There is no doubt that the next battleground for signal routing and distribution will be in the realm of 4K resolution gear. Consumer TVs, Netflix broadcasts, digital signage and commercial AV applications are all pushing 4K resolutions from everything from improving the movie watching experience to full-screen collaboration in BYOD Huddle Rooms.

And, there are dozens of manufacturers out there that have launched 4K resolution switchers, cables, distribution amplifiers, splitters, signal boosters and anything else you can imagine that’s required for getting a signal from one place to another.

But not all 4K is equal. In fact, just a simple Wikipedia search will tell you that 4K includes six different resolution standards from 3840×2160 through to 4096×2160 up all the way to 5120×2160 (yes, even that is technically part of the 4K plethora of standards). But, it isn’t as simple as resolution — what about frame rates, color bit depth, etc.? Why do you think that nearly all 4K you’ve seen so far at trade shows is done at 30 Hz and not 60 Hz or 120 Hz? Simple: bandwidth.

In fact, nearly all of the 4K demos you’ve seen thus far are either direct from the source to the display (without any signal roughing in-between), compressed, or actually 30 Hz. Hardly any hardware has even attempted to do uncompressed 4K any other way — until 2015. And now, we have a handful of manufacturers specifying 4K resolution capability — but at what frame rate? At what color bit depth? What’s their sampling rate? Most manufacturers don’t give us those specs.

Extron says it always will. Calling its 4K guarantee a True4K Specification, the company hopes to help the industry, overall, to adopt a standard-way to get all manufacturers to spec 4K performance the same — thus, as the product is specified by an integrator or systems designer, they know what it is capable of doing.

In fact, for each of Extron’s 4K solutions, they’ll see the True4K logo and True4K specification that includes the technical information they need to know about product performance. Extron says that the True4K specs will include complete information regarding resolution, color sampling and color bit, sampling and frame rate.

In addition to True4K specifications, Extron Institutes (their educational offerings) now include new training that provides vital information that AV system designers need to know in order to successfully design 4K video systems that perform reliably and meet customer expectations. And, they’ve made available a free technical white-paper that you can get here called “Hitting the Moving Target of 4K” that is an in-depth discussion and explanation of 4K video in its current state, and what’s to come as technologies and industry standards continue to evolve.

Finally, Extron is challenging the other industry manufacturers to adopt this standard and add these specifications to their 4K products. It’s time to be truthful and help the industry be successful with 4K. We can’t imagine any manufacturer wouldn’t do this. But, it will take you, the integrators, pushing them. Doesn’t it make sense? Don’t you want to know which 4K signals your 4K-capable systems are really able to route?

Here is an example of how the True4K spec reads in product literature on Extron’s website.