For all of last year’s talk about distributing 4K television to home viewers, there has been little real progress on making it a reality. The only place 4K technology is being used regularly is in some sports production and in the making of premium television programming.

Oslo, Norway, 11 December 2018 – Nevion, award-winning provider of virtualized media production solutions, today announced that a leading Japan-based global video transmission company (which cannot be named for commercial reasons), has chosen Nevion’s software-defined media node, Virtuoso, for 4K/UHD broadcast contribution with TICO encoding. Initially, Virtuoso is used by the company to transport signals over legacy dark fiber, with a migration to IP expected in the future. 

Ans, May 02, 2016 - PANASONIC and DELTACAST have built a full video chain together, including 4K acquisition, TICO compression, SDI Transport, 4K TICO decompression and 4K display. This demonstration at the technical room of PANASONIC at NAB (#N205) showed a perfect interoperability test between PANASONIC and DELTACAST of their TICO equipment.

14 March 2016 -- Cobalt Digital has joined the TICO Alliance, a consortium of vendors and others, supporting TICO compression for use in IP-based live television ecosystems, the company said today.

The TICO compression and video-over-IP standards are intended to make it possible for the industry to update existing SDI-based workflows to IP and Ultra HD 4K without a complete operational overhaul.

Joining the alliance gives Cobalt access to the TICO technology. The company said it can quickly integrate TICO into its high-density FPGA-based hardware platforms. Cobalt TICO solutions will be available as openGear modular cards and as units in Cobalt’s BBG-1000 stand-alone systems, the press release said.

MONTREAL, September 10, 2015 — Broadcasters around the world are focused on the exciting opportunities for enhanced content and efficiency offered by 4K and IP solutions, but are struggling to deal with the increased infrastructure required to handle the signals. At IBC 2015, Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, is unveiling a suite of products that provide support for 4K 1-wire transmission. Rather than requiring four 3G wires to carry an HD or 4K signal, the Grass Valley solutions use the award-winning TICO 4:1 visually lossless compression from intoPIX to carry a high-quality signal across a single wire.

"A number of manufacturers are talking about compression solutions to simplify the transmission of high-end video and audio signals, but because TICO is extremely low latency and requires minimal hardware for processing, we believe it is the best fit for live production workflows. That's why we chose to implement TICO compression in our IP solutions first," said Mike Cronk, senior vice president of strategic marketing, Grass Valley. "Also important to Grass Valley was intoPIX's work to submit TICO as an RDD to SMPTE. We are committed to a standards-based approach, and are happy to see industry adoption of TICO growing among other broadcast equipment suppliers."

As a key part of Grass Valley's "Glass-to-Glass" IP solution, 4K 1-wire connectivity allows the transmission of 4K signals using industry-standard 10 GigE connections, which avoids the need to use cumbersome and error-prone four quad signals (4 x 1080p), while also offering the flexibility and power of IP infrastructures. Importantly, Grass Valley offers both 4K 1-wire IP connections and traditional SDI connections on its products, making it easy for users to create hybrid IP/SDI workflows until they are ready to fully commit to IP at some time in the future.

The first two product families to provide seamless integration for 4K 1-wire with TICO compression are LDX 86 cameras and K-Frame switchers.
With the move to video-over-IP, there's a demand to integrate camera base stations into IP infrastructures, while also retaining SDI connectivity for use in hybrid IP/SDI environments. At IBC 2015, the XCU HD/4K IP camera base station for the LDX 86 series cameras will be available with TICO compression to provide 4K 1-wire transmission. This extra capability will be delivered via a free firmware upgrade to the existing XCU HD/4K IP base station, and will provide broadcasters with full 4K for live production with reduced cabling, faster and easier set-ups, as well as greater reliability. This makes 4K and HD a more practical proposition for live production, and will allow easy linking between the base station and a video-over-IP studio infrastructure. The base station also has traditional coax connectors for SDI plus audio, and communication and control interfaces to simplify migration, while the patented cradle design makes it easy to switch between baseband and IP infrastructures on the fly as needed.

Kayenne and Karrera K-Frame video production centers are modular, powerful and scalable, reducing the complexity of today's production workloads while providing the flexibility to meet future demands. With the addition of 4K 1-wire IP connectivity for K-Frame switchers at IBC 2015, Grass Valley is enabling production workflow in IP in either 4K/UHD or HD. The TICO 4K 1-wire implementation is ideal for production applications because it is visually lossless even after multiple codec passes, and it creates far less delay than other compression formats. The K-Frame video processing engine is ideally suited to transitional, hybrid IP/SDI environments, as it can handle IP and SDI video formats seamlessly.

"4K 1-wire is a game-changer for our industry. It's all about giving customers choice and making the best technology available to help them provide the best service possible to their clients," noted Cronk. "We know that broadcasters have legacy investments and we want to be sure the investments they make with us will integrate smoothly into their environments and grow with them. Open standards are a very important part of driving the industry forward for the benefit of all."
All 4K 1-wire solutions will be previewed at the Grass Valley booth (1.D11) at IBC.

30 June 2015 -- Adds Support for Emerging TICO Compression Technology that Will Ease the Challenge of Moving 4K/UHD Content over Current Infrastructures

BEAVERTON, Ore., June 30, 2015 - Tektronix, an industry-leading innovator of video quality monitoring solutions, today announced that it has joined the TICO Alliance, bringing additional industry support to efforts by the newly formed alliance to ease 4K/UHD adoption challenges. TICO is a new lightweight compression technology that provides visually lossless compression up to 4:1 and enables 4K/UHD content to be transported over existing SDI infrastructure as well as 10 GigE IP production and contribution networks.

To support transport of UHDTV streams across an IP network or existing 3G-SDI infrastructure, a new smart, fast and light compression is needed. Announced at NAB 2015, the TICO Alliance is a coalition of leading broadcast technology companies working to promote the use of TICO compression in 4K/UHD workflows.

"By joining the TICO Alliance, we are continuing to demonstrate our leadership in enabling the transition to 4K/UHD and IP," said Charlie Dunn, general manager, Video Product Line, Tektronix. "TICO compression technology effectively balances quality, bit rate and latency to keep data rates for 4K content below 10G. As with other compression technologies, it will be critical to monitor quality at every step of the workflow."

Tektronix offers the broadcast industry's most complete portfolio of solutions for ensuring picture and sound quality, including expanded options for 4K analysis and monitoring. These include comprehensive 4K monitoring using WFM/WVR8000 Series Waveform Monitors and Rasterizers, a recently expanded line-up of 4K-capable file-based analysis solutions, 4K picture quality analysis and 4K video distribution network monitoring.

TICO provides extremely low latency (limited to just a few pixel lines), preserves video quality across multiple generations of encoding/decoding, fits into the smallest cost effective FPGA devices and runs efficiently in software. The technology is designed to enhance live IP systems by increasing efficiency and reducing cost for both HD and 4K/UHD video. Developed by intoPIX, TICO has been submitted to SMPTE for publication as a Registered Disclosure Document (RDD) for the benefit of the broadcast and media industry. Members of the TICO Alliance are closely collaborating with intoPIX on the SMPTE RDD draft document

"TICO compression technology has the potential to ease the transition to the next generation infrastructure needed for 4K today as well as High Dynamic Range, High Frame Rate and 8K content in the not too distant future. However, for this technology to be successful, it must have backing from across the broadcast industry ecosystem," said, Jean-Baptiste Lorent, marketing manager of TICO Alliance. "The addition of Tektronix to our group is critically important because it means that broadcasters will be able to ensure the quality of TICO compression streams throughout production and contribution workflows."

Kawasaki, Japan – March 7, 2019: At NAB 2019,booth SU3324, Media Links, Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award winner and pioneer in Media over IP transport and switching technology, will showcase its MDP3040 4K/UHD IP Media Gateway for Network Edge applications