What thoughts come to mind when you hear the term 3G? Could it be that ubiquitous cell phone spokesman, touting their company’s latest network? Perhaps — but if you walked the aisles at April’s NAB convention, the video industry’s most exciting new buzz was evident at almost every turn — and yes, it’s also called 3G.
It’s the latest trend in the never-ending evolution of video, and numerous companies were proudly displaying “3G Ready” in their banners. But, you might ask, “What is it, and what can it do for me?”
Clearing the Air
At the outset, let’s get one thing straight. Our 3G in the video industry is not their 3G in the cell phone industry.
For the telecommunications market, 3G stands for the industry’s “third generation” wireless network, which provides mobile users with a higher capacity for voice, video, broadband data, high-speed Internet and many other advanced services.
But in the video industry, 3G is short for “3 Gbps” — a 3 gigabit per second serial data interface for transporting video from point to point. The SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) 424M standard defines the specs for 3G, and folks, this isn’t just fast data transfer — it’s lightning fast, and for a good reason. Essentially, 3G enables the transport of twice the amount of data as high-definition video with a single co-ax. The implications are impressive, for both the broadcast industry and the rental and staging industry, and the payoff could be highly beneficial — superior images and the elimination of “interlaced” video transmission for good.
Torrents of Data
Here’s a basic comparison. The table below traces the increase in data rates, from good ol’ standard definition video at 270 megabits per second (relatively calm) all the way up to 3G video at 2.9 gigabits per second (blazingly fast).
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Remember that interlaced video never displays a full picture on a CRT in a single scan. Because it takes two fields to make a frame, one field contains all the odd numbered lines and the next field contains all the even lines. Persistence of the phosphors on the CRT and reconstruction in our brains makes it look like a complete picture. It’s an archaic system, invented way back in the early days of television to reduce flicker — but the system keeps the data rates fairly low.
Progressive video, on the other hand, draws complete pictures with each scan, yielding higher resolution images. However, bigger and faster pipelines are needed, because as the data rate goes up, the number of total pixels pushed down the pipeline increases dramatically. By comparison, standard definition pipelines are small, while 3G pipelines need to be huge.
Standard definition television permeates most of our households in the U.S., and HD continues to make substantial inroads into the home, driven largely by the demand for crystal clear sports broadcasts. Those pipelines are in place, but they’re highly compressed, and you are not seeing all the pixels. In the rental and staging marketplace, however, HD is the de facto standard for displaying video at concerts, events and trade shows. HD image quality is much better, yet with 3G looming on the horizon, the quality stands to get better still — up to twice as good as HD. In fact, the “rise” of the 3G standard parallels the rise of HD, in many ways.
History Might Repeat Itself
When HD was first demonstrated publicly back in the 1980s, it was largely in the form of technology demonstrations by Sony, Ampex, and the other large video manufacturers at the time. We all instantly recognized the superior image quality, but there was no supporting gear, no infrastructure at TV stations, no way to broadcast to the home, and certainly, no one could afford an HD CRT.
From those early beginnings, and given the visual benefits of the format, the industry evolved. Manufacturers started to produce infrastructure gear such as HD-compatible routing switchers, cameras and tape recorders. Producers started creating content in HD. Compression technologies evolved to the point where broadcasters and cable providers could bring HD direct to the home.
Then, combined with an abundance of film libraries available in HD, manufacturers essentially bypassed the broadcasters, giving rise to high-quality closed circuit systems such as Blu-Ray. Combine this with a government mandated business model (the conversion of all U.S. television stations to digital), and you have a very nice success story.
The question is — given the superiority of 3G, with faster data rates and high quality progressive scan video, will there be a business model to advance the format? Can the broadcasters find a way to get twice the data through the same size pipe? Will the rental and staging marketplace lead the way with closed-circuit 3G systems? There are benefits that would indicate “yes.”
Future-Proofing the Investment
As the 3G buzz spreads, as witnessed at NAB, the primary driving force is more bandwidth into a single wire and the beauty of the resulting images. Today, if we want to send 1080p to a projector from a video switcher, you send it via DVI — which is very expensive, often involving fiber cables for long distances. However, because 3G is a serial interface, using a single co-ax for 1080p offers a huge cost advantage for the staging company.
Another key driving force is the semiconductor manufacturers, who are now producing a variety of 3G chips that make 1080p @ 59/60 possible — and that in turn drives the video manufacturers to turn out more gear. At NAB, the “3G ready” equipment included cameras with 3G interfaces, routing switchers with 3G backplanes capable of handling the high data rates and production switchers such as Barco’s FSN series, capable of switching and mixing 3G sources as they become available. The advantage to the buyer is not for today’s production requirements but in the clearest terms of “future-proofing” one’s investment.
The Direct Connection
The business model that drives the format may be slow to evolve (similar to HD), but a leader has already stepped forward. BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) has a transition plan in place to begin over-the-air 3G transmission by 2012. There are numerous hurdles, not limited to the challenges inherent in sending twice the data down a transmission pipe that might not get any larger. Regardless, once the BBC leads the charge, other broadcasters will surely follow.
But the holy grail of our industry is the quest to get “interlaced” out of our lives, and 3G may be the treasure map. Imagine not having to deal with interlacers and de-interlacers at every step of the production workflow. Imagine un-compressed progressive quality video from image acquisition to the final projection. And because we’re a closed-circuit industry, our marketplace doesn’t have to wait for broadcasters to develop their compression schemes and solve their transmission pipeline challenges.
All we’ll need to do is plug our 3G production switcher directly into our 3G capable projector and wow the audience with remarkable quality images.
