NAB 2008 Report Part I

Yesterday I was at the NAB show for the day meeting customers and also checking out new trends, new products and meeting potential customers and partners.

Our customers are implementing Video and Embedded Audio over SDI/HD-SDI using our SD vc_656o/vc_272m_291mo and HD vc_274m_296mo/vc_299m_291mo pairs of cores.

Company and product names will be omitted from the NAB 2008 show report.

In 2007 the rage was 3G Video, everybody was announcing some system-level product, FPGA or chip with 3G video support (as a single link used for 1080p 50/60 among other resolutions).

This year the “rage” was actually all over the place.

The largest Professional Video companies were presenting their AVCHD (H.264-based) camcorders showing how they were much better than HDV camcorders (which are MPEG-2 based) .

Another trend was higher-than-HD resolutions, one was called “QuadHD” which was 3840 x 2160 (2X in each dimension of 1080p).  At least two manufacturers were showing 50+ inch LCD-based panels with that resolution which looked impressive albeit a bit soft and others where the Digital Cinema 2K, 3K and 4K.  There were screenings of 2K and 4K movies using projectors which were very impressive as they allowed you to sit at half the distance of where you start seeing resolution-related artifacts on 1080p video.

One surprise was 1080p 50/60 support for Broadcasts.  A demonstration showed runners on an European event and their movement was more natural than if the video had been 1080p 24/25/30 but still not quite as realistic as watching people move.

Several manufacturers were showing how they are moving away from tape and into solid-state storage specifically SD cards for video storage with capacities up to 32GB about to appear for sale.

How do the above trends influence the video-cores.com portfolio?

Some of the trends don’t affect the portfolio since most of our cores are resolution and bit-depth independent and the cores are already designed to run at twice the speed of current HD offerings which require a clock of up to 74.25 MHz (all cores are designed to run on 180nm/120nm TSMC ASICs, Lattice XP2 and ECP2, Altera Cyclone II/III  and Stratix II/III,  and Virtex 2/4/5 at at least 148.5 MHz).  But perhaps it is time to start figuring out which FPGA manufacturers can support speeds higher than QuadHD for customers that require very high image or video resolutions.  Also, having multiple HD or QuadHD streams will place what today would be called “unreasonable” demands on clock rate for cores such as DDR/DD2/DDR3 Memory Controllers.

More about NAB 2008 and how it influences the video-cores.com portfolio soon.

RAUL

Response Time

We have always been congratulated on our Response Time.

Whether it is on checking on a system-level problem that the customer is experiencing (diligently presenting our approach to debug the problem), or providing information necessary to closing a sale, our team will get back to you soon after you request something from us.

We have been referred to as “the team down the hall” (a 278-mile long hall in that case) and often we are the most responsive company of several considered during the pre-sales and sales process.

We believe that there is nothing more valuable than time and we will do our best to make sure that your project development is accelerated when working with video-cores.com.

RAUL

Competition and Pricing

From time to time I get contacted by another Intellectual Property provider,  run into one at a trade show or at a public place and the subject of pricing of IP comes up.  Everybody brings up that video-cores.com is charging too little, that I should “double the prices”, that I am “killing the market.”

The video-cores.com core prices are meant to be fair and competitive in the eyes of the managers, directors and VPs that eventually are part of the approval process.  Once they understand that it is possible to get a design done on time and with the quality provided by our team, it almost becomes a matter of “where do I sign?”

Can video or embedded audio IP be found for lower prices?  Yes, but either the IP is only provided in netlist form, or it is too big (in gates or LUTs) or it is offered by an un-proven team that makes all sort of other cores.  We have consistently beaten lower prices and/or better-known names because we can prove that video-cores.com offers the best solution to the customer’s problem.

video-cores.com specializes in digital video and embedded audio audio cores that process uncompressed media and we are continuously checking what the market needs through direct customer feedback, partner feedback or by reading online and printed publications.

Feel free to provide feedback and questions to this moderated forum.

Thank you for your time.

RAUL

Introducing the video-cores.com blog

Hi All,

This is the first post in the video-cores.com blog where I will communicate current and future developments in our products, partnerships and events.

Please stay tuned,

RAUL I. LOPEZ

General Manager

video-cores.com