Software Defined Video over Ethernet — uncompressed AV-over-IP standard built around 10 GbE and the Aquantia / Marvell AQrate chipset.
What it is
SDVoE (Software Defined Video over Ethernet) is an AV-over-IP standard promoted by the SDVoE Alliance. It transports uncompressed 4K60 video across standard 10 Gbit/s Ethernet with sub-frame latency, leaning on the AQrate (Marvell, ex-Aquantia) chipset that lives inside every certified encoder / decoder.
Why people choose it
- Sub-frame latency — under one video frame end-to-end, which matters for live operator control and for any workflow with operator-pointing interaction.
- Uncompressed quality — no compression artefacts, useful for colour-critical and forensic workflows.
- USB and serial over the same cable — KVM-class workflows with one transport.
The trade-offs
- 10 GbE everywhere — switches, cables, NICs. Costs roughly 3× the equivalent 1 GbE fabric you'd use for NDI or IPMX with JPEG-XS.
- Chipset lock-in — every SDVoE-compliant endpoint uses the same silicon family, which constrains the vendor pool more than IPMX or NDI do.
- Tendency toward 1:1 source ↔ display — composition above the transport (multi-window, scaling) is possible but usually pushed up to a controller above the SDVoE layer.
Where it fits
Trading floors, broadcast suites with strict latency budgets, and operations centres that already own the 10 GbE fabric. For greenfield ProAV with cost sensitivity, IPMX usually wins on price-performance.