NAB 2025 Round-up – Grass Valley Goes 8K+
In a separate article, we covered the main 8K stories from NAB and in this article we’re covering the other bits of news that we tracked down.
Grass Valley Highlights that Better 4K Comes from Higher Capture
Grass Valley is not a company that we have focused on a lot as it is very clear that it is aiming at the broadcast market where 8K content is still limited. However, at NAB 2025, the company endorsed the point that the 8K Association has been making for some time, that even if your final deliverable is in 4K, capture in 8K can boost quality. At NAB, Grass Valley launched the DX 180 Camera with a 51.8MP 10K S35 global shutter CMOS sensor. Although the sensor has 10K resolution, the content of this ‘cinematic’ broadcast camera is downsampled to 4K UltraHD for output. Pricing and delivery dates for this new camera have yet to be finalized.
(We followed up this news with an interview with Grass Valley)
Panasonic Highlights S1RII
Panasonic was showing its new Lumix S1RII full frame mirrorless camera which has a new 44.3 megapixel sensor and supports 8K capture, the first Panasonic Lumix camera to do so. It’s increasingly becoming important to capture high end content in 8K, even if it will be delivered in 4K.
Broadcast monitor company Postium from Korea was highlighting its 17.5″, 24″, 32″, 42″ ‘8K’ LCD monitors. The monitors have four 12G SDI inputs, but just UltraHD panels, so monitor up to 60fps but scale down the 8K to the panel resolution. Features include EOTFs for PQ (SMPTE ST 2084), Hybrid Log Gamma and S-Log3 and wide color gamuts conforming to DCI-P3 and ITU-R BT.2020. The company also had an 18.5″ AMOLED monitor that has the same input facilities.
Stereotec Working on 8K 3D
Stereotec is a company that we have not covered before. It is based in Germany (near Munich, Bavaria) and specialises in 3D video capture. The company said that is working already with the new Sony remote sensors for the Sony Venice II camera. It has a special beam splitter optical mode which allows dual sensors to be mounted co-axially (useful if you want to capture visible and infrared light, for example, using different sensors). Alternatively, the sensors can be moved apart for 3D capture.
Stereotec is also working on a new3D rig that can be used with dual smartphones to allow 3D capture.
DJI was at the show, although we didn’t realise this initially as the firm was highlighting its Osmo and Ronin sub-brands. The company was showing its Ronin 4D cinema camera. Just before the show, DJI announced a price reduction of $1,800 to $4,999, perhaps responding to the Blackmagic Pyxis 12K pricing. It also reduced the ProRes RAW license from $980 to $1.
As we reported from the BSC Show recently, Nikon is gradually boosting the presence of its RED subsidiary at shows and at NAB the company was highlighting the RED V-RAPTOR [X] and KOMODO-X which now have Nikon’s Z mount. RED also released its Cine-Broadcast Module which supports just up to two channels of 4K60P via 12G-SDI or up to 4K 60P JPEG-XS using SMPTE ST 2110 (TR-08). The module also supports the RED Connect fiber system which can support 8K RAW streaming.
Canon was at the show, but its only new cameras were the PowerShotV1 which has just a 22 megapixel sensor and the EOS R50V which is limited to 4K video. Of course, Canon recently released the R5 Mark II which can support 8K up to 60 fps with 12-bit RAW capture internally, so the company has a strong mirrorless offering in 8K. A feature was made of the stereo capture options using the EOS 5C and the EOS 5 Mark II
An intriguing feature of the Canon booth was a display of its sensors. including the LI8030SA sensor which has 1.5 micron pixels and supports 410 megapixels! The sensor is not typically used for video as the frame rate is just 6-8 fps, but it is seeing usage in surveillance. It’s unusual for us to see demonstrations that highlight how much more resolution you can see than with 8K!
LED video wall controller maker, Novastar, was showing two different solutions for 8K support – one with 1G connections to the panels, while the other supports 5G, reducing the number of controllers and cabling. The firm also has the MX6000 Pro controller which is modular and can support up to four 8K displays or a total of 141 million pixels. The inputs are up to 8K 60P and a maximum of 32 channels of 4K input is supported via HDMI, DP1.2 or 12G-SDI. There is also a SMPTE ST2110 input card.
The firm told us that later in the year it will have a controller that supports up to 100Gbps ST2110 uncompressed video with two channels so that one can be used for the primary, while the other is used as a redundancy back-up.
Laowa once again showed its Ultima 8K 12-120 ‘broadcast’ zoom lens as it had at IBC but told us that it is still developing the product and is still not ready to ship. The firm was reluctant to give an expected date as its the first product that the company has designed for this market and is continuing to gather feedback on features and requirements.
Brompton, the highly regarded maker of video wall controllers, told us about its planned 8K controller last year and this year told us that it would now ship in the second half of 2025 with support for 100G dual ST2110 and DisplayPort 2.1. At the show, we heard from other vendors that one of the challenges of enabling new products has been the work needed to implement the DSC compression algorithm into FPGA chips.
Kinefinity is still working on the new 8K camera with four 12G-SDI outputs that it told us about last year, but did not bring it to NAB this time.
Asus showed its color calibrated 8K monitor last year and it was at the show again, although now it is being talked of as being through to mass production in May 2025. It will cost $8,799, tariffs willing and the firm told us that it has 4K miniLED zones. Certainly, the performance looked very good in our brief demo, We asked if the panel was from AUO and although staff wouldn’t confirm it, neither would they deny it!
Advantech was at the show with its Vega-6321 8K UHD live player/recorder built around Intel silicon and launched last year after NAB, so described as ‘new’ at the show. It includes a 5″ touch display which can be used as a very basic ‘is there an image?’ monitor. It can also support external UHD monitors via HDMI2.1 or 12G-SDI.
Colorlight was showing its LED video processors and is based in Shenzen, China. The company had its latest U15 processor which can support up to 260 megapixels of video wall output and with up to 180 input channels in 160 layers. The U9 Max also supports up to 260 megapixels, but has fewer input channels. The U15 Max doubles the capability of the U15 in terms of outputs. The U15 series is expected to ship in June or July. The company highlighted the color control that it has in its Z8t and Z8i processors.
VuWall is a maker of video wall controllers for control rooms and the firm was acquired by KVM specialist G&D in January of this year and shared the firm’s booth at NAB. The company showed us its control systems which can support LCD or LED-based video walls and include KVM features. The firm’s PAK video wall systems have ‘virtually no limit’ in terms of video wall size as each processor has support for up to four displays, but additional units can be simply added with a single control system for a single surface. The company can use the G&D proprietary video encoding algorithm or standards such as H.264/H.265 and can support RDP ad VNC sessions.
Bosma told us last year that it hoped to ship its new G2 smaller 8K box camera at the end of 2024 or early in 2025. However, the proudct remains under development. There was a prototype at the show, but it was not complete as the final design will have an integrated display, not shown at NAB. The camera will support HDMI output.
NXVI was at the show with its 4 channel 4K UHD Theia R2 recorder and player which uses SSD storage ad has four 12G-SDI inputs and outputs as well as HDMI. It can record Apple ProRes “If it can support four 4K channels, could it be configured for 8K?”, we asked. “Yes” was the answer. The unit is expected to ship in Q3 of 2025.
B&M were showing their AI100 ST2110 & JPEG-XS generator and real time analyzer that has applications in production, editing, broadcasting, technical QC and R&D. The company also provides a JPEG-XS codec processor/gateway which can convert between TICO and JPEG-XS to or from ST.2110 or SDI.
We spoke to Video Clarity about its measurement systems for VMAF/PSNR/SSIM etc at NAB last year. This year the firm was showing a new smaller server. The smaller unit still supports 8K uncompressed video but will only support either recording or playback because of the bandwidth limits for the server. The firm also had the bigger version which can perform both recording and playback at the same time. The unit is optimised to allow very detailed side by side examination of video images. The firm also told us that sometimes its technology is used to test the integrity of transmission and other processes. Even an invisible degradation in pixel values can show up in a PSNR statistic.
We met up with Cinnafilm, a company that makes a media conversion and image processing platform called Tachyon. It can cover all formats up to 8K+ and offers features including motion-compensated frame rate conversion. The firm also has its ‘Dark Energy’ noise and grain reduction tools which can improve video quality and minimize the required bandwidth for compressed content. The processes can be offered on premises or via the firm’s PixelStrings SaaS facilities.
High end media server developer AVStumpfl was showing its latest Pixera4 system which can support up to four 4K windows and can support input via ST.2110. The system can support up to 8K (4:4:4) 60fps playback.
Spin Digital, Fraunhofer and MC-IF Promoting VVC
Spin Digital, the codec developer that has done a lot of work with the VVC codec, was on the Fraunhofer booth with a split-screen demo of VVC alongside H.265 HEVC and the AV1 codec. There were some difficult passages of video including splashing water and the demo showed some of the weaknesses in the other codecs. We would expect AV1 developers to be able to do something similar to show artefacts in VVC compression! However it was an interesting demonstration
The MC-IF, which promotes the adoption of MPEG standards, was showing VVC decoding on a notebook with 70-100 fps of throughput. The UHD Alliance, which is in discussions about a merger with the UHD Forum (it’s around 75% done, we heard) was showing the latest Filmmaker mode with ambient light compensation on an LG OLED display. It was also showing how 4K could look really good even with low bit rates of around 5Mbps using the VVC codec.
