Staying in front of changes in the professional AV market can be challenging.  The technology is changing every day and the consumer market now drives the professional market.  Some would say the tail is wagging the dog.  This really became the case when HDMI was introduced as a standard for home video and professional AV has never been the same.

I know this to be true because I had a full head of dark hair prior to the introduction of HDMI in the pro market and now I’m holding onto table scraps.

The challenge is what works in the home doesn’t work the same way in a professional environment.  Issues like adoption, security, and reliability become bigger at the enterprise level as opposed to the home.  With 4K or UHD (Ultra High Definition) video becoming the new standard, professional AV is now faced with a new set of challenges.  For example: how do we transmit the signal reliably over long distances and how can we integrate each manufacturers specification with the other?  We have been extending 1080P video over CAT6 shielded cable and that will work for 4K/UHD, but there are many limitations such as distance and color saturation.  In order to push high bandwidth signals over long distances, it may require the use of fiber optic cable but not all products are compatible with fiber optic cable.

Professional AV lacks standards in comparison to the IT industry and each manufacturer has their own spin on the specifications of the 4K/UHD spec.  Some products that are listed as supporting 4K only support UHD.  4K and UHD are often referred to in the same breath, but they’re not exactly the same.

The difference between Ultra HD and 4K

Technically, "Ultra High Definition" is actually a derivation of the 4K digital cinema standard.  However, while your local multiplex shows images in native 4096 x 2160 4K resolution, the new Ultra HD consumer format has a slightly lower resolution of 3840 x 2160.  Within those specifications, there are varying color saturation specs that are dictated by availability of bandwidth and compression rates.  The 4K/UHD spec has formed the need for an update to HDCP copyright protection protocols. The new HDCP protocol has gone from version 2.0 to 2.2 and the early products that were released supporting 2.0 can’t support HDCP 2.2.  The secondary issue is the color saturation of the video being viewed.  This impacts what bandwidth is needed to support the signal and can cause products to be incompatible with one another.

The biggest question we need to answer is what is the 4K content that will be viewed in a corporate setting?  Yes, videos on YouTube, Netflix, Direct TV and others are a given, but the quality is not true UHD.  The signals are compressed and may or may not be able to display full resolution depending on the bandwidth of the connection.

To me, what this all means is that 4K/UHD is still in its infancy and professional AV does not have a complete solution that will support the content for all applications yet.  Pro AV 4K/UHD systems have limitations and this will get worse before it gets better.   It is quite possible that by the time the industry and the manufacturers figure this out, 8K will be the new standard.

In most applications (excluding broadcast), there isn’t a compelling reason today to deploy 4K/UHD systems. The best thing that the professional AV industry can do is prepare for what is to come.  I believe that utilizing fiber optics as much as possible now is the best way to prepare for high bandwidth signal transmission in the future.  To be of the best service, I also believe in the importance of educating clients on 4K/UHD and helping them prepare for the changing landscape in professional video.  All of these concerns are pushing the market towards IP base streaming systems and will move us away from more traditional switching/video processing methods, but that is another topic for another time.

I recently had the luxury of sitting down with Pete Putman, who is an AV subject matter expert and has a wealth of knowledge about how technology impacts our personal and professional lives, when he spoke about the UHD/4K issue and many others with the IMS Technology Services engineering team.  Pete recently returned from the Consumer Electronics Show and released a compelling recap.  Click here to read more about 4K/UHD video and other technologies that are impacting Professional AV.

Article written by Keith Moss,Vice President of Technology Services at IMS Technology Services

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