SHOW REVIEW: IBC2013 Riedel, which announced a joint development with Studer, drew attendees to its stand
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4K and IP dominate
Although it primarily serves the broadcast market, IBC continues to provide useful pointers to developments in the world of AV. Paddy Baker reports from Amsterdam
4K WAS one of the buzzwords at IBC. The 2014 FIFA World Cup is to be broadcast in 4K, but Niclas Ericson, director of FIFA TV, went further, saying during the show conference that 8K was a technical possibility for the final. “Technically it is possible to send an 8K signal back to Japan [over IP] and then onto satellite so maybe they can do the final in 2014 in 8K,” he said. He added a cautionary note,
however: “We must be careful not to confuse the consumer again with a message that Ultra HD in 4K or 8K is ready. It is still experimental.” It’s clear that while
manufacturers are continuing to launch 4K equipment – whether for creation, processing or display – there is not yet a full 4K ecosystem in place, and certainly not in IBC’s home territory of the broadcast market. So, on the Panasonic stand
for instance, one of the themes was announcing equipment to bridge the gap between 4K content creation and 4K in the home. However, one product offered four
24 October 2013
times HD resolution in a different way – an Ultra Wide Camera that produces a 180º panorama. This consists of four HD cameras whose images are automatically joined by software to create a 64:9 image – suitable for covering an entire sports pitch, for instance. More conventional
Panasonic product on display included the company’s recently announced TH- 55LFV5 videowall display, which features a bezel-to- bezel distance of just 5.3mm. This is an IPS D-LED panel with a wide viewing angle, an anti- glare surface treatment and brightness of 500cd/sqm. Screen depth is just 122mm, making the panel suitable for public spaces.
Blackmagic Design added
to its ATEM Production Studio 4K family. The original model, launched in the spring, was the first Ultra HD production switcher – and has now been reduced in price to become the entry-level product of the family. New at IBC was the new ATEM 1 M/E Production Studio 4K, which features all
SDI inputs, for broadcasters and others using all-SDI systems. Sony demonstrated its
newest 4K digital projector, the SRX-T615. Designed for industrial, visualisation and simulation applications, the projector can edgeblend native 4K content; this was demonstrated on the stand by creating a 7K x 2K image overlapped by a 1K visualisation. Other features of the
projector include extremely high picture quality, created by a contrast ratio of 12,000:1 (said to be best in class) and a high brightness of 18,000 lumens thanks to its newly developed 4K optical engine. The projector uses six HPM lamps (much lower in cost than Xenon lamps) in individual cartridges, making lamp replacement easier and safer; the projector also provides a longer lamp- exchange cycle. On display on the Leyard stand was the world’s first Ultra HD 4K LED videowall – with a pixel pitch of 1.9mm. Alongside this was a 144in
LED HD TV set with a brightness of approximately 1,200cd/sqm.
A small stand with a potentially highly significant offering – particularly in the move to 4K – was that of Israel-based Beamr Video, whose optimisation technology is claimed to automatically reduce the bitrate of any H.264 video stream by up to 50% without affecting the perceived quality or altering the format of the original stream. The stand featured side-by-side screenings of original video at around 6Mb/s alongside optimised video at around 3Mb/s, and it was hard to spot any difference between them. Beamr Video produces fully compliant H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) video streams and is device agnostic, making high-quality video accessible from any media player, browser, smartphone or tablet, without installing additional software. “4K resolutions represent
the next step in high-definition video, but until now providing content in this new format has posed daunting technical
challenges. Beamr Video has figured out how to reduce the massive footprint of video files, so they can be distributed efficiently and cost effectively,” said Sharon Carmel, founder and CEO of Beamr.
IP ON THE RISE If 4K was one of the key trends at IBC, another was IP technology. Adder Technology demonstrated the recently released version 3 firmware for its AdderLink Infinity KVM technology. The update enables network teaming, which provides twice the bandwidth of previous versions, so that HD video can be sent at 60fps over standard IP infrastructure. This feature can also be used to prevent a single point of failure from taking down the operation. The product has now also been
internationalised, with 10 different language options. John Halksworth, senior
product manager, said of the move to IP-based KVM: “Storage has gone networked, so KVM can go networked as
www.installation-international.com
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