WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers will put on the “SMPTE Roadshow: Future of Media Infrastructure” during IBC2026, Sept. 14, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Room G-106 of the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.
The SMPTE Roadshow will help leaders assess where technology investment can create operational and business value and give attendees a practical look at implementing emerging approaches.
The program moves from strategy to practice over two complementary three-hour sessions. The morning session, “Strategic Media Infrastructure: A Technology Roadmap for Executive Leadership,” will examine six major areas of technology investment through a business and operational lens. In the afternoon, “DMF in Practice: Designing and Operating Dynamic Media Facilities for Software-Defined Production” will tackle the technologies, architectures, tools and live demonstrations behind software-defined media production.
Pierre Routhier, media production architect at CBC-Radio Canada, will lead the morning session. His work spans advanced imaging, media production architecture and emerging production technologies.
Designed for executives, technology leaders, strategists and others involved in infrastructure planning, the session will examine:
- UHD, HDR, 1080p and 8K
- Codec strategy
- The transition from SDI to IP
- Dynamic Media Facilities
- HTML5 and OGraf graphics workflows
- Cinematic approaches to broadcast production
Attendees will examine total cost of ownership, time to market, operational efficiency, infrastructure readiness, audience engagement and competitive position. The session will provide a framework for determining where investment makes sense and how technology choices connect to wider organizational goals. It does not require an engineering background.
Willem Vermost, senior IP media technology architect for the European Broadcasting Union, and Wim Van Roy, educational architect at Lawo, will lead the afternoon session focusing on DMF, which will examine the DMF approach to software-defined production and the technologies making it possible. Topics will include modern Ethernet networking, RDMA and RoCEv2, server and compute architecture, NUMA and CPU affinity, GPU pass-through, virtualization, Linux, containers, Kubernetes/k3s and the Media eXchange Layer (MXL).
Attendees will see how these individual building blocks come together as DMF concepts move from trials and proofs-of-concept toward real production environments.
Live demonstrations will provide a closer look at three implementations: a container-based Docker deployment using YAML configuration; an AWS-based MXL deployment demonstrating cloud-scale operation; and an SMPTE Lab reference environment illustrating interoperability and standards-based design.
Participants will also receive QR-code access to curated GitLab repositories and resources they can use to continue exploring the technologies after IBC. No prior DMF experience is required, and attendees are encouraged to bring a laptop.
Attendees can participate in the complete program or register separately for either the morning or afternoon session. Full-day registration is $500. Individual sessions are available for $275 each. Use code 20OFF at checkout for 20% off registration.
To register, visit SMPTE Roadshow online.
IBC2026 visitor passes are available for free with code EXFRKQFR7 on the IBC registration page.
