TV Tech: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2026 NAB Show?
CJ Prober: The broadcast industry is in the midst of the transition from traditional SDI infrastructures to IP-based workflows. We’ve moved from the early-adopter phase of IP infrastructure into the early-majority phase, where the focus shifts from experimentation to operational reality. IP is now proven, reliable and delivering a clear ROI.
Most facilities today are operating in hybrid environments where SMPTE ST 2110 systems coexist with legacy SDI equipment. This creates complex operational environments where deterministic broadcast timing requirements meet enterprise IT security policies, and where broadcast engineers must collaborate with networking professionals who may not fully understand the precision requirements of live production.
Article continues belowI expect conversations at the 2026 NAB Show to focus on how to bring IP fully into mainstream operations and how organizations can navigate this transition in practical terms. The benefits of IP are well understood at this point, and now the challenge is how to deploy IP infrastructure that meets broadcast-grade timing and reliability requirements while also being manageable by real teams under real-world conditions. Remote production, cloud contribution, and distributed workflows add another level of complexity. The pieces are all in place, and the industry is now focused on closing the gap between specification and operational reality.
TVT: What will be your most important product news?
CP: In keeping with the theme of making the transition to IP practical, the NETGEAR Engage Controller, unlike anything else available on the market, greatly simplifies network provisioning. Engage provides a centralized software platform that automatically discovers NETGEAR switches, applies validated configuration profiles, and enables real-time monitoring across the entire network. This allows engineering teams to deploy high-performance IP networks faster and with minimal manual configuration steps.
The latest update to Engage Controller 2.4 introduces offline provisioning. Entire network topologies can now be configured using virtual switches and access points to design complete systems without having the physical hardware on-site. Teams can arrive on-site with the network already configured and ready to deploy. For multi-site operations or facilities with tight commissioning windows, the deployment is significantly simplified.
TVT: What is it about NAB Show that brings you back every year?
CP: What makes NAB Show uniquely valuable to us is the quality and depth of the conversations we have there. NAB Show brings together broadcast engineers who understand signal integrity, timing precision and the operational realities of live production in ways that don't exist anywhere else. You can’t build products for this industry without understanding those requirements with real-world detail.
We come to NAB Show not just to demonstrate, but to listen. The offline provisioning feature of the Engage Controller, for example, was inspired by conversations with customers managing multiple remote production deployments who needed a way to preconfigure sites before hardware arrived.
NAB is also where we get to see industry convergence happening in real-time—broadcast facilities adopting IT infrastructure practices, Pro AV workflows integrating broadcast-grade quality standards and everyone navigating the shared challenge of deploying IP at scale. That intersection is where the most important and interesting engineering challenges are being addressed.
