Plura and Ensemble: engineering never really goes out of fashion
Monday May 25, 2026 13:24
At NAB this year, Gencom had the opportunity to catch up with our friends at Plura — which now also includes our friends at Ensemble Designs, following Plura’s acquisition of Ensemble two years ago.
This was a particularly interesting meeting for us, because both companies have independently been partners to Gencom for many years. Both are well-established, engineering-led organisations, and both have built their reputations on making products that do exactly what they say on the tin. In broadcast engineering, that is not faint praise. It is often the difference between a system that works on day one and a system that is still working quietly and reliably ten years later.
Ensemble, in particular, has long been known for rock-solid signal processing and infrastructure products. Some of the product lines were, admittedly, starting to get a bit long in the tooth as the industry moved forward into 12G-SDI and SMPTE ST 2110 workflows, while much of the Ensemble range remained centred around 3G-SDI. But “older” is not the same as “obsolete”, especially when the engineering is good.
A case in point is the Ensemble BrightEye BE57, which is currently functioning as the beating heart of the new virtual production studio Gencom built for TAFE NSW this year. It is simple, reliable, cost-effective, and can switch cleanly between 24p and 25p — a key requirement for that environment. This is not a product that has seen a major refresh every five minutes, which in today’s world almost makes it suspiciously well behaved. It just works.
During commissioning, we did actually run into a bug that was preventing the unit from switching correctly to 24p. Jeremy Wood, Ensemble’s head of engineering, identified the issue and had a fix issued within 48 hours. That is the sort of engineering capability we are talking about, and it is one of the reasons we have such a high regard for both Ensemble and Plura.
So naturally, we were keen to see what the combined Plura and Ensemble team had been working on.
The answer is: quite a lot.
On the signal processing side, Plura has introduced new BrightEye products that bring the Ensemble engineering lineage forward into modern 12G-SDI and SMPTE ST 2110 workflows. The new BrightEye 1612G is a compact 12G/3G/HD/SD/ASI reclocking distribution amplifier, available in several combinations of coax and SFP fibre inputs and outputs. It supports UHD, HD, SD and ASI signals, passes embedded audio, and includes the sorts of practical details engineers care about: clock regeneration, jitter reduction, automatic cable equalisation, flexible power options, and the ability to rack up to six units in 1RU.
The BrightEye Gateway 4 is another important addition. It is a bi-directional four-channel ST 2110/SDI gateway, designed to bridge SDI and IP workflows for signals up to 4096 x 2160. It supports 12G, 3G and HD-SDI, simultaneous encapsulation and de-encapsulation, dual 10/25GbE media LAN ports, ST 2022-7 seamless protection switching, and modern control options including NMOS, Ember+, SNMP, USB, RS232 and GPIO.
Plura has also introduced the new BrightEye Mitto 4K and Mitto 25G platform, bringing the well-known Mitto scan converter family into 12G-SDI, ST 2110 and IPMX workflows. The Mitto 25G platform supports SFP+/SFP28 10G/25G, ST 2110, ST 2022-7, IPMX, 12G/3G/1.5G-SDI, 4K HDMI 2.0, HDCP 2.2 and HDR, including PQ and HLG. In practical terms, that means taking computer-generated content and turning it into proper broadcast video streams for modern hybrid SDI/IP environments.
That is exactly the sort of progress we were hoping to see: Ensemble’s proven broadcast infrastructure engineering, combined with Plura’s deep experience in timing, monitoring and IP-based workflows.
On the Plura side, one of the most interesting demonstrations was something a little outside our usual day-to-day world: their low-latency conductor camera system for film scoring, orchestral recording and live performance environments.
In these applications, timing is everything. Musicians may not always have direct line of sight to the conductor, particularly in scoring stages, remote performance spaces, theatre pits, isolation rooms, or other distributed production environments. Historically, analogue camera and monitor systems were often used because they introduced very little delay. As those older systems are phased out, the challenge is to provide a digital replacement that preserves the immediacy performers need.
Plura’s answer is a specially optimised low-latency camera system working with its Fast Mode monitor technology. The aim is simple: give musicians and engineers a real-time view of the conductor, with minimal delay, so tempo, timing and musical cues remain locked together.
The NAB demos made the point nicely. In one setup, Plura had a toy train running around a track inside a closed cupboard, with the camera mounted inside. In darkness, the camera’s IR capability showed the scene clearly. Open the cupboard, and it immediately adjusted to visible light. In another demo, the camera was pointed at a metronome, with the signal distributed through the new 1612G-1C5C1S distribution amplifier to Plura reference displays using both 12G-SDI and SMPTE ST 2110 paths.
It was a neat demonstration because it brought together several parts of the Plura and Ensemble story: timing, monitoring, low-latency video, SDI, IP, and practical broadcast engineering.
More importantly, it was good to see these two companies moving forward together in a way that makes sense. Plura and Ensemble have both earned their reputations by building useful, reliable, engineer-friendly products. The newer 12G and ST 2110 products show that the combined team is not just preserving that legacy, but actively bringing it into the next generation of broadcast infrastructure.
It was great to catch up with the team, see the new toys, and get a closer look at where the product lines are heading. We are looking forward to seeing what they come up with next.
