TECH TIP: WHAT IS ICT?
- Published , by Tom Devine
ICT, Invisible Compression Technology, is AVPro's proprietary compression algorithm used in several of our HDBaseT matrix switchers and extension products. So what makes ICT special? We asked AVPro CTO Matt Murray to explain it for us.
ICT is different technology than VESA DSC (Display Stream Compression), and is actually more akin to CSC (Color Space Conversion). DSC is imperfect because it uses a spatial type of compression and requires deep color to be removed to work. There is currently no solution to recover and mask the dropped bits creating banding.
With Traditional CSC there is a similar issue, in order to use CSC the bit density is reduced to minimum (8 bpc or 24 bpp), in turn, you get banding in some formats, namely 4:2:2 signaling (Which is always 12 bpc/36 bpp). So visually CSC is typically better than DSC due to the minimization of artifacts on most signals (remember 4:2:2 is bad) but the sync times for CSC are increased by about 500ms for processing. This is not only present in HDBaseT transport, you will see in standard bits of silicon that are “18Gbps” they are, but they aren’t – they are just processing in the silicon.
ICT has a unique algorithm that can be contained inside of an FPGA or a robust enough HDMI circuit that circumvents conventional wisdom to allow us artifact free processing of high bandwidth signals in ANY situation we are presented – it is a totally in-house, proprietary, construct. Our ideals originate from a LONG history with ISF and belief that image quality matters, it is what separates us and focuses us on the quality of the end result rather than “making a picture”.
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