Matrox helping drive IP and 4K forward

The new X.mio3 12G SDI Card for Developers

One of the stand-out industry changes of last month’s IBC was the move towards IP production, and Matrox is one of the companies at the forefront of what will probably be the greatest change to impact the industry since the introduction of audio. It’s not forgotten SDI though either.

In fact, attendees at IBC and further afield could see exactly what it was up to in the IP arena day in day out, as its new Matrox X.mio3 IP cards were one of the key components of the Vizrt graphics package that fed in to the IBC TV television channel (IBC being big enough that it has its own TV channel and daily newspaper).

Vizrt and Matrox in turn were part of the pioneering VRT-EBU LiveIP studio production set-up operating at the show. Supported by the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (Vizrt and Matrox are both members) the LiveIP set-up made its point by spanning across sites within the venue that were connected by fibre. These included the LiveIP studio floor, control room, and data centre in Hall 8, and the IBC TV studio in Hall 13, which, of course, could control the LiveIP studio remotely.

The Matrox X.mio3 IP cards that were operating within the Viz Engine, offer full multi-channel video I/O support over 10 GbE networks, adding IP encapsulation of HD and 3G. Featuring what the company says is a unique on-board up/down/cross scaler and compositor, the X.mio3 IP frees up CPU and GPU resources to concentrate on other important matters.

4K was part of the company’s story at IBC as well, Matrox rocking up to Amsterdam with its new X.mio3 12G SDI Card for developers. This is designed to help implement 4K in the SDI space — which, IP or not, is going to be part of the mix for quite a few years yet to come — and is a half-length PCI Express card that offers two 12G SDI inputs, two 12G SDI outputs, and two reconfigurable 3G SDI I/Os allowing for 4K and HD simulcast for broadcast production. Multi-channel hardware processing accelerates computation-intensive operations including up/down/cross scaling and compositing for resolutions up-to-4K.