Fremont, CA – June 29, 2016 – Blackmagic Design announced today that Japan's NHK Media Technology created an 8K60p video media player, "HyperCUBE MHP-8000," using four Blackmagic HyperDeck Studio 12G.
NHK Media Technology is an affiliate of Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), specializing in broadcasting technology as well as programming and sales. The organization has built a strong capacity in developing non-broadcast technology, including broadcast design and operations.
"Currently, 8K players on the market are very expensive. I've heard there simply is not the demand for it yet and there are complex ways to utilize the technology. I wanted to create an 8K player at a lower price to counteract these issues and hopefully get this technology out to the broader market," said Kazuki Naito, manager of Business Development Division in the NHK Media Technology's Broadcast Engineering Department.
"Our company has been originally focusing on video synchronization technology. Using that technology and the combination of the 4K media players that are already available on the market, we were able to create one that could play up to 8K30P. After this first step, we were just about to develop a new one that could play up to 8K60P, and that's exactly when HyperDeck Studio 12G was released."
Hideo Inou, NHK Media Technology's Engineer of Business Development Division, said: "Originally, there were not enough 4K60P media players available on the market, but our main concept of product development this time was to make it possible to create an 8K media player at the lowest cost possible. One challenge we faced was the need to have it be controllable externally. HyperDeck Studio 12G could satisfy those demands and was also very customizable. It is amazingly very well-made."
"Around the same time, SHARP released an 8K TV that has 4 HDMI inputs, which was very lucky for us. By using that TV, we did not to have to use additional converters, so we were able to keep the product price low," continued Naito.
The mechanism of HyperCUBE is based on four "Sync Controllers," which was also invented by the company to keep all four HyperDeck Studio 12G to be in sync. It allows the 8K player to display by syncing each of the four outputs equally by 1/4 size of the screen. The operation itself is very simple as it is a fully automatic playback.
"As for the connection, it is very simple since it's only controlled by connecting the Sync Controller and each HyperDeck via RS-422. It was very important to make it simple and usable for anybody since we understand that there could be a situation that doesn't allow technical staff to be involved: for example, a place for just exhibiting footage. That's why I tried to design a simple solution that does not even have a power button and automatically plays when you connect the power cable and insert an SSD card," said Ino.
"Even with the lower price of HyperCUBE we understood that some would not be able to use it immediately so we also created an opportunity for them to rent the solution. Since the sales have been deployed widely by Mitomo Co. Ltd., we hope a lot of people will have the ability to experience 8K footage," said Naito.