Matrox: The power of standards

Matrox ConvertIP standards-based transmitters/receivers.

Rob, why do you think standards are so important in the AV industry today?
Principally two things: interoperability, and sustainability of supply. AV is all about linking equipment together, and passing content along the chain with the confidence that the recipient will see and hear exactly what the sender intended. You can only get this by either putting yourself at the mercy of a single manufacturer, or using products that all conform to one standard, whether that’s connectors and cables or signal formats and transport methods.

You also mentioned sustainability of supply?
We’re facing an unprecedented global components crisis, and if your regular manufacturer can’t deliver for weeks or months, you have to find an alternative supplier whose products will interoperate seamlessly with your existing systems. It’s standards that guarantee this. For years we’ve taken it for granted that we can swap in a new brand of display screen or CCTV camera. Why shouldn’t that hold for a decoder or software codec?

Manufacturers and integrators will have to address this issue, because one small incompatibility – in a cable or codec, say – can break the whole supply chain, with serious financial consequences. Buyers need what someone called “predictability in an unpredictable world”, and standards provide this.

What benefits should AV manufacturers and integrators expect to gain from standards?
Standards are an arbitrator. If two products don’t work together, you don’t get each supplier blaming the other. You simply consult the standard and see which one (or both!) hasn’t properly adhered to it. And by reducing time and effort spent achieving compatibility, or just reinventing the wheel, standards also leave manufacturers free to focus on things that add more value for the customer, such as functionality, performance and security.

But there’s a more profound effect. When scientists make a new discovery, they don’t keep it to themselves, they publish a paper and share it with the world. Standards can do the same for technology. Someone says, I’ve had this really good idea, and by getting it incorporated into the standard, it can benefit the whole industry. Knowing you’ve left a legacy like that can be really satisfying.

And how do standards benefit the end customer?
For a start the technology just works – I think for most users that’s benefit enough. It also gives them a much wider choice of suppliers, without being locked into inflated prices or outdated feature sets. Standardisation should lead to better security, since it’s said that “variability leads to vulnerability”. And when technical specifications can be taken as read, buyers can focus on those qualities that don’t appear on the spec sheet but are ultimately more important to the business, such as quality, usability, reliability and stability.

Some people say that we don’t need open standards, because widely adopted proprietary technologies such as HDMI, NDI and Dante already do the same job?
But people also say two heads are better than one. A single person or company can certainly have a great idea, but the diversity of perspective and breadth of experience of a standards body usually make for better results overall.

Buying licences for proprietary technology also adds cost for the end customer, and the alternatives can be even worse. Years ago manufacturers in some countries decided not to use HDMI to avoid paying royalties, and tried to develop their own alternatives. It caused no end of problems.

Which standards do you think are most significant in the AV world today?
The one I’m really excited about is IPMX. This is a set of open standards and specifications for AV-over-IP in pro AV and live production, allowing the command and control of AV content over an IP network – like taking the functionality of HDBaseT and extending it right across the network. It’s the kind of standard that encourages people to build bridges, not fences. It’s very inclusive and very relaxed, so you can use any input or output format you choose, and continue to do things in your own way if you prefer. But the more you conform to the standard, the more benefits you get.

As well as offering a range of compression densities for bandwidths as narrow as 1Gbit, IPMX supports fully uncompressed video, making it ideal for live venues and stadiums where top quality is vital. And it supports full redundant networking, with the ability to switch to the backup network within a single frame so the audience will never notice. That’s very powerful.

So Matrox is committed to IPMX?
Definitely. We already had a lot of experience of the SMPTE ST 2110 broadcast standard, from which IPMX has evolved, and our ConvertIP series of standalone IP transmitter/receivers are the first on the market with IPMX compatibility. There’s a palette of six products, each of which can act as transmitter or receiver, so buyers have a choice of a dozen possible endpoints. And our routing software will work with any IPMX compatible device, enabling buyers to add equipment to the network in future without upgrading their software. Overall IPMX dramatically simplifies signal routing.

But you don’t expect to be alone for long?
We hope not. After all, that’s the point of an open standard. The broadcast industry has been won over – they’re already committed to SMPTE ST 2110 – and now we’re seeing pure AV companies such as Barco indicating that this a boat they don’t want to miss. I think that by ISE next year we’ll see multiple manufacturers with IPMX-ready products, and the market will snowball from there.

IPMX IN A NUTSHELL
Developed primarily by AIMS, IPMX (Internet Protocol Media eXperience) supports 1GbE to 100GbE networks and beyond, including wireless, thanks to a compression scheme that enables ultra-low latency but can also support full uncompressed quality. It can transport any resolution, including 8K and beyond, in 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 10-bit colour.

IPMX offers three levels of error resiliency, from full redundancy to basic network protocols, and is agnostic about the networking equipment. Standard APIs enable a single control application to manage multiple vendors’ equipment, while HDMI and EDID support allows for automatic display set-up and resolution support.

Matrox
Tel: +44 (0) 1895 827300
Email: video@matrox.com
Web: https://www.matrox.com/en/video
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