as uncompressed video over IP (SMPTE 2110).

He added that cost is a top priority for its customers, especially when it comes to many-channel systems.

“To help keep costs low, we've utilized the latest generation of chips in our interface cards and removed any unnecessary components,” said Dekker. “Our focus has been on delivering a lean, efficient solution that doesn't sacrifice quality or performance.

“Furthermore, we have developed a range of innovative technologies, e.g. Zero Copy sharing of video between multiple dockers, that enable our customers to optimize the efficiency of their applications, and allow them to implement a larger number of channels per machine, resulting in a further reduction of the cost per channel.”

Another important strategy for solving customers’ challenges is the fact that DekTec's hardware products and SDK offer a seamless, “plug and play” solution to manage the complexity of new interfacing protocols.

“With the ability to distribute development efforts across a broad customer base, we are able to develop high-quality interface solutions more efficiently than our customers could on their own,” said Dekker. “At DekTec, we abstract the video interfacing process, freeing up our customers’ engineers to focus on their core areas of expertise.”