The Bond (version 1) is a channel-b

The Bond (version 1) is a channel-bonding link aggregator expansion pack for the Teradek Cube series of compact video encoders. The Cubes are based on the Texas Instruments DaVinci Digital Signal Processor (DSP) chips that do all their H.264 encoding. DSPs, while being more expensive to develop in their own right, are dedicated to their task, and as such, once they’re developed mass production is cheap, and typically the power consumption is relatively low. This in turn lends itself to small form factor devices and that is what the Cube is: small.

I won’t go into a review of them as standalone encoders here, but for reference I have deployed several Cubes with clients in the place of extremely expensive “high-end” encoders that are some five times the price, both for direct-to-web (DTW) and for IP contributions to broadcast TV. For many applications they are excellent.

The Bond extension for the Cube had a proprietary link between itself and the Cube that let the channel-bonding link aggregator and separate encoder communicate to ensure that the critical vertical integration between the multiplex over the bonded link, and the video encoding process could vary— creating a two-part system that was a true cellmux.

Having sold many of these devices as a paired system it obviously became clear that there was a market for a single integrated device. And that is what the Bond II is—it is a true cellmux, a vertically integrated video (and obviously audio) encoder, combined with a channel bonding video multiplexer and a link aggregation protocol.