JPEG XS Pushes Compressed IP Into the AV Mainstream

The clearest signal from this month’s broadcast calendar is that compression has stopped being treated as a compromise. NAB Show New York runs from 21 to 22 October at the Javits Center, and JPEG XS sits at the centre of several exhibitor line-ups. intoPIX will demonstrate its TicoXS FIP codec family, which covers HD, 4K and 8K in 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 chroma with HDR and Temporal Differential Coding, together with a Titanium FPGA system-on-chip design kit that recently completed IPMX certification testing against the VSF TR-10 series. Titanium SDK 2.0 extends the same JPEG XS, SMPTE ST 2110, IPMX, NMOS, PTP and AES67 support to commercial off-the-shelf hardware, so software-defined senders and receivers can be built without dedicated capture cards.

Cobalt Digital arrives with JPEG XS Temporal Differential Coding added across its IPMX-capable lines — SAPPHIRE converters, INDIGO gateways, PACIFIC encoders and decoders, TOPAZ processing platforms, ARIA audio monitors and UltraBlue multiviewers. Its blueCORE standalone processing platform handles SDI alongside ST 2110 and IPMX while drawing under 80 watts in the IP configuration, and its openGear Dante audio cards now accept optional fibre input and output to remove external media converters from long-distance racks. Fifteen Cobalt products were certified at the first IPMX interoperability event in Geneva in January 2026; the second week-long event in August added fourteen more products from eight manufacturers, every one of which passed.

The most useful evidence, though, comes from operations rather than booths. Host Broadcast Services delivered the 2026 FIFA World Cup as 104 matches across 16 venues in three countries, producing close to 9,000 hours of UHD HDR content while centralising replay, graphics, camera shading and audio mixing in Dallas. The primary Extended Stadium Feed travelled uncompressed over SMPTE ST 2110, but with roughly 45 cameras per stadium and each redundant transport path limited to 100 gigabits, additional feeds were carried with JPEG XS at around 10:1 compression. Sub-frame latency kept remote camera shading and commentary return feeds responsive, which is the point: the compression never reaches the operator. Standards bodies are converging on the same conclusion, and China’s UHD World Association now specifies JPEG XS High 444 12 inside MXF OP1a at roughly 2,073.6 Mbps for its 8K programme files.

For AV integrators the practical consequence is bandwidth arithmetic. A visually lossless stream that fits inside a gigabit or 2.5 gigabit link changes what an existing campus network can carry, and it retires the assumption that uncompressed 4K always means a dedicated switch. That benefits distributed deployments where content must reach many rooms at once, and it raises the importance of the endpoint hardware that encodes and decodes the stream. Amtune’s AV-over-IP codecs and decoders occupy exactly that layer, paired with HD video seamless hybrid matrices for deterministic local switching, AV extenders where a point-to-point run is simpler than a network, and the seamless hybrid matrix multiview processor where many signals must be monitored at once. Every unit is manufactured under an ISO 9001 quality system and tested to CE, FCC and RoHS standards; integrators can reach the team at sales@amtune.com.