1080p: a fire hose of data
I was blown away by this article in Broadcast Engineering which rather dryly notes:
Implementation of dual-link 3Gb/s distribution methods for 1080 60p would reduce the capacity of an existing HD infrastructure by 50 percent. SMPTE has issued 3Gb/s standards (424M, 425M) that can be used for intrafacility 1080 60p SDI distribution over a single coax cable. An alternate method could be to work in the compressed domain, with 1080 60p content compressed at 200Mb/s data rates or higher. This format could be distributed using SDTI, ASI or over the media network (TCP/IP). In this way, 1080 60p content will survive the editing and production process, and produce acceptable, artifact-free video.
Broadcasters are concerned with converting their production infrastructures to support 1080i (or 720p) HD content. Any thought of expanding production to 1080 60p or 2K is well out of mind.
Do you react to what I did: a reduction in capacity of 50% just to support 1080p? Talk about drinking from a fire hose.
We believe that this explosion of media (you’d have to call anything with a bit rate of 200Mb/s explosive) needs a comprehensive and open strategy for managing it. We don’t believe the industry should be behind the availability of consumer devices because of the size or cost of distributing digital media. Consumer 1080p TVs and disk formats mean that broadcasters have to respond quickly or face further challenges from alternative sources of 1080p content.
