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posted by martyb on Wednesday June 19 2019, @06:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the 8K-TVs?-Who-has-that-many-TVs? dept.

Realtek Demonstrates RTD2893: A Platform for 8K Ultra HD TVs

Just like with any other major transitions, the shift to 8K Ultra HD TVs will require not only new display panels (and even new display technologies), new cables, and new media, but also new codecs as well as new SoCs. To this end, Realtek demonstrated its first platform for 8K televisions and Ultra HD set-top-boxes/players at Computex.

Realtek's RTD2983 SoC can support decoding 8K resolution videos encoded using the AV1, HEVC, and VP9 codecs. The chip can process all HDR formats, reduce noise, upscale, and perform all the other functions common for processors for televisions and digital media players. The RTD2983 has PCIe and USB 3.0 interfaces, it can receive data via an HDMI 2.1 48 Gbps interface, and transmit pixel data over Vby1 wires. One advantage the RTD2983 has is embedded memory, which eliminates necessity to use external DRAM devices, lowering the BOM costs for finished products.

Vby1 = V-by-One HS.

AOMedia Video 1 (AV1).

See also: Vimeo adds support for the royalty-free AV1 video codec

Related: A New Wave of 8K TVs is Coming
YouTube and Netflix Upload AV1-Encoded Videos for Testing
LG Announces its 2019 OLED TV Lineup, Plus an 8K Monstrosity
Intel Releases Open Source Encoder for AV1 Codec


Original Submission

Related Stories

A New Wave of 8K TVs is Coming 53 comments

Sharp Announces 2nd Gen 8K UHD TVs at IFA

Sharp this week introduced its second-generation 8K ultra-high def TVs at IFA in Berlin. The new televisions use the company's new panels as well as the latest processors that can upscale Full-HD and Ultra-HD 4K content to a 7680×4320 resolution.

The initial lineup of Sharp's 2nd Gen Aquos 8K UHD TVs will include models featuring sizes of 60, 70, and 80 inches. The new televisions will be based on the company's new image processor that doubles its compute throughput over the predecessor and can upscale 2K as well as 4K content to an 8K resolution with a 100/120 Hz refresh rate.

Samsung's first 8K TV goes on sale next month

Samsung is announcing its first commercial 8K TV, the Q900R, at IFA 2018 this week. The QLED panel will be available in 65-inch, 75-inch, 82-inch, and 85-inch sizes, and is capable of peak brightness of 4,000 nits. It also supports the newer HDR10+ format backed by Samsung and Amazon.

The incredibly poor detail of 4K makes my eyes bleed; it's impossible to look at. At least now we'll have some more 8K options to tide us over until we reach 64K (61440×34560).

See also: Tech Tent: Are you ready for an 8K telly?
Samsung's 8K QLED TV looks great, but who needs it?
Toshiba Intros Its First Ever 8K TV Concept – IFA 2018

Previously: AU Optronics to Ship 8K Panels to TV Manufacturers in H1 2018

Related: Dell Announces First "Mass-Market" 8K Display
Philips Demos an 8K Monitor


Original Submission

YouTube and Netflix Upload AV1-Encoded Videos for Testing 11 comments

YouTube, Netflix Publish First Videos Transcoded Using AV1

YouTube has uploaded about a dozen videos that were transcoded using the AV1 codec, which was introduced earlier this year. The test sequences are expected to give Google as well as developers of browsers, decoders, and encoders an understanding how to better use the new royalty-free codec. Netflix is also testing AV1 codec and offers everyone a video in different resolutions and featuring various color depth.

To date, YouTube has added 14 videos transcoded using the AV1 codec to a special playlist. The list includes various types of content, including a talking-head program, musical clips, action videos, and demo footages from RED and Blackmagic Design. YouTube says that this type of content represents a large share of videos hosted by the service, so it makes a lot of sense for the company to learn how they behave on various devices in terms of performance, power consumption, and overall stability.

At present, AV1 support is available only in those Chrome 70 and Firefox Nightly builds released after September 12th. Meanwhile, the test videos use AV1 for resolutions that are lower than 480p, underscoring the fact that they are meant to test decoders that, for the moment, are going to be anything but optimized. This is on top of the fact that at the moment there are no hardware decoders that support AV1, so everything is being handled in software by the CPU to begin with. Eventually the codec will be used for content in 4K+ ultra-high-def resolutions, along with HDR and wide color gamuts.

Netflix video.

Also at 9to5Google:

Users on Chrome 70 and Firefox Nightly builds after September 13th can test it by making sure media.av1.enabled and media.mediasource.experimental.enabled prefs are set.

chrome://flags/#enable-av1-decoder

Once running a supported browser, users can head to YouTube's TestTube experiments list and select "'Prefer AV1 for SD."

Related: VLC 3.0.0 Released, With Better Hardware Decoding and Support for HDR, 360-Degree Video, Chromecast
Alliance for Open Media Announces Release of AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1) Specification


Original Submission

LG Announces its 2019 OLED TV Lineup, Plus an 8K Monstrosity 27 comments

LG has announced its TV lineup in the lead-up to the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next week. As in other recent years, the company has split its lineup between LCD and OLED models, and the OLED models are generally the most interesting. This year, LG's OLEDs and certain high-end LCD TVs will support HDMI 2.1, allowing them to display 4K content at 120Hz over HDMI.

HDMI 2.1 is also relevant for the emerging 8K TV category, as the previous version of HDMI only allowed 8K at 30 frames per second (fps). LG will introduce two 8K TVs—the 88-inch Z9 OLED TV and the 75-inch SM99 LCD TV—that can handle 60Hz content at the full 8K resolution over HDMI. Samsung announced its first mass-market 8K TV in late 2018, and it was limited to 30Hz. Granted, there is virtually no 60Hz 8K content available in most markets, and very little 120Hz 4K content. But that could change as TVs like these come to market.

Intel Releases Open Source Encoder for AV1 Codec 24 comments

Intel Releases Open Source Encoder for Next-Gen AV1 Codec

Intel published its own open source CPU-based encoder for the next-generation and royalty-free AV1 codec (a codec is a program for encoding / decoding a digital data stream or signal). Intel is one of the main founding members of the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), the non-profit group behind the development of the AV1 codec.

Intel's new encoder, called Scalable Video Technology AOMedia Video 1 (SVT-AV1), aims to fill the role of a good CPU-based encoding software tool until dedicated AV1 encoders are ready for prime time. The encoder supports the Linux, macOS and Windows operating systems.

A CPU-based encoder requires a beefy system, so it's no surprise the real-time encoding specifications for SVT-AV1 are no joke. SVT-AV1 requires Skylake-generation or newer Xeon processors with at least 112 threads and at least 48GB of RAM for 10-bit 4K video encoding. Outside of video streaming companies, these type of systems are out of reach for most. Consumers that want to encode AV1 videos may want to wait for dedicated AV1 encoding hardware to appear, which make take another year or so.

Here's a recent 42-minute talk (no transcript) about AOMedia Video 1 (AV1). Hardware support for AV1 should begin appearing around 2020.

Related: Alliance for Open Media Announces Release of AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1) Specification
YouTube and Netflix Upload AV1-Encoded Videos for Testing


Original Submission

MediaTek Dimensity 1000 SoC Supports 5G Speeds, 16 GB RAM, and AV1 Video Decoding 13 comments

MediaTek Dimensity 1000 octa-core SoC promises 5G for the masses when it launches in 2020

The 5G SoC will support 90 Hz QHD displays, up to 16 GB of quad-channel LPDDR4x RAM, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, hexa-core AI processor, download/upload speeds of up to 4.7/2.5 Gbps, and more with the promise of faster performance than the current Qualcomm Snapdragon 855.

While a handful of 5G smartphones are already available today, they are all prohibitively expensive. The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, for example, currently retails for $1300 unlocked. MediaTek hopes to be the catalyst for 5G adoption next year by launching an all-in-one SoC solution that integrates an octa-core CPU, octa-core Mali-G77 MC9 GPU, hexa-core AI APU, and a 5G modem for more affordable smartphones.

Called the Dimensity 1000, the SoC will be the first in a series of SoCs with integrated support for 2G, 3G, 4G, and sub-6 GHz 5G networks. MediaTek is also claiming it to be the world's first SoC to support 5G dual-SIM for better worldwide appeal and versatility. While single-SIM smartphones are still prevalent in the U.S., most smartphones overseas tend to carry two SIM slots.

MediaTek's presentation shows that the SoC will support AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) hardware decoding at up to 4K60:

In addition to hardware video encoding and decoding at 4K 60FPS, the MediaTek Dimensity 1000 is the world's 1st mobile SoC with AV1 format support.

Also at AnandTech.

Related: MediaTek Announces 10-Core SoC for Phones and Tablets
MediaTek Helio X30: 10 Cores on a 10nm Process
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 SoC Will Optionally Enable 5G Connections with Added X50 Modem
Realtek RTD2983 SoC for 8K TVs: Supports AV1 Codec
Huawei: ARM Cortex-A77 Cores Would Shorten Battery Life (Dimensity 1000 includes 4x Arm Cortex-A77 cores)


Original Submission

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