CES 2014: ATEME Preps For Early 4K Deployments

ATEME has expanded its cooperation with manufacturers of Ultra High Definition Televisions (UHDTVs) and 4K-capable set-top boxes, to guarantee flawless interoperability using the new High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard ahead of the first deployments scheduled for 2014.

ATEME’s TITAN encoders support HEVC with unrivalled compression efficiency
for resolutions up to 4K, in Main or Main-10 profiles. TITAN Live encodes linear channels up to HD from an uncompressed source (HD-SDI), or a compressed service (IP); TITAN¹s HEVC output may be streamed Over-The-Top (OTT) using significantly less bandwidth than with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC.

TITAN File is an off-line video transcoder supporting up to 4Kp60 resolution and frame rate; it enables UHD Video On Demand (VOD) services for connected TVs and set-top-boxes, with bitrates ranging from 10 Mbps (4K cinema content at 24 frame per second) to 20 Mbps (4K high motion sports at 60 fps).

ATEME is working with the leading manufacturers of UHDTV sets, systems-on-chip and set-top-boxes to ensure the interoperability of TITAN with their most advanced decoding solutions for UHDTV and HEVC. 4K TV sets presented at CES, such as those from LG Electronics, embed HEVC decoding capabilities that match, or will match, the formats supported by HDMI 2.0, including 60 Ultra HD frames per second with 10-bit color depth, and are fully compatible with the TITAN encoder.

“In order to leverage the efficiency of the new HEVC codec in the field, ATEME and its industry partners are fully engaged in providing the thorough interoperability testing required by service providers and programmers,” says Jérome VIERON, advanced research manager, ATEME. “In 2014 we will see the first pilot services using HEVC for UHDTV and OTT video. This year’s CES show demonstrates the maturity and support of the standard in an increasing number of decoding or viewing devices.”

TITAN has also been successfully tested with Broadcom¹s flagship Ultra HD video decoder system-on-a-chip, the BCM7445, and set-top-boxes based on this SoC.