The pro AV industry never stands still when it comes to picture quality. While many consumers have yet to embrace 4K video, the professional market already has its eyes on the next big leap in image quality – 8K.
“The entire industry is moving to 8K, from camera sensors to display panels,” Ramesh Lyer, director pro AV and broadcast vertical marketing at Xilinx, told the ISE Daily. “The Tokyo Olympics will see 8K becoming more and more important as broadcasters use the technology.
8K requires some type of connectivity for the video feed, and we have been investing in DisplayPort and HDMI technologies for the last five years.”
The fruits of this work are unveiled at ISE 2018, as Xilinx demonstrates for the first time a DisplayPort 1.4 FPGA core (chip) for transmitting and receiving uncompressed media streams up to 8K. “We’ve done a lot of testing and we are proud to showcase something that is production-ready and which our customers can go to market almost immediately,” added Lyer.
Xilinx is also showcasing a 4K-over-IP solution. “Traditionally, pro AV has relied on proprietary methods for transporting AV over a network,’ explained Lyer. “But with the cost of Gigabit switches dropping dramatically, why not adopt standard IP-based transport?” Xilinx‘s 4K AVoIP solution uses the SMPTE 2110 standard, adopted by the broadcast industry for transporting media over IP, and pro AV seemed an obvious market.
“So, we are showing the first implementation of SMPTE 2110 here at ISE.”
