TV Tech: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2026 NAB Show?
Matthew Williams-Neale: The most significant trend at NAB Show will be the continued shift toward hybrid live production, driven by customers looking for more flexible ways to scale live events while managing cost and complexity. Broadcasters, sports organizations and rights holders increasingly want workflows where linear IP video and cloud-based processing operate within the same production environment. Standards and protocols such as SMPTE ST 2110 and SRT, alongside frameworks like DMF and MXL, are helping define shared models for timing, control and interoperability across distributed infrastructures.
REMI and distributed production are gaining traction, demanding precise timing, synchronization and reliability across AVC/HEVC and ultra-low-latency JPEG XS workflows. Customers are prioritizing dense, power-efficient platforms that can support both large-scale global productions and smaller remote events. These architectures are now firmly established in major live environments, including NBC Sports’ coverage of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics and Paralympics, where Appear’s X Platform supported its contribution and distribution workflows.
Article continues belowTV Tech: What will be your most important product news?
MNW: The Appear X Platform underpins many of these environments, supporting high-density video compression, transport and processing for live production. It is widely used for contribution, production, and distribution across sports and major live events. The X Platform was also recently verified by YouTube for SRT live streaming, allowing broadcasters and rights holders to deliver resilient, professional-grade live content directly to YouTube Live.
We will also showcase X5, the compact addition to the X family which is now commercially available. It delivers low-latency AVC and HEVC encoding and decoding with hardware-accelerated SRT in a highly efficient form factor suited to remote production and right-sized live events. In addition, we will demonstrate the VX Media Gateway, a cloud-ready software platform that complements the X Platform by extending these workflows into cloud and datacenter environments. VX operates as an API-driven distributed media gateway, enabling resilient media transport and processing across both on-prem infrastructure and cloud resources.
TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?
Our approach starts with customer workflows rather than individual products. Customers are increasingly moving from traditional satellite to IP contribution, expanding remote production models and exploring hybrid processing across cloud and on-prem infrastructure. In many cases, this involves replacing IRD-heavy, RF-routed satellite distribution with centralized satellite-to-IP architectures that reduce infrastructure footprint, simplify operations and create a more flexible path to cloud and multi-site contribution. Our goal is to provide a platform that supports those transitions without increasing operational complexity.
The X Platform provides the density and processing performance required for high-volume live production environments, while X5 extends those capabilities into smaller and more distributed deployments. For example, World Archery used the X Platform to bring production in-house, deploying an X20 chassis with SRT, decoding and network management to build a fully IP-based workflow that improved the quality and consistency of its live streams while giving the federation direct control over delivery. VX complements this by introducing a flexible software layer that enables media transport and processing across hybrid infrastructures. Combined with the deterministic performance of the X Platform, it allows broadcasters to run resilient live workflows from venue to network operations center to cloud production.
TVT: What is it about NAB Show that brings you back every year?
NAB Show provides an opportunity to engage directly with customers and partners who are actively building and evolving hybrid production environments, whether that means shifting from satellite to IP, expanding remote production models or exploring hybrid processing workflows. Listening to these requirements is central to how we develop our technology, and conversations at NAB Show support initiatives such as Appear’s customer councils, which help inform our priorities and strategic roadmap.
The show also offers a useful view of where the wider industry is heading. For Appear, it’s a chance to share what we are seeing across our customer base and to demonstrate how these production approaches are already working in real deployments across sports, broadcasters and content owners.
