IN Brief:
- Sx2 and Sx2E provide portable 12G-SDI and 4K/UHD signal generation, analysis, and monitoring.
- Sx2E adds physical-layer eye and jitter analysis across 12G, 6G, 3G, HD, and SD-SDI.
- Optional HDR tools, configurable displays, USB-C charging, and replaceable batteries extend the platform across laboratory and field work.
Leader Electronics of Europe has launched the Sx2 series of handheld test instruments for 12G-SDI and 4K/UHD signal generation, analysis, and monitoring. The range comprises the Sx2 for general signal testing and the Sx2E, which adds physical-layer measurement for development, commissioning, and fault diagnosis.
Both instruments support single-link 12G-SDI workflows, carrying 4K/UHD video over one coaxial interface rather than dividing it between several lower-rate connections. The simpler cabling comes with tighter electrical margins because attenuation, reflections, jitter, connector condition, and impedance discontinuities become increasingly important as serial data rate rises.
The handheld platform combines a touchscreen interface with a rotary control and integrated audio monitoring. Users can store up to eight customised display templates, each presenting three or four instruments, allowing repeated test arrangements to be recalled without rebuilding the screen for each measurement session.
Leader has also adopted USB-C charging and a replaceable rechargeable battery. A depleted pack can therefore be exchanged during field work, avoiding the need to stop testing while the instrument remains connected to a charger — a practical consideration for installation, outside broadcast, and commissioning jobs that run for several hours away from a bench supply.
The analysis suite includes ancillary-data status and payload inspection, OP47 decoding, CTA-608 data carried within CTA-708, native CTA-708 closed captions, and ancillary time-code display. A video raster can appear correct while timing, metadata, caption, or payload-identification faults remain elsewhere in the stream, making those protocol-level checks part of diagnosing the complete signal path.
Sx2E extends the platform into electrical measurement across 12G, 6G, 3G, HD, and SD-SDI. Leader’s Real-Time Eye technology displays the signal eye and highlights SMPTE compliance problems, while its jitter functions monitor five specified frequency bands simultaneously and provide histogram and video-trigger tools.
Eye-pattern analysis exposes signal margin that ordinary picture monitoring cannot show. Cable loss, connector wear, transmitter behaviour, receiver equalisation, PCB discontinuities, and interference can progressively close the eye before errors become persistent enough to disrupt the displayed video, leaving intermittent faults that are difficult to reproduce away from the installation.
Jitter measurement provides another view of the same physical link. Separating timing variation into defined frequency bands can help distinguish different clock, transmission, and equipment behaviours rather than reducing every timing problem to a single aggregate number.
That capability makes the Sx2E relevant beyond broadcast operations. Equipment manufacturers working with 12G-SDI interfaces need to characterise transmitter and receiver behaviour during development and production, while systems integrators need comparable measurements after cables, patching, distribution equipment, and installed hardware have been assembled into a complete chain.
An optional SX2-HDR licence adds signal generation, luma false-colour or heat-map views, waveform monitoring, and vectorscope functions. Supported formats include SDR, BT.709, BT.2020, BT.2100 HLG and PQ, Sony S-Log3, and SR Live, allowing the same handheld to inspect image-level HDR behaviour after the transport layer has been checked.
Leader says the existing Sx family will remain supported, so the new instruments extend rather than immediately replace the installed platform. That reduces pressure on organisations with established accessories, procedures, training, and calibration arrangements while providing a route to additional processing and physical-layer functions.
Hiroshi Kajita, chief executive of Leader Electronics of Europe, said engineers need tools that “keep pace with the demands of their everyday workflows.” With 12G-SDI links, that increasingly means diagnosing the electrical condition of the interface as well as confirming that a valid picture reaches the other end.
The Sx2 series is being introduced across manufacturing, production, post-production, broadcast facilities, and field operations. Its most useful distinction is the combination of portable format testing with physical-layer visibility, giving engineers a way to inspect marginal high-speed serial links at the point where the fault actually occurs rather than after the equipment has been returned to a laboratory.
