AVT Question: Please share insight and best practices for planning to integrate the next-gen streaming media ecosystem.
Thought Leader: Paul Harris, Chief Executive Officer at Aurora Multimedia
In a streaming media environment, it is important to focus on the infrastructure first and work your way up from there. The cabling will ultimately determine the capability for the now and the future. Endpoints come and go, but cabling is a lot of labor and cost comparatively. One thing is for sure: Bandwidth usage goes up and rarely down. 4K60 4:4:4 1 Gbps solutions can easily use Cat-5e to 100m, however, 10G requires Cat-6A shielded to go the same distance with better image quality due to the lower lossless compression. If 8K 4:4:4 becomes popular one day, 10G will not be enough and 40G will be required, which means Cat-6A will not suffice for the distance. 8K with visually lossless compression can easily be distributed over 10G, but it will no longer be lossless—however in most applications, it will be adequate.
If remote communication is involved, then even higher compressions must be used to send over the internet, and in some cases this must be simultaneous to the higher bandwidth. From there, it is about the brand of product and what features, quality, and warranty they have to offer." —Paul Harris, Chief Executive Officer at Aurora Multimedia
Different applications will have different requirements for acceptable latency and image quality. 10G is better suited to medical or broadcast settings, but for typical conference rooms or bars a 1G would be more than adequate. If remote communication is involved, then even higher compressions must be used to send over the internet, and in some cases this must be simultaneous to the higher bandwidth. From there, it is about the brand of product and what features, quality, and warranty they have to offer. Education and support of the product will be important too, because no matter how good the product is—if the support and education is poor, it will impact the overall solution. This applies to the network switch as well as the end points to encode and decode. Set expectations for the now and the future, and you won’t go wrong
