Harmonic is not a company many consumers have heard of—it provides video-infrastructure services for the professional community. But its booth at NAB 2014 had several interesting demos related to UHD. Perhaps most important was a live UHD stream at 60 progressive frames per second. A playout server sent uncompressed UHD via multiple SDI connections to a real-time HEVC encoder provided by Altera, which sent the encoded bitstream at 20 Mbps to a ViXs prototype set-top box via IP. The STB decoded the stream and sent it to a Panasonic UHDTV via HDMI 2.0.
This was a demonstration of a live UHD stream at 60 frames per second on a Panasonic UHDTV. With an encoded bitrate of 20 Mbps, the image looked really good, even with some airplanes flying in relatively fast motion.
In another demo, 1080p was upscaled to UHD and compared with native UHD on a split-screen display. The 1080p/30 content was encoded in AVC at 5 Mbps, while the 2160p/60 was encoded in HEVC at 15 Mbps.
The upscaled 1080p on the left looked nearly as good as the native 2160p on the right, though the images were all slow-moving. I saw a slight color shift between the two, and the HD side looked ever so slightly darker than the UHD side.
Finally, there was a demo of "120 Hz" UHD—which turned out to be 2160p/60 with frame interpolation. The bitrate was 20 Mbps, and the imagery was all slo-mo.
The 120 Hz frame-interpolated content in this demo was all slow-motion, and it was shot at a frame rate of 60 Hz, so there was no "soap-opera effect" that I could see. The colors were pretty oversaturated; I asked if the display had been calibrated, but the Harmonic rep I spoke with didn't know. I have no idea what the color gamut of the original content or the display was.
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Harmonic is not a company many consumers have heard of—it provides video-infrastructure services for the professional community. But its booth at NAB 2014 had several interesting demos related to UHD. Perhaps most important was a live UHD stream at 60 progressive frames per second. A playout server sent uncompressed UHD via multiple SDI connections to a real-time HEVC encoder provided by Altera, which sent the encoded bitstream at 20 Mbps to a ViXs prototype set-top box via IP. The STB decoded the stream and sent it to a Panasonic UHDTV via HDMI 2.0.
This was a demonstration of a live UHD stream at 60 frames per second on a Panasonic UHDTV. With an encoded bitrate of 20 Mbps, the image looked really good, even with some airplanes flying in relatively fast motion.
In another demo, 1080p was upscaled to UHD and compared with native UHD on a split-screen display. The 1080p/30 content was encoded in AVC at 5 Mbps, while the 2160p/60 was encoded in HEVC at 15 Mbps.
The upscaled 1080p on the left looked nearly as good as the native 2160p on the right, though the images were all slow-moving. I saw a slight color shift between the two, and the HD side looked ever so slightly darker than the UHD side.
Finally, there was a demo of "120 Hz" UHD—which turned out to be 2160p/60 with frame interpolation. The bitrate was 20 Mbps, and the imagery was all slo-mo.
The 120 Hz frame-interpolated content in this demo was all slow-motion, and it was shot at a frame rate of 60 Hz, so there was no "soap-opera effect" that I could see. The colors were pretty oversaturated; I asked if the display had been calibrated, but the Harmonic rep I spoke with didn't know. I have no idea what the color gamut of the original content or the display was.
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