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Chapter 2: Overview
2. Overview
2.1 Introduction
The ACS2004A is a single fiber optic DVI extender set that consists of a transmit-
ter and a receiver. It overcomes the limits of traditional copper-based extenders and
even other fiber optic extenders. It extends DVI signals up to 1920 x 1200 pixels
using optical signals transmitted without signal degradation, without compression,
and without delays.
The ACS2004A transmitter (TX) uses six optical infrared lasers operating at dif-
ferent colors of light (CWDM) to convert the DVI 1.0 compliant video data of your
PC/workstation to pulses of laser light, which travel along one optical multimode
fiber. The receiver (RX) at the other end of the fiber, up to 1280 feet (400 meters)
and five patch connections away, detects the infrared light pulses and converts
them back to the electrical domain of DVI. The ACS2004A does not modify to the
data. This preserves the DVI video data’s quality. Because it is real-time transmission,
no delays and no compression will degrade your high-resolution viewing experience.
The ACS2004A provides three modes of EDID handling. By default, a factory-
provided EDID (which has all common video modes supported) is presented to the
video source. When you press the TX unit’s push button anytime during operation,
it reads back the remote display’s EDID info and presents it to the source, even if the
display or link is disconnected (mode 2). When you press the TX unit’s push button
while powering-on the unit, EDID handling switches to transparency mode (mode
3). This enables you to support content protection systems, such as HDCP and
display control channels. When a video source is supported, it’s called “clock
stretching.“
