Media Links claims to have solved the problem of moving UHD signals around with its MD8000 codec. This can act as a bi-directional interface between all the current formats of SDI and the IP world. Because the MD8000 is modular, and can aggregate SDI interfaces, it’s entirely practical to be operated with multi-line UHD (e.g. 2 x 3G-HD-SDI) and single line (6G) within the same unit.
On top of that each MD8000 frame can aggregate up to 240G in each direction – so that’s 80 x 1080p@50/60 frames channels, or 2 x 8K@120frames + 16 x 1080p@50/60 frames channels, all without compression. Karsten Winterberg, Technical Director at Media Links Systems, said: “When the original design of the MD8000 was undertaken, UHD was still only a laboratory concept. We knew it would move out of the lab in time, so we designed the MD8000 to have the ability to process UHD when that happened.”