NDI has announced that BirdDog has become the first hardware manufacturer to achieve full NDI 6.3 compatibility across its portfolio of cameras, encoders and decoders. Aiming to simplify scalable IP video deployments, BirdDog hardware now natively supports NDI 6.3’s enhanced discoverability features including active Discovery Server registration via the new Sender Advertiser APIs, hostname-based device grouping and real-time property broadcasting.
Compatible BirdDog devices now auto-register with a central Discovery Server, route video via unicast and send real-time status updates, simplifying connectivity across VLANs and reducing deployment overheads.
NDI 6.3’s Sender Advertiser APIs are embedded directly into device firmware as a native hardware behaviour rather than a software overlay. With NDI 6.2’s Receiver Discovery already in place, encoders and decoders are fully visible and addressable throughout the network, providing end-to-end signal visibility and real-time routing control through the BirdDog Connect centralised management platform.
Commenting, Dan Miall, CEO of BirdDog, said, “BirdDog has worked with NDI from the very beginning, so we understand what it takes to make IP video work reliably in real products and real workflows. NDI 6.3 removes more of the friction from large deployments, giving customers easier discovery, easier management, and more confidence as they scale. BirdDog solutions are ready to put those improvements to work.”
“With NDI 6.3, we are making it easier for organisations to deploy and scale NDI across more complex network environments,” added Miguel Coutinho, head of NDI. “That is an important step in expanding what the ecosystem can support.”
The practical outcome is significant. Cameras and decoders deployed across multiple sites can power up devices that automatically appear named, grouped and ready to route without manual source entry or specialist network configuration. NDI 6.3’s unicast model resolves subset visibility at the protocol level, preserving network segmentation without limiting production capability, said the company.
