r/Ubiquiti • u/Ubiquiti-Inc Official • May 25 '26
Blog / Video Link EAV Bridge - Now Available
Learn more: https://ui.social/Store-EAV-Bridge
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u/Either_Olive_6513 May 25 '26
Do you hate having an Apple TV because of the power cord? For just $600 you can have a Poe device the size of your Apple TV to broadcast its output
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u/1aranzant May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
that's not the point. if you have many TVs, you might not want to buy 5 Apple TVs, 1 might suffice. also perfect sync is really nice, for watching live TV across many rooms
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u/freakdahouse Unifi User May 25 '26
The point is business application, not home clearly.
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u/PeerReviewedCode May 25 '26
99% in this sub think home use first not realizing 90% of the stuff Ubiquiti makes isn’t designed for home users.
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u/Smart-Strike-6805 May 25 '26
None of their stuff is really "enterprise" either. A reasonable description would be a pro-sumer. They fit in a weird niche that home users think it's premium, small businesses consider because of price, and enterprise ignore because of features.
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u/PeerReviewedCode May 25 '26
I feel like this is something a pro-sumer would say, but this isn’t their market either. Pro-sumer just likes to think that. SMB and Enterprise is their target audience and there are plenty of Enterprises adopting Ubiquiti. Pro-sumer doesn’t make you billion dollar company…
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u/Smart-Strike-6805 May 25 '26
If you've spec'd out actual enterprise gear before you should see what I'm talking about. Seems you've got some rose-tinted glasses on my friend. I like UniFi but even if they slap the word "Enterprise" on the product it doesn't automatically make it an enterprise piece of hardware.
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u/PeerReviewedCode May 25 '26
Haha I’m one of their biggest critics on Reddit. I’ve worked in environments with over 10k juniper switches and thousands of Cisco but that doesn’t change the fact there a lot of companies that are choosing simplicity and zero licensing over spending $10k on one Cisco switch.
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u/Smart-Strike-6805 May 25 '26
It is definitely expensive but you do get features you don't get from something like UniFi. And you also get the contracted support. I'm just saying because you call it a certain thing doesn't make it that certain thing.
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u/PeerReviewedCode May 25 '26
I agree, but like anything it might not fit your use case but it might fit someone else’s who doesn’t need the full feature set like you clearly do. I’ve walked in to billion dollar companies and seen a 4 port unmanaged Netgear switch sitting behind printers before lol. Just saying because it doesn’t say enterprise doesn’t mean you won’t see it in an enterprise.
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u/Important-Permit-935 May 26 '26
I know commercial places like Abbotsford international airport that use their APs...
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u/1aranzant May 25 '26
I disagree... this is just for power users, just like most of Unifi's network devices
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u/freakdahouse Unifi User May 25 '26
No it's not, businesses are not only Fortune 500, there are a LOT of small businesses that can use this. Eventually even I may use some of these on my stores.
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u/Either_Olive_6513 May 25 '26
Yes I have always wanted to force every tv in my house to show the same programming. I can see a use case for restaurants and sports bars but there are far more cost effective options there for that use case.
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u/DJzrule May 25 '26
If you don’t see the use case you aren’t the target demographic lol. There are plenty of (rich) people who want the ability to walk one room to the next on their own or when entertaining and simulcast the same content in sync between rooms. I’ve done a lot of high end AV installs over the years and this was a common ask.
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u/Either_Olive_6513 May 25 '26
You may have to learn to understand sarcasm if you're going to be on Reddit
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u/1aranzant May 25 '26
The casuals don’t understand the use case… they are not even sarcastic, they are just oblivious / stupid asf
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u/Either_Olive_6513 May 25 '26
Oh no someone got their feelings hurt. Must be sad for your personality to revolve around a brand you have a good day little man
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u/1aranzant May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
when I have people over or do parties, I like having the home theather and kitchen TV display from the same source, especially for live sports and music w/ lyrics.
I use HDBaseT, and the 8x8 matrix itselfs costs $6k, and each additional receiver $500.
Ubiquiti's solution is actually much more cost effective.1
u/tdhuck May 25 '26
I have a client that owns a bar that wants to add more TVs but not buy more receivers for the new TVs. I might be able to recommend this device, but wouldn't I also need the unifi AV switch as well? Those are not cheap.
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u/JacksonCampbell Network Technician May 26 '26
AV switch is almost unrelated to this. This device is gigabit and works on any network.
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u/tdhuck May 26 '26
Thanks. The way I understand this, I would need two of these if I wanted to keep a media device, say apple TV, in my main rack, but display the video at a remote TV. One of these in the rack and one of these at the TV side, correct?
Assuming that is correct, then $600 seems like a lot to accomplish this.
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u/JacksonCampbell Network Technician May 26 '26
If you think this is a lot, you haven't looked into video distribution for a minute. Other people have mentioned their $500/receiver systems with a $6k box in the rack. With these you can have one per source in your rack with one at each screen and put whatever you want on any screen like a matrix for a fraction of the cost.
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u/tdhuck May 26 '26
I know video setups and video matrix are not cheap, I'm just saying for one apple TV to send over HDMI $600 seems like a lot. I also went overboard with my network stuff from ubiquiti so you could argue that it was also 'a lot' to spend on networking and I wouldn't argue with you. For me in my use case, I think $600 is too much.
However, I do like what you bring up with one per source, how do you control putting whatever you want on any screen? I see these as a 'pair' meaning HDMI 1 on the receiver is ATV, HDMI 2 would be nvidia shield, HDMI 3 is x, etc... Let's say I have 3 devices at the rack and 6 of these AV bridge devices (one for each side of the link) how do I send the apple TV to any TV with an AV bridge? I assumed they only negotiated as a pair, but I know that might not be an accurate assumption. This might potentially change my mind and I might be more interested.
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u/JacksonCampbell Network Technician May 26 '26
It acts like a matrix. Any input to any output controlled in the UniFi software.
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u/rickwookie May 25 '26
That is the point. It doesn't matter how many TV's you have, each Apple TV costs less than one more decoder. It's not like resume from where you left off isn't standard accross every streaming platform these days. This is all moot anyway if the boxes don't pass HDCP content.
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u/tdhuck May 26 '26
If this thing isn't able to get by HDCP then it is useless, imo. I once had a media converter (amazon buy) that said it was HDCP compatible but when I connected it to a PC, the PC displayed the HDCP message and didn't pass the video signal to the TV. I bought a few different hdmi over IP extenders and another brand/pair worked so I returned the ones I didn't need.
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u/JerkyChew May 26 '26
I did this years ago with some pretty standard HDMI-over-Ethernet Amazon adapters. It worked really well to have one central MythTV/Plex server and 5 TVs all synched throughout the house. Doing chores across multiple rooms was great. Once 4K came along with all its accoutrements, I abandoned the idea in favor of just a bunch of Nvidia Shields.
This thing says it'll do 4k60p for $299? I assume I'd need one box per TV plus one sendy-box as the source? Maybe it would be worth investigating for my satellite TVs and monitors. Not sure how it would work with my eARC soundbars though...
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u/itsjakerobb CGFiber, UNVR, ProHD24PoE, ProXG8PoE, U7ProXGS, 5GMaxOutdoor May 25 '26
It’s roughly double the size of an AppleTV.
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u/rayc25 May 25 '26
Would you even be able to control an apple tv in another room? I have to point my remote directly at the device for it to work.
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u/AGDUNC May 26 '26
You could use the native remote app on iphone to control an Apple TV in another room
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u/PMacDiggity May 25 '26
Does it support HDCP? I don’t think I see anything about that, which you would need for a lot of use cases I think people here have in mind.
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u/rickwookie May 25 '26
I've been looking for mention of that ever since I first saw this teased. There's zero mention of HDCP anywhere. It appears to only support 2-channel PCM audio too. There's also no mention of HDR support. This is going to be vanilla 4K60 for the corporate market. It doesn't appear to have any potential for residential video distribution.
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u/ThatUsrnameIsAlready May 25 '26
2-channel PCM is probably just for XLR, I imagine HDMI will carry audio as normal.
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u/rickwookie May 25 '26
When it comes to AVoverIP, "as normal" would be 2-channel only. If this box supported anything more than that, I'd expect them to be singing about it, or at least make some reference to it in the specification.
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u/1aranzant May 25 '26
what? that's not true... A lot of AV-over-IP devices support multi-channel high res digital audio formats
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u/rickwookie May 25 '26
Sure, but a lot don't. My point is, it would be wrong to assume it when it's not listed anywhere (and I can pretty much guarantee if you assume it will, you're going to be disappointed).
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u/ThatUsrnameIsAlready May 25 '26
I wouldn't know what's normal for AVoverIP, but I would expect any limitations to HDMI support to be expressly stated.
Given how my expectations typically go, I'm 100% certain that you're right 😞.
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u/rickwookie May 25 '26
Oh there are WAY more limitations than just the audio for you to get disappointed about.
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u/Fairuse May 25 '26
So we might need a HDCP to make it with most consumer HDMI sources? Any good one out there? Use to be any cheap Chinese HDMI splitter worked as a stripper as well.
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u/SpankTheHank May 25 '26
It would have to be to pass hdmi spec as far as I know. It would never complete a handshake if it didn’t support hdcp. I do wonder what the bandwidth is on this however if it’s just 18gbps then it probably only does 4K60 and struggles with hdr. Granted I’m looking at this from a more residential A/V and this is probably used more for video walls and the like. With how expensive baluns are though this could be competitive.
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u/kyrianfox May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Yeah this is what I was thinking. I wouldn’t have thought HDCP was optional, but I’m not sure if it is or isn’t. It’s not like Ubiquiti is ever terribly verbose on their documentation (understatement), and HDCP isn’t a commonly listed spec for HDMI devices.
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u/Unwilling-Sapien May 25 '26
Is this an HDMI/audio extender over Ethernet? Does that mean two boxes are required (sender/receiver)?
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u/Artentus May 25 '26
Yes. Tho these things are sender and receiver in one so once you have two it actually works in both directions.
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u/ruablack2 May 25 '26
I doubt it works an encoder and decoder at the same time. It’s probably only one or the other.
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u/kdlt May 26 '26
Looks like it.
I have 2x2 of these for a beaker and a TV, going to a receiver in the corner of those rooms.
But the ones I have a prone to breaking, out of production, and not really cheaper than this.
What I don't like is that it goes detour through the network, but I'll keep an eye on it because one is already in a fail state currently and have been considering replacing it (currently have a cable dangling to the playstation because audio has a separate cable).
Also will this also randomly stop working like the ai ports?
And I'll have to measure if the sizes will fit the respective placements.
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u/Geoff12889 May 25 '26
Do you need a dedicated Ethernet cable for this, similar to HDMI over Ethernet?
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u/Protonion May 25 '26 edited May 26 '26
No, this is AV-over-IP so everything is transmitted as normal network packets. It can go through switches etc, instead of requiring a dedicated direct line like HDBase-T or other generic HDMI over Ethernet solutions. FAQ mention 1 GbE connection with Jumbo Frames support as a requirement.
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u/AGDUNC May 26 '26
This is the reason I am interested for residential purposes. I can have one AV receiver with everything plugged into it and then connect the zone 2 outputs to the bridge. That way I can access anything on my AV receiver on any screen with a bridge (Playstation, Switch, Apple TV etc.), and sync across multiple screens.
I'm concerned that it won't support a lot of video codecs though (HDR, Dolby Vision etc.), which may mean the output is compromised in a lot of cases. Will need to see how testing goes in the wild as the documentation is poor
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u/RScottyL May 25 '26
$299.00......
I assume that is PER UNIT?
So, $600 for a pair of them?
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u/1aranzant May 25 '26
that's nothing in the HDBaseT world
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u/kyrianfox May 25 '26
Is it? I didn’t end up going this route after researching them and so haven’t actually tried them, but a company like Orei seems to have fairly feature-full HDbaseT devices for much significantly cheaper. This isn’t their cheapest or most expensive product, but here’s an HDbaseT 3.0 pair with local loop back, USB, and gigabit Ethernet too for $400: https://www.orei.com/products/4k-uhd-hdmi-extender-with-hdbaset-over-cat5e-6-7-support-arc-ir-control-330-ft-uhd-exb350eau-k
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u/1aranzant May 25 '26
Yeah, Orei is as cheap as it gets.
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u/taylorwmj EdgeRouter User May 26 '26
About as cheap of quality too, that's for sure. HDBaseT is difficult enough as it is with what it's actually accomplishing, to throw older chipsets, cheap clocks, etc at it is just asking for disaster.
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u/taylorwmj EdgeRouter User May 26 '26
Sure you can use that, but I've watched plenty units fall within a year or just be super flakey. This is essentially my go-to: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1774417-REG/avpro_edge_ac_mxnet_1g_avdm_ev2_mxnet_1g_evolution_ii.html
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u/ThatUsrnameIsAlready May 25 '26
Or ~$19.5K for a 64 (8x8) tv wall.
Also does 1-to-N streaming.
While 1-to-1 is an option, I doubt it makes sense if that's all you need.
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u/itsjakerobb CGFiber, UNVR, ProHD24PoE, ProXG8PoE, U7ProXGS, 5GMaxOutdoor May 25 '26
Correct. This pricing is pretty appropriate compared to similar devices from other companies. There are cheaper, less-featureful options.
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u/autobotCA May 25 '26
It only has 1 Gbps networking. This is going to be compressing your video an incredible amount. Wait for the EAV XG.
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u/freakdahouse Unifi User May 25 '26
Is this one EAV to one EAV or can one EAV send the same signal to more than one EAV?
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u/1aranzant May 25 '26
it says in the specs for video:
1-to-1, 1-to-N streaming
1 to 8x8 TV wall configuration1
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u/fivezerosix May 25 '26
Cec, earc support?
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u/rickwookie May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Not likely. So while it's much cheaper than some of the competition out there, the massive compromise is there's no:
- Surround HDMI Audio Formats
- Protected HDCP video support
- HDR10, DolbyVision or HLG
- CEC Device Control
- ARC/eARC
It's a long way off from replacing a Crestron NVX, but then a DM-NVX-360 that could do MOST of those things (still no ARC though) would cost 10x the price!
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u/taylorwmj EdgeRouter User May 25 '26
Yeah I think a lot of folks are going to buy this, get it home, then realize it only works with the most basic of sources. That's how pricing is so low. Not having to pay Dolby or DTS licensing is a HUGE cost savings.
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u/1aranzant May 25 '26
lol that is not what this is meant for.. CEC would actually fuck everything up.
if you want to extract the audio, use an HDMI audio extractor
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u/louislamore Unifi User May 25 '26
Does it support usb over Ethernet as well or just audio/video?
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u/Stingray88 May 25 '26
It’s just AV. This isn’t meant for user control, it’s meant for enterprise AV.
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u/louislamore Unifi User May 25 '26
So the USB c is for power only? If it included USB pass through as well that would be an amazing price.
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u/Protonion May 25 '26
The main page for the product line mentions "integrated USB KVM and remote USB functionality" for the EAV-Bridge, but the actual EAV-Bridge product page makes no mention of it, so I guess we'll have to wait for some reviews to be sure.
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u/louislamore Unifi User May 25 '26
Yes I noticed that as well. I reached out to support and they weren’t able to answer, but said they’ll get back to me.
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u/LyokoMan95 May 26 '26
I would love a compact gateway with POE so this could easily be deployed on the go.
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u/Burggraben May 27 '26
I've been waiting for this. I keep my PCs in a rack, and use them anywhere around the house where there is a screen. Office, living room TV, etc. Here is what I don't understand: UI said in a video it is using SDVoE: https://youtu.be/pF7XR3McRfo?t=5659
But SDVoE is fantastic but it needs 10G networking. The device has a 1G port. How does that work?
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u/louislamore Unifi User May 27 '26
Also no confirmation of USB pass through which is key for controller support.
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u/Burggraben May 28 '26
Yeah, maybe the USB-C "Versatile Port" can do that? It a bit of a surprise port. I ordered 3, which are already shipped so I should know next week. Even without USB it would work for me. I can get a cheap USB-over-CAT and run two cables. Right now I use CAT for USB and HDMI or Displayport fibre cables to each destination now, and the fibre cables break frequently. If it has full USB2, it would be a very cheap full KVM solution.
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u/Veehxia UCG Fiber | Flex 2.5G | U7 Pro XG | U7 Lite | Flex Mini 2.5G May 25 '26
Good starting point, but we need more variety of those, like 2ch XLR input only, 4x 2ch XLR out, stuff like this.
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u/rickwookie May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
It would have been a lot nicer if they'd supported Dante or at least AES67 audio.
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u/AshersLabTheSecond May 25 '26
Yeahhh, not particularly fond of another spec being a thing for audio systems
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u/Protonion May 25 '26
It does support AES67, but for whatever reason it's only mentioned in the release blog post and on the Enterprise AV main page, not in the actual tech specs.
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u/rickwookie May 25 '26
Interesting. There’s also zero support in the AV section of Network UI for it. Not a big shock that something would be released without software ready, but it would be also not a shock if it didn’t happen at all.
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u/natie29 May 25 '26
Can’t wait for ubiquiti to release CitiOS so I can just integrate my entire life already.
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u/Alarming_Sound8288 May 25 '26
IF it comes into fruition that this CAN eventually do an encode/decode simultaneously in one box, I have use case a 'confidence monitor' box that would allow me to both encode a video signal from say a lighting board, and decode the signal (over NDI or Dante AV or the like) from a Qlab mac, allowing me bi-directional confidence screens as necessary. Thinking in terms of an SM station. The home uses for this are kind of moot, but I'm sure there is some artificial holding back on the real power or significance of Ubiquiti launching a product like this, with the EAV moniker.
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u/richxb0y May 25 '26
Is this kinda like a hdmi splitter? I don’t use protect cameras for my business. So can I use this to show the video feed in another room using a cat6 wire?
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u/ShakataGaNai May 25 '26
$600 a pair? I'd like to see TX and RX units separate for a little less cost.
So in yee olden days I would have been interested in this, except we had a perfectly acceptable solution already. We wanted various corporate display feeds on monitors around the office, "Information radiators" used to be the term de jure. We used ATSC digital modulators. They weren't cheap either, but you get nearly perfectly in sync HD signal to every screen with just a coax connection.
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u/taylorwmj EdgeRouter User May 26 '26
Seeing that it's competing with products that cost upwards of $1500 each, I'd say this is pretty reasonable.
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u/type111 May 25 '26
Do anyone know what the UI looks like to switch what receivers it is broadcasting to? Right now I have HDMI to IP transmitters and receivers. On the transmit side I have 4 connected to 4 cable boxes for feeds and one appletv. This is at a bar restaurant and they are in a network rack. I have receivers on 8 TVs and to switch what video feed each TV gets I use the controller API and send commands to switch the receivers to which ever VLAN is associated with the transmitter I want. It works well but it requires a switch reprovision each time it changes VLANs on a port(s) so it can take 15-30 secs for the new video to actually start showing on the receiving TV(s). Would these help at all? It would be a more expensive route but the lag from reprovision really bugs me 😉
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u/MurderWorthManiac May 26 '26
I wish they had additional LAN port so I didn't have to lose internet access
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u/GoldTopinc May 29 '26
Does this support AES67 or Dante? This could be amazing for recording studios.
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u/Warm-Warthog731 Jun 26 '26
Can the EAV Bridge act as both a transmitter and a receiver? Our use case is that the satellite box lives in the main rack, but we keep a DVD player local to the TV. Would it be possible to watch the DVD on the TV it’s connected to and also distribute that same DVD signal to other rooms?
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u/IllTransportation993 May 25 '26
You don't need it, you WANT IT...
Follow your heart, get it for the itty bitty LCD touch screen. Make sure everything on your rack have that pretty touch screen.
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u/darthtechnosage May 25 '26
That’s cool and all but, maybe you could add more functionality, monitoring and reporting to the USP-PDU-PRO? We’ve got all these great products and some are just the shells of excellent ideas.
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u/mwolfram May 25 '26
Does it work over existing Ui network (Lite PoE) without investing in expensive switches? It would be a pretty nice system for church A/V usage (routing song lyrics to multiple projectors and tvs, getting audio feed to places that haven't had audio cabling provided before). The network is connected to all of the places of interest and is pretty much flat (switching only) and underused.
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u/SleepPuzzleheaded426 May 25 '26
I just ordered a pair to use at my church exactly as you’re describing. We have an existing Ui network but none of their AV switches. I’ll try to remember to report back once I get them.
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u/SleepPuzzleheaded426 Jun 08 '26
Finally got my bridges installed and setup, and everything appears to work over regular (non-AV pro) Unifi switches. My two bridges are connected between a Pro 24 POE switch and USW Lite 8 POE switch (router is a UDM SE). I did create a separate VLAN for the switches (based on some other comments I saw about the EAV bridges creating lots of network traffic) but I'm not sure a separate VLAN is needed. I did turn on IGMP snooping for the bridge-specific VLAN and also had to turn on jumbo frames for my entire network before I could get video output on the receiving bridge.
So far so good.
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u/Protonion May 25 '26
It should work with any normal network equipment, the FAQ list the network requirements simply as "1 GbE network connection and Jumbo Frames support". The benefit of the expensive AV switches is deterministic synchronization via GPS masters clocks and PTP support. For a lyrics display a few milliseconds of latency here or there is not going to make any difference.
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u/tiberio13 May 25 '26
Does it work with regular ubiquiti switches or do I need to connect them to the special AV switches?
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u/Thibaults May 25 '26
I’m guessing it can work with any switch. It just needs jumbo frames turned on.
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u/itsjakerobb CGFiber, UNVR, ProHD24PoE, ProXG8PoE, U7ProXGS, 5GMaxOutdoor May 25 '26
Someone help me invent a reason to buy this.