[opendtv] Re: NAB 2016
- From: cooleman@xxxxxx
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 23:39:43 +0200
Daniel Grimes schreef op 28-04-2016 20:55:
Regarding the AJA KONA, AJA does, in fact, have an IP card version,
Kona IP, announced at NAB:
https://www.aja.com/en/news/top-stories/452
$2500 without the SFPs.
I suppose the IP-video technology is still too new to be able to use
off-the-shelf, enterprise level, network cards to take in the signal.
Dan
Not just compression (untill 40/100 gig networks become the norm), but
most of all timing and synchronisation are an issue with asynchroneous
networks. Chris discussed this last year, so what tranceiver technology
is one seeking?
http://www.insightmedia.info/aptovision-is-the-silicon-driving-new-4k-av-over-ip-products/
Ever noticed that development of key communication silicon leads to
whole new categories of connectivity? Consider Silicon Image (now
Lattice Semiconductor) and the HDMI and MHL interfaces. How about
Valens and the HDBaseT ecosystem? Now we have AptoVision providing
FPGA-based chipsets to drive video, audio, Ethernet and more over
conventional IP switches.
AptoVision calls their FPGA solution BlueRiver NT. As shown in the
figure below, the idea is to use standard Ethernet infrastructure and
equipment to move audio, video, control, USB and even Ethernet signals
from source to sink. To do this, each source must have a transmit box
to encode the signal for IP transport and each sink device must have a
receive chip to decode for display. While the concept of distributing
video over IP has been around for a while, it has only been possible
with very high compression and latency (e.g. YouTube). What makes this
solution unique is its ability to transmit uncompressed or lightly
compressed video over IP switches with virtually no latency, a baseline
requirement in most Pro-AV applications
BlueRvier NT Applications
This technology has the potential to really accelerate adoption of IP
transport in the AV industry because it allows users to implement
standard IP components in the AV network using switches and routers from
Cisco or Netgear, for example.
HDBaseT, the main competitor to AptoVision, requires similar transmit
encoding and receive decoding at source and sink, but the network
operates completely differently. According to AptoVision CEO Kamran
Ahmed, “With our BlueRiver NT approach, the transport is all
packet-based and IP routable so it operates on standard LANs. HDBaseT
is a point-to-point solution which is not IP routable, hence it always
requires proprietary circuit switches to form an AV switching network.
That may have been fine for such applications until now, but for a truly
flexible and scalable AV distribution network, a packet-based, and more
importantly, IP-routable solution is preferred and is the way of the
future.”
Other uncompressed AV switching solutions such as Crestron’s
DigitalMedia solution, AMX’s DGX solution, Extron’s XTP and Lightware’s
25G solution are all based on HDBaseT and hence require proprietary
circuit switches and the AV traffic is not IP routable. As a result, a
separate independent IP-routable network is also needed for LANs.
“The cost of an AV matrix switch from Crestron, as an example, can be up
to 10X the cost of a similar 10 GbE switch from Cisco or Netgear,”
explained Ahmed. “That can represent a lot of investment savings with
similar and even higher levels of performance. Plus, these customers
will still need a separate Ethernet network. The AptoVision solution
gives you everything in one infrastructure.”
At InfoComm, AptoVision announced their latest chipset solution called
BlueRiver NT+. This solution (based on a Xilinx FPGA) allows the
distribution of 4K at 60 fps and 4:4:4 color sampling on a 10 GbE
network. But wait, this video signal requires 18 Gbps to transport
uncompressed HDMI video, so how do you get this into a 10 Gbps pipe?
According to Ahmed, they do two types of manipulation on the signal.
The first one is mathematically lossless decoding from HDMI format to
uncompressed-raw video format bringing the data rate down to 13.8 Gbps,
while the second one, uses a light, zero-frame latency compression codec
developed by AptoVision, to bring it down to 9.1 Gbps.
Compression is typically only used where latency and image quality are
not highly critical, mostly for video and almost never for high
resolution text and computer desktops. But Ahmed claims their
proprietary compression scheme is truly visually lossless, both for
video and for high resolution graphics and only adds 7 lines of latency.
If that is true, it could open up the use of compression in
applications that would never have considered it in the past. While
4:4:4 color space is important for graphical data, the motion picture
industry has recognized that HDR (high dynamic range) with 10-bits of
color at 4:2:0 provides better quality for motion video than 4:4:4 color
space at 8-bits without HDR. Consequently the standard for 4K on Blu-ray
media, which is now locked down, is 4K/60Hz (4:2:0) 10bit with HDR.
AptoVision technology uniquely supports this capability within the 10G
envelop using mathematically lossless compression.
But distributing video over a standard Ethernet network can be
problematic as distribution of data is asynchronous, i.e. going out in
bursts of data that can arrive at different times at the destination.
To solve this, buffering is required, but this adds latency often even
results in low frame rate and choppy video, which many applications
can’t accept.
SMPTE has a solution for this called 2022 that encapsulates an SDI
signal in an IP wrapper with timing. But this is limited to baseband
audio and video signals, so AptoVision took a different approach to
allow additional types of data to be transported in the stream.
They developed what they call Adaptive Clock Re-synchronization. This
is essentially a multiplexing technique that weaves in the audio, video,
1GB Ethernet and other signals, along with an embedded clocking
mechanism. This scheme can recover the clocks for both audio and video
at the decoder end with only a few lines of latency while remaining
fully genlocked (synchronous) to the source clock across the entire
network – even through an IP switch. And, each signal can be sent to
any IP address independently. That’s pretty powerful.
So far, the company has secured a number of customers. Publically
announced ones include DVIGear, ZeeVee, Aurora Multimedia, Grandbeing,
AvenView and IDK Corporation. Ahmed says they are talking to nearly
every AV signal distribution company (OEM) now, so expect more
announcements later.
At Display Summit, we saw this solution in action. At the event, ZeeVee
used a laptop as the source to drive an LED video wall and an LCD video
wall with common content. Two transmitters accepted the HDMI laptop
signal, encoded it for IP transmission and sent out the signal over
fiber and through an IP Netgear switch. At each display, a decoder box
converted it back to an HDMI for delivery to the display. It worked
flawlessly.
Display Summit LED vs. LCD
At InfoComm, DVIGear released their DisplayNet solution that uses
“off-the-shelf 10 GbE technology to switch, extend and distribute
uncompressed AV signals in real time at resolutions up to 4K.” The new
DN-100TX transmitter accepts multiple signals such as HDMI (with
embedded audio and HDCP), analog stereo audio, bidirectional IR, RS-232,
and 1GbE and transmits them over a 10GbE link up to 328 ft. (100 meters)
using a single CAT6a or CAT7 cable. This link is then distributed via
an off-the-shelf 10GbE network switch to the receiver unit (DN-100RX),
which provides all the signals for output at the destination.
The DN-100 Series supports uncompressed video up to 4K /30p (4:4:4) and
4K /60p (4:2:0) with no artifacts and zero frame latency. Video signals
may be simultaneously routed in Point-to-Point, Matrix Switching, Video
Wall, and MultiViewer (coming 2016) modes all in the same system. For
more flexibility, each signal type (Video, Audio, IR, RS-232, etc.) is
treated as a separate switching layer that can be routed independently.
Other advanced features such as audio embedding and de-embedding are
also supported.
DisplayNet
The DN-100 Series transmitter and receiver will begin shipping September
2015 at a suggested retail price of less than $1,000 per endpoint.
So how do distribution companies differentiate their products we asked
Ahmed. His answer was software. “Since the hardware is standard stuff
and based on IP-based protocols, developers have flexibility in the way
they manage and manipulate each signal type over the network allowing
different configurations optimized for certain applications. Moreover,
differentiating features, which previously required development of
expensive custom hardware can now easily be achieved with software
controlled packet routing. e.g. independent routing schemes for audio,
video, and control ”
You may have noticed that this solution is based upon using 10 Gb
Ethernet hardware, which is perhaps a factor of 10x more costly today
than 1 GB hardware. But it is still a lot cheaper than proprietary AV
solutions. And costs will come down much more quickly in the IT world
than they will in the AV world. Ahmed told us he expects 10 GbE
switches to cost about 40% less in 2016 and drop to today’s price of 1
GbE devices by 2017. Think that will happen with AV equipment?
Ahmed maintains that proprietary platforms have stifled competition in
many ways – and very few companies have the resources and means to
develop a competing platform that can cost tens of millions of dollars
to develop, particularly the AV switch. By allowing the use of
off-the-shelf 10G, this barrier has been eliminated and smaller
companies can now deliver equivalent and also much higher performance
solutions without huge capital investments. These smaller players will
now be able to innovate at the software level (on an open platform) and
at a solution level rather than waste their resources on developing the
baseline hardware.
He makes a very good point and as a result, it now seems likely that
standard IP switching technology powered by the AptoVision chipsets will
make strong headway in the market. Any solution that uses off-the-shelf
IT gear seems like a hard thing to bet against.
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