With the advent of power over Ethernet (PoE) and other technologies that deliver data communication and power over a single cable, transmission and power have become woven together so tightly that it can be difficult to tell where one stops and the other starts. In some cases, that doesn’t happen at all. As a result, the way we think about these two functions in video systems has changed quite a bit in recent years.
However, no amount of blurring of the lines can change the fact that transmission and power remain two distinct functions, each with its own technologies, considerations, best practices and nuances. Each plays an important role in video systems, but of the two, power is — and will remain — the most critical. After all, without power, there can be no transmission. Because security is by definition mission-critical, ensuring that systems receive the correct amount of power even in the case of an outage is of utmost importance.