Socionext Inc. began sampling its new MN2WS03101A, a single-chip IC for 4K/p60, HEVC and VP9 playback with built-in HDMI-Tx/Rx. The new device is compatible with HEVC Main 10 profile, and supports new copyright protection, HDR and wide color gamut.
As 4K resolution video becomes more popular and a wider variety of video content is available through the network, there is a high need for a playback capability for new video formats in addition to conventional full HD. HEVC, the new data compression technology is being adopted now for 4K Video, in particular. The market requires a compact, low-power chip that performs real-time decoding of HEVC-compressed 4K/p60 video, allowing output of high quality video with various image processing effects.
Socionext’s MN2WS03101A supports 4K/p60 video all the way through input, decoding to output. It can accommodate the high quality playback of 4K video such as HEVC, VP9 and H.264. It supports the up-conversion of Full HD videos with the conventional codec standards, such as H264 or MPEG-2, to 4K, using super-resolution processing.
The new device is also capable of real-time, multi-channel transcoding (Four-channel Full HD videos to H.264 or to MPEG2) and 4X speed transcoding of Full HD one-channel video, which is applicable for media distribution equipment such as recoding instruments or home gateways.
Socionext plans to start volume production of MN2WS03101A in the second half of 2015, targeting it for next generation 4K video equipment.
