Barco quietly launched a new AV-over-IP adapter into medical imaging market today — not even mentioning ProAV. But we found the announcement and, even though it’s aimed at a specialty market not integrated by Pro AV installers, it signals their intent to enter thee AV-over-IP market, eventually, in ProAV. In their case, it appears they are aiming for the higher-end 10G network market (not SDVoE, however).

Installed in over 2,000 operating rooms worldwide, Barco’s Nexxis has become a video integration platform for the surgical suite. Nexxis allows for streaming of both HD and 4K signals without scaling — delivering 4:4:4 chroma subsampling and automatic color gamut selection (BT.709 or BT.2020) to detect the camera source and configure the display. Barco just added both 4K endoscopes with HDMI 2.0 compatibility this week blog with a new adapter that supports two dual-channel Full HD inputs.

Barco’s MNA-440 ENC HDMI is the first of the new generation of AV-over-IP Nexxis adapters. The MNA-440 ENC HDMI converts HDMI 2.0 video signals to Nexxis RAW IP packets. Other non-video signals such as audio and USB for keyboard/mouse are also supported. Barco is saying that end-to-end video latency is guaranteed not to exceed a single frame. The video streams that are distributed over the Nexxis network can go up to a resolution of 4K (4096×2160), 8-bit color.

Again, although this isn’t aimed at ProAV, it clearly signals an intent to enter the AV market with a series of AV-over-IP products — likely to be at the ISE show in Amsterdam in February. Here are specs on the MNA-440 ENC HDMI.