The Switch, Net Insight, Demonstrate 4KTV Production Transport

NEW YORK—The Switch, in conjunction with Net Insight, demonstrated contribution quality, 4K ultra high-definition television transport over 14,000 route miles of its Inter-City On Demand network. This represented the first field deployment of special 4K software just released by Net Insight that provides advanced internal synchronization capabilities to transport and reassemble master quality 4KTV transmissions.

“With this successful demonstration, The Switch has illustrated that the ICOD network is ready for 4K immediately,” said Scott Beers, chairman and CEO of The Switch. “The ICOD network now provides remote program producers the ability to transmit 4K from all of our major league sports and entertainment venues.”

The Switch worked in close coordination with manufacturers Sony and Astrodesign, who contributed new 4K sources, record/playback and monitoring hardware. The demonstration consisted of 3840x2160 60p Type-B 4K video content, provided by a Sony 4K camera, as well as an Astrodesign HR-7510 uncompressed 4K SSD recorder/player originating in New York. The camera segmented the source content into 4x 3G video quadrants, each of which was converted to Type-A 4K format using Astrodesign model SD-070 4K interface converter.

The Astrodesign player provided an alternate source of prerecorded 4K content. The four source quadrants were then compressed using Net Insight JPEG2000 encoding of the 3G signals before they were routed via the ICOD network. With the new Net Insight 4K software installed on the network, The Switch then internally synchronized all of the quadrants to present a uniform signal at the receive site.

The signals travelled over 14,000 miles, initially to Los Angeles and then on to Miami, London, and ultimately back to New York, where they were decoded at The Switch Network Operations Center. The reassembled 4K signals were displayed on advanced 4K monitors provided by Sony and Astrodesign.

“This was the first transmission over the ICOD network of low-latency JPEG2000 compressed quad handoff 4K 60p video at these distances, with first-ever field use of the Net Insight software with internal quadrant synchronization” said David Anderson, chief technology officer of The Switch.