Vitec first with professional HEVC/H.265 decoder card

Vitec, a worldwide leader in advanced digital video solutions, has announced the first professional video decoder card to support the new HEVC/H.265 video compression standard.

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is the successor to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (advanced video coding). It was developed jointly by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and provides better video quality than H.264/MPEG- but with double the compression ratio.

Vitec’s HDM850+ is the latest addition to its Stradis decoder product line. It is a PCIe based decoder for use by end users as well as integrators. It decodes and displays video up to 1080p60 over 3G-SDI or HDMI. The available codecs are HEVC up to MP@4.1, H.264 up to Hi10P@L4.2 and MPEG-2 up to HP@HL. File format compatibility includes MXF OP1a & OP-Atom, MOV, MP4, and MPEG-2 PS & TS.

The HDM850+ will be available through the Vitec worldwide dealer network from September 2013 and a firmware upgrade will add HEVC/H.265 support to the company’s current HDM850 product.

According to CombiTel CEO, Eugene Razbash, the HDM850+ is the first independent tool available for lab and deployment work for users wanting to take advantage of HEVC/H.265.

“There has been a great response from the Australian marketplace to the new HEVC/H.265 decoder product from VITEC,” Razbash said. “Until recently there it was difficult to independently verify H.265 compatibility through third party decoding devices when broadcasters and telcos were testing the latest HEVC/H.265 encoders. Finally there is an independent tool available.”