Trans-Atlantic 8K/UHDTV Streaming With UltraGrid and Commodity PCs 58
An anonymous reader writes "During the 12th Annual Global LambdaGrid Workshop in Chicago, researchers have demonstrated interactive multi-point streaming of 8K/UHDTV (i.e., 16x Full HD resolution) using commodity PC hardware running Linux and open-source UltraGrid software. The transmissions featured GPU-accelerated JPEG and DXT compressions implemented using the NVIDIA CUDA platform, which are also available as open-source software. The streams were distributed from the source to one location in the USA and to another location in the Czech Republic over 10Gbps GLIF network infrastructure."
GLIF=Global Lambda Integrated Facility (I think?) (Score:3, Informative)
And here is a map of the infrastructure: http://www.glif.is/publications/maps/GLIF_5-11_World_4k.jpg [www.glif.is] (6Mb)
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, a click on TFA indicates this was streaming 8K video, which is roughly 16 times the resolution of 1080 (whether that's 1080i or 1080P is ambiguous).
The real story is that there's now a significantly large 10G internet connection. A side note - they're streaming 16X HD content, which is generally about 8GB for 2 hours compressed, or 4GB per hour, which is about (consults anachronistic pocket calculator) 9 Mbps for the HD stream or roughly 144Mbps for 16X that assuming the same compression efficiency and/or loss acceptance.
Not sure why 10G was needed, other than as a POC for the technology. 1Gbps should have been plenty.
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
Note that this experiment was specifically not on commodity Internet, but on the Global Lambda Integrated Facility [www.glif.is].
10 Gbps is usually delivered on OC-192 / STM-64 / 10G SONET.
8K UHDTV (4320p) has been defined by SMPTE as a resolution of 7680x4320 (33.2 megapixels).
JPEG 2000 for 2K Digital Cinema Packages are 250 Mbps, a rate determined to be adequate by the industry. This group used 2 Gbps for 8K, which is reasonable considering it is ~16 times the resolution of 2K.