At the 2017 NAB Show (Apr. 22-27) in Las Vegas, NHK and Village-Island announced that they have developed an innovative system, called VICO-8, that makes possible to transport 8K 4:2:2 60p 10bits video on a single 12G-SDI cable using the intoPIX TICO compression technology.
"The gain to bring 8K to a single 12G-SDI is huge," says Miyazaki San, senior manager of the Engineering Administration Department at NHK. "It enables us to achieve 8K with 4K-ready appliances, wherever it is about switching, distributing, transmitting the signal on optical fiber or other support. Dramatically dividing the cost of infrastructure, the gain of VICO-8 is even exponential when considering the matrix switcher where VICO decreased the number of required input by 4, while decreasing the number of required output by 4, dividing the number of required nodes by 16. The gain of using VICO-8 can be dramatic within our 8K OBVAN where the constraints on space, heat, wiring, energy are the most challenging. 8K on a single SDI cable simplify our operations and reduce risks inside the OBVAN.”
According to the companies, the VICO-8 system takes 8K video as 4x 12G-SDI input as compressed by a factor of 4 to 1, in visually lossless quality, generating a single TICO 8K stream output mapped on a single 12G-SDI interface with a delay of few video lines, so less than 1msec. “All of this would not have been possible without intoPIX TICO supporting resolution up to 7680x4320 pixels, while keeping all its performance,” adds Yoshizu Taira, OEM Manager at Village Island. “Our customers are just expecting to work with raw quality and near-to-zero delay, and only TICO would bring this reality on an affordable FGPA."
The companies note that 8K 60p 4:2:2 (10bits) video usually requires 16x 3G-SDI or 4x 12G-SDI for raw quality transport. Such high number of SDI cables implies many drawbacks such as big space constraints, high costs and high complexity of wiring. Furthermore, a UHD signal spread on multiple SDI cables brings concrete problems for signal distribution, switching, transmission, and other basic operations.
The VICO-8 system was showcased at this year's NAB Show at TICO Alliance's booth. “The TICO technology eases the access to 8K to a wide range of users and applications”, says Jean-Baptiste Lorent, marketing director at intoPIX. “With our new 8K cores, we are happy to accelerate the transition to 8K broadcasting, the so-called Super Hi-vision."
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