The cloud is playing an ever increasing role in media production, with broadcasters increasingly deploying hybrid platforms that combine the cloud with on-prem solutions that take advantage of advances in processing, connectivity and AI.

In our latest Guide to Cloud Solutions, we examine the current landscape of cloud-based production and how media companies are adopting the best of both worlds to make workflows simpler and more efficient.

Download your free guide here.

STUDIOS IN SWANSEA, U.K.—QuickLink will debut its new StudioPro AnywhereTally system during IBC 2026, Sept. 11-14, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

Purpose-built for QuickLink StudioPro, AnywhereTally extends tally control beyond traditional local workflows, delivering reliable, real-time on-air indication over the internet for multi-camera productions operating across multiple locations.

Designed for the future of cloud-enabled production, StudioPro AnywhereTally integrates natively with the brand’s StudioPro Proton and StudioPro Fusion control panels, creating a unified workflow across software, control surfaces and remote tally devices. With support for four, eight or 12 tally light configurations, the system provides the flexibility required for everything from compact studio setups to large, distributed productions.

“StudioPro AnywhereTally is a first-of-its-kind cloud tally solution, designed to meet the evolving needs of modern live production. Built for cloud-based workflows while supporting traditional on-premises environments, it gives production teams the flexibility to extend professional tally capabilities wherever they operate,” says Richard Rees, CEO of QuickLink. “By combining real-time remote tally, seamless StudioPro ecosystem integration and professional-grade wireless performance, AnywhereTally enables more connected, flexible and efficient production workflows.”

StudioPro AnywhereTally delivers high‑performance wireless reliability with up to 7,200‑ft range, strong wall penetration and 20ms low‑latency response using military‑grade wireless technology, ensuring dependable tally performance in demanding environments.

Built for long production days, it provides 20 to 40 hours of battery life, USB‑C charging and a clear battery status indicator. It’s compact, lightweight aluminum alloy design supports both hot‑shoe and 1/4‑inch mounting for fast, flexible deployment. With cloud‑controllable operation through StudioPro Cloud instances, AnywhereTally enables production teams to stay coordinated and connected regardless of physical location.

With cloud-controllable operation through StudioPro Cloud instances, StudioPro AnywhereTally enables production teams to stay coordinated and connected regardless of physical location, bridging the gap between cloud-based and traditional production environments.

See QuickLink at IBC stand 7.C19.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) has revealed some of its plans for the next Summer Olympics, taking place in Los Angeles in 2028.

At a meeting of rights holders last week, OBS said it intends to provide approximately 3,800 to 4,000 hours of competition and Ceremonies coverage.

The host broadcaster added it is expanding its use of first-person-view (FPV) drones, real-time 360° and stroboscopic replays, point-of-view (POV) cameras, microphones on officials and coaches, dynamic graphics, back-of-house access and enhanced digital content at LA28.

The broadcast ecosystem will be designed around virtualization, cloud-based workflows and AI-ready infrastructure, said OBS, to deliver increased flexibility, resilience and operational efficiency across broadcast operations.

Plans include expanded cloud services, AI-assisted production workflows, enhanced digital content delivery and new approaches to content distribution.

Work on the IBC fit-out will begin in early 2027, added OBS.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand TVBEurope.

AMSTERDAM—Pebble will discuss its future-facing developments for the new generation of media operations at IBC 2026, Sept. 11-14, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

Development leaders will be on hand to discuss Pebble's roadmap for virtualization and cloud-based playout, alongside the technologies, standards and operational models, including Dynamic Media Facility (DMF), cloud infrastructure and AI-assisted operations.

“Broadcasters and media enterprises around the world are changing fast, and they're asking us for more adaptable infrastructures, more flexible deployment and more intelligent workflows,” said Pebble CEO Peter Mayhead. “At IBC, we'll show how we're answering that, with a virtualization and cloud roadmap that lets operators deploy on-premises, in the cloud or hybrid environments, on their own terms. The same principle applies to AI."

"Used judiciously, AI can be transformative, but in playout it earns its place working around our core engine, not inside it,” Mayhead continued. “Frame-accurate execution has to stay deterministic, so we’re adding intelligence around that engine. Since NAB we’ve continued to develop that approach, exploring how AI can support monitoring, operational workflows and decision-making."

“Our approach to cloud and hybrid architectures is no different,” he added. “They build on the security and reliability our customers already trust from their on-premises systems.”

Pebble continues its active engagement with industry bodies including the DPP and JT-DMF, the Joint EBU/AMWA Task Force on Dynamic Media Facilities. Through its involvement in these initiatives, Pebble is helping shape the standards and operational approaches that will underpin future media infrastructures, ensuring its product roadmap reflects the real-world expectations of broadcasters and media organizations.

Those expectations include the agility to support new business models, operational methods and content delivery workflows. In turn, they will drive the deployment of increasingly flexible software architectures and the tactical choice of on-premises, cloud or hybrid environments.

That flexibility is reflected in Pebble's roadmap, with ongoing work to evolve Pebble Automation towards a cloud-native architecture while continuing to enhance Pebble Integrated Channel and Pebble Remote.

See Pebble at IBC 2026 stand 8.C58.

More information is available on the company’s website.

As broadcasters continue transitioning to IP-based workflows, industry leaders are exploring new approaches that could improve interoperability, collaboration and operational flexibility.

At the heart of these discussions is the Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) and related Media eXchange Layer (MXL), emerging frameworks intended to help broadcasters determine how the next generation of software-defined workflows could work.

The topic was explored during a panel hosted by the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), in conjunction with the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), featuring moderator Steve Reynolds, CEO, Imagine Communications, and guest speakers Naveed Aslam, senior vice president of Production Technology and Engineering, CBS/Paramount; John Mailhot, senior vice president of Product Management, Imagine Communications; Willem Vermost, senior IP media technology architect, EBU; and Andy Rayner, CTO, Appear.

“Much of media processing now runs in software, in a combination of on-premises and in the cloud,” Reynolds said. “And so, if everything is now moving to software, we have to ask the question: are we still designing our facilities in the right way?”

Panelists said DMF was created to address this question, driving the industry forward while solving key business challenges such as how to improve efficiency and allow broadcasters and their partners to share “very expensive resources” amongst more productions.

“I think, from our perspective, SMPTE ST 2110 and IP-based workflows have largely been understood and embraced as being the next industry evolutionary step,” Aslam said. “From our perspective, the DMF initiative is truly the key to start unlocking the practical and technological benefits that we can derive from an IP infrastructure, the opportunities that arise from that, and it just truly starts to give us an opportunity to explore what IP workflows can be.”

The panel explained that neither DMF nor MXL are meant to replace SMPTE ST 2110, the technical standards that gives broadcasters a means to transport broadcast-quality signals over IP networks, enabling them to scale workflows and providing a foundation for interoperability.

Rather, all three are designed to work together: DMF provides a framework for the next generation of more dynamic, software-defined facilities, while MXL provides a specific mode for connecting applications and services, effectively enabling interoperability inside of a computing cluster.

“It’s really the goal of the DMF to organize those upper layers so that you can actually have a dynamic facility,” Mailhot said. “I think that 2110 and MXL will work together to achieve that, but there’s a lot of work to do to fill in all those blanks.”

“If we work in an asynchronous way, suddenly more media functions can be run than ever before. Within the same time frame, of a frame, multiple operations can be run,” Vermost said.

“If you look at it from that point of view, it seems like a revolution. But, if you look at it from your broadcast plant and how you operate it, it’s an evolution. We’ll get there step by step.”

Panel discussion is available on demand on NABA's YouTube channel.

For most of broadcast history, captioning was treated as a metadata problem. QC systems checked whether caption data was present, whether files were correctly formatted, and whether character encoding was valid. If a CEA-608 or CEA-708 stream was embedded and a sidecar file — SCC, SRT, WebVTT — was properly formed, the asset passed. Whether the captions accurately reflected what was spoken was largely outside the scope of automated review.

FCC requirements in the United States and emerging mandates across Europe have moved from nominal compliance gates to substantive quality standards. Caption files that pass every technical check can still fail on accuracy, synchronization, or readability.

What broadcast and streaming organizations need is content-level validation: verifying that captions are accurate, properly timed, readable, and ready for multiplatform delivery. Captioning is becoming part of the broader media intelligence layer — one that evaluates a caption track against the content it accompanies, treating accuracy, timing, readability, and compliance as properties the system actively measures.

Caption Accuracy Starts With the Audio Track
The practical difference between metadata validation and content validation shows up in what each one misses. A traditional QC pass confirms that a caption file is present and well- formed. It does not detect dialogue that was misheard during transcription, lines that were omitted, or text that lags consistently behind speech — all failure modes that reach viewers and, increasingly, regulators.

Content-intelligent captioning systems work directly with audio. Modern automatic speech recognition (ASR) models transcribe spoken dialogue from the audio track, producing a reference against which existing captions can be checked, or generating a new track directly. Current-generation ASR achieves word error rates below 5% on standard broadcast dialogue — comparable to experienced human transcribers, and substantially lower than error rates produced under the time pressure of manual captioning at scale.

Accurate transcription addresses what is said; alignment addresses when it appears. AI alignment engines analyze audio waveforms to synchronize caption timing against actual speech, accounting for pace variation and pausing that fixed-offset methods miss. Captions that drift from dialogue constitute a real accessibility failure, and automated alignment catches those errors systematically across an entire content library. These systems can also surface compliance risk before delivery, flagging assets where timing drift, word error rate, or reading speed exceeds regulatory thresholds.

How Captions Render on Screen
A caption that is correctly transcribed and timed can still be difficult to follow if segmented poorly. Breaking mid-phrase or mid-clause forces viewers to piece together meaning across display windows. This presents a functional problem for all audiences and a more significant one for viewers with hearing impairments who rely on captions as their primary communication channel.

Rather than breaking text at fixed character counts, machine learning models identify natural language boundaries, such as clause endings, breath pauses, and semantic units, then segment accordingly. The result is captions that read more naturally. Emerging standards reflect this: quality evaluation is increasingly extending from file validity to content readability, including reading speed, display duration, and caption segmentation.

A complete evaluation also requires reference to the video frame. Text that covers a speaker's face, obscures on-screen graphics, or overlaps burnt-in text creates problems that fall outside the scope of transcription-level review. Managing visual placement has traditionally required frame-by-frame manual review or post-production adjustment — both slow and unsystematic at the scale modern workflows demand.

Video analysis integrated into current captioning platforms detects faces, on-screen graphics, and critical visual elements, then adjusts caption positioning automatically. These tools can also prevent captions from spanning scene-change boundaries, a source of visual discontinuity invisible to metadata validation. The caption track is evaluated against the full audio-visual context of the content it serves — a quality assurance step that operates where file-level checks end.

From One Validated Track to Many
Once a base caption track has been validated, the same content intelligence can carry through to multilingual delivery. Machine translation pipelines generate multilingual versions from that source track without a proportional increase in localization effort. Additionally, systems incorporating large language models can preserve timing, segmentation logic, and reading-speed compliance across the target language, so translated tracks inherit the quality properties of the source without a separate QC cycle.

Broadcast, OTT, and streaming platforms each impose distinct caption format requirements, and a caption track that passes QC for one delivery destination may fail for another. Generating and validating multiple output formats — SCC, WebVTT, TTML, and others — within the same pipeline means format-specific compliance is confirmed once, upstream, before distribution splits across platforms.

Accuracy That Compounds With Use
One persistent limitation of traditional captioning pipelines is that errors recur without systematic correction. When a captioning process mishandles a recurring term, such as a character name, an athlete, or a brand, that error propagates across multiple assets with no mechanism to resolve it at the source.

Content-intelligent platforms address this through a continuous learning loop. When operators review and correct AI-generated captions, those corrections are captured and used to fine-tune the underlying model. Over successive production cycles, the system becomes progressively more accurate for that organization's specific content mix, speakers, and terminology. This provides a meaningful advantage over static vendor relationships, where the same errors resurface without correction.

Moving Quality Decisions Upstream
These capabilities move captioning from a production checkpoint into a media quality system. Content-intelligent workflows generate structured, validated caption data that feeds directly into MAM systems, localization platforms, and distribution pipelines. The caption track arrives at each stage as a verified asset, ready for use without additional QC. That changes where quality decisions happen. Compliance risk is surfaced before delivery.

Multilingual tracks inherit the quality properties of the source. Format-specific requirements are confirmed once, before distribution splits across platforms. The underlying shift is from discovering caption failures at the point of delivery, where correction is costly and timelines are unforgiving, to catching them at the point of production.

LONDON—Gravity Media, a global provider of production, content, media services and facilities, is powering an innovative reverse remote production setup for ITV’s FIFA Football World Cup coverage, connecting Gravity Media’s London Production Centre with ITV Sport’s live studio operations in New York through a fully integrated workflow.

In this three-hub production model, match feeds are received via the International Broadcast Center in Dallas and transmitted to Gravity Media’s London Production Centre, where production galleries are operated and enhanced with live editorial and presentation content.

Meanwhile, ITV Sport’s presenting team based in New York delivers the live studio segments, creating a seamless workflow across three international locations rather than a traditional single-site production. The result is a highly resilient, flexible production model that brings together transatlantic collaboration and state-of-the-art infrastructure.

The production also incorporates venue injects, with game-side presentation elements seamlessly integrated into Gravity Media’s London galleries, elevating storytelling and live coverage.

This project highlights Gravity Media’s continued investment in advanced remote production technologies and its ability to deliver complex, multi-location workflows at scale for major international sporting events, according to Kate Rendle, Global Sales Director at Gravity Media.

“This is a perfect example of how Gravity Media is redefining what’s possible in remote production. By integrating our London Production Centre with live presentation in New York, we’re able to deliver a seamless, resilient and highly creative workflow for one of the world’s biggest sporting events. Our investment in infrastructure ensures that we can support our clients with true operational flexibility and continuity, no matter what challenges arise. It’s about delivering innovation and reliability at scale, and we’re proud to be doing that for ITV.”

ITVX says it achieved its strongest monthly performance to date in June, crossing the 400 million monthly streams milestone for the first time in its history.

ITV Sport showed seven out of the top ten biggest matches in the group stages, including England's two winning games, with peak audiences of 16.4 million and 13.8 million respectively, as well as the opening match of the tournament, Mexico vs South Africa, Norway vs France, Netherlands vs Japan, Scotland vs Morocco, and Germany vs Cote D’Ivoire.

JERSEY CITY, N.J.—Fox Television Stations, XR (Extreme Reach) and LTN completed a successful four-week live syndication initiative in May for game show “25 Words or Less LIVE,” using IP-based distribution to deliver the program to stations and let viewers play along.

“Live programming creates unique opportunities for stations to engage viewers in real time,” said Stephen Brown, EVP Programming and Development, Fox Television Stations, Fox First Run. “This initiative demonstrated how innovative distribution strategies can support new programming models while maintaining the reliability broadcasters require.”

Produced for Fox First Run and hosted by Meredith Vieira, “25 Words or Less LIVE” aired weekdays from May 4–28, originating from Parlay Studios in Jersey City, N.J. More than 38 live episodes were delivered twice a day to 18 stations, many of which were Fox-owned-and- operated stations in key U.S. markets.

The workflow was powered by Extreme Reach’s syndication services and LTN’s managed IP video transport network.

The milestone project proved the viability of live syndicated television workflows that let broadcasters create more immediate and interactive viewing experiences, the companies said. Live delivery created new opportunities for stations to engage with viewers through social media, local promotions and real-time audience participation, allowing fans to play along with contestants.

XR and LTN delivered a live syndication workflow that allowed Fox to distribute the programming to participating stations nationwide. XR managed the show’s distribution through its syndication platform, while LTN provided fully managed IP transport and master control services connecting Fox’s production facility to local stations.

Together, the companies leveraged XR’s content-delivery expertise and LTN’s proven broadcast infrastructure to bring the excitement of live television to viewers nationwide, allowing fans to watch, interact and play along with the show as it happened.

“Delivering live syndicated programming requires coordination, precision and dependable technology partners,” Matt Pagen, general manager of XR Media, said. “Together with Fox and LTN, we created a workflow that helps broadcasters and syndicators engage audiences in new ways while maximizing their content investments. This combined offering delivered the performance we needed, while providing a more cost-efficient alternative to traditional satellite distribution.”

The initiative received positive feedback from participating stations. It showed how cloud-based and IP-enabled distribution models can support live television workflows that typically depend on legacy infrastructure. It also highlighted the potential for significant cost savings compared to traditional satellite distribution, without sacrificing the reliability, scale or viewer experience required for live television.

“This project represents the kind of innovation content creators and broadcasters are actively exploring as they modernize their distribution strategies,” LTN Senior Vice President of Global Products Rick Young said. “By combining Extreme Reach’s syndication expertise with LTN’s managed IP network and operational services, we enabled a reliable live television experience to stations across the country.”

More information is available on the XR Extreme Reach and LTN websites.

SAN FRANCISCO—LucidLink has expanded its workflow integration with Adobe Frame.io, giving globally distributed production teams unified access to their Frame.io projects and offering support for production media in separate cloud storage environments.

By extending the Frame.io ecosystem, LucidLink said it provides a complete production workflow where editors and producers can access Frame.io assets alongside all supporting production media, including B-roll, audio, graphics and archives—all within a unified LucidLink file space.

Using LucidLink Connect, files stored in such cloud environments as Microsoft SharePoint, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and Amazon S3 appear instantly for the editor. No data migration, downloads or file duplication is required and existing cloud-storage systems remain unchanged.

This approach extends LucidLink’s file-streaming technology to assets outside Frame.io, bringing local, real-time performance to the rest of the production workflow. Creative teams can collaborate in Frame.io while keeping assets synchronized across the rest of the production toolchain, providing a true camera-to-timeline experience, LucidLink said.

“Creative teams don't work in a single application anymore,” LucidLink CEO Peter Thompson said. “They move across NLEs, MAMs, review and approval tools and VFX platforms. Our integration with Adobe Frame.io means customers can enjoy an exceptional review and collaboration experience, while LucidLink provides the persistent, tool-agnostic storage layer behind it. You get the best of both worlds: a seamless Frame.io workflow and a cloud filespace that serves every other tool in the production.”

As more vendors introduce their own integrated storage options, many media organizations are re-evaluating how to architect their workflows. While application-specific storage can simplify narrow use cases, it often creates silos when content needs to move beyond a single platform.

LucidLink Connect addresses this challenge by acting as an enterprise-grade access layer across the entire production workflow, the company said. Content reviewed and approved in Frame.io can simultaneously be used by other tools, such as NLEs, finishing systems, MAMs or AI services without additional exports, syncs or manual handoffs.

Key benefits of the LucidLink and Adobe Frame.io integration include immediate camera-to-timeline workflows, access to everything in one place, no need to move or duplicate files and enterprise-ready orchestration, the companies said.

“Over the years, Adobe and LucidLink have teamed up to help organizations like Brut, Casual and Minute Media, plus hundreds of other joint customers, do their best work. That success continuously informs our roadmap,” Thompson said. “This integration isn't about choosing one storage option over another. It gives customers the flexibility to design workflows that match the way they actually work. LucidLink Connect provides a neutral, high-performance storage layer that lets Adobe Frame.io shine at what it does best, while ensuring assets are always ready for the next stage in production.”

From high-end episodic and feature projects to live sports and fast-turnaround social content, organizations are increasingly relying on hybrid and fully cloud-based workflows, the company said. The LucidLink and Adobe Frame.io integration is designed for media and entertainment studios, broadcasters, sports and live event producers, agencies, brands, in-house creative teams and enterprise video teams.

More information is available on the LucidLink website.

HACKENSACK, NJ—LAt the 2026 IBC Show, Sept. 11-14, LiveU will showcase what it refers to as its "Q Era," which uses AI-driven connectivity intelligence in a modular, open IP-video EcoSystem to automate live production workflows across news, sports, entertainment and other live events.

Among the highlights at its booth are the LU900Q, LiveU's Intelligent Production Unit, the first unit built natively around LiveU IQ (LIQ). The unit applies AI-driven connectivity intelligence and smart operator selection to optimize performance in real time, helping crews stay reliably connected in challenging conditions, according to the company.

Built for multi-camera workflows, the LU900Q combines native LIQ connectivity, advanced eSIM technology, optimized 5G modems and a MIMO antenna array with support for SDI, HDMI, USB and IP camera input. It delivers HD/4K transmission with 10-bit HDR 4:2:2 encoding, up to 32 audio channels, dual video return, dual intercom with built-in Bluetooth audio and wireless file transfer for faster field-to-production turnaround.

LiveU will also showcase its expanded collaboration with Sony Corporation, first announced at the 2026 NAB Show. On display, and currently available, will be the LiveU TX1—a compact, camera-mounted unit purpose-built for Sony's professional camera range—delivering fast, reliable bonded file transfer directly from the camera. Also demonstrated will be the Sony RXS Connection License, enabling direct file transfer from compatible Sony cameras to the PWA-RXS solution via supported LiveU field units, starting with the compact LU300S.

LiveU has also announced that Cuez has signed up as its latest EcoSystem partner, extending workflow automation into cloud-based newsroom and rundown management.

As a member of the EBU's working group, LiveU is actively involved in advancing the MXL shared-memory architecture – enabling multiple applications to access the same video frame simultaneously, eliminating redundant processing and reducing latency.

Together, these developments reflect the broader LiveU EcoSystem approach, supporting the full arc of live production, across live and file-based workflows.

Also at the LiveU booth is LiveU Nexus, a universal gateway for digital and IP workflows that converts, normalizes, and routes feeds across LRT, SRT, and RTMP, bridging social, online, and remote sources with traditional broadcast operations. As well as offering seamless digital source integration for Zoom, Teams and YouTube, it can be used as a scan converter for any web content, the company said.

LiveU Studio is a cloud-native production service for video switching, audio mixing, graphics, and more. It enables multi-output cloud production, allowing teams to deliver multiple feeds in multiple formats from a single production. Together, Nexus and Studio give newsrooms and digital teams a faster, leaner path from live event to published content—across every platform simultaneously.

Also on tap, LiveU Ingest, which replaces fragmented, manual processes with a single story-centric workflow for live and file based—from planning and scheduling through ingest, and metadata enrichment.

Actus Digital, a LiveU company, will showcase the latest capabilities of Actus X – a modular, browser-based platform that unifies compliance logging, low-latency multiviewing, QA monitoring, clip creation, and AI-powered media intelligence.

LiveU will be in Stand 7.C24 at the RAI Amsterdam.

Over the years we have all gone through numerous video content format introductions with new formats raising the bar as the world moved from black and white to color and then the subsequent format and technology increases in quality—sometimes major and at other times incremental—in resolution, frame rate, color sampling, dynamic range, overall color palette and so forth. Some have been easier than others depending on what is needed at each step in the path from content creation to viewing on the display at the end of the chain.

That said, they all involved a collection of components to hold up the advancement’s three-legged stool. One is the bucket of things needed to create content, including cameras, mixing/processing, post and editing. Another is the devices needed to display the content for audio and video; amps speakers and display screens and projectors.

The third leg is often overlooked, but without it the other two can’t hold things up. After all, even when the content is superbly created and devices are available to show it with pristine clarity, you have to have a means of distribution. Imagine farmers, bakers or ranchers with all the things needed for meals and a restaurant on other end ready to cook, prepare and a table to serve without the trucks and other transportation routes to get everything from one end to the other.

The Missing Link
That brings us to 8K. It’s not new. All the elements of the content side and display sides of the stool are there, but for the consumer market that middle segment has for the most part been missing: the delivery playback means to get the content to its end destination.

Now, that has changed with the introduction of the Kaleidescape Strato K Movie Player, the first consumer storage and playback product that can deliver 8K content as part of an ecosystem that will offer a wide range of content in resolution up to 4320/30p. Equally important, with Kaleidescape’s new 4K Cinematic format, this is the first consumer device capable of playing back content in 4K with full 4:4:4 chroma sampling and up to 2160p/60/12-bit delivery.

Fine, you might say, but you’re reading TV Tech from the perspective of a professional, and likely high-end, content creator, not as a home entertainment purveyor or installer so why should you care about this new device? Let’s go into the details before answering the question and hopefully the answer will reveal itself.

If you are not familiar with Kaleidescape they are a 25-year-old company that offers high-end content playback devices that deliver reference quality video and lossless audio with a huge library that includes movies, concerts, TV series and more that are downloaded to the device rather than played from an optical disc or streamed.

Using a “rental or purchase” model, once downloaded, the content is stored locally so there are no compression artifacts, no buffering, and course, no ads. Combined with a masterfully simple user interface, Kaleidescape products have become the de facto standard for content playback in high end home theaters.

The product in question is the new Strato K Movie Player from Kaleidescape.

The Strato K Movie Player’s ability to deliver two media playback formats to consumers that have not previously been available outside of your control and mastering suites is important as it helps justify the complaints about the added file size requirements for 8K and 4:4:4 versions of the content you are involved. It enables the Premium Large Format experience beyond specialized theatrical exhibition that we see with the likes of Dolby Cinema, PRIME and XL at AMC venues and PRX and PLF at Regal Cinemas. What is in large part is now driving the theatrical side of the distribution market is now available in the home.

The Details
As you will see going forward in my new “From The Other Side” articles in TV Tech starting next month, there is another important reason to bring this to your attention. As a content business professional you are someone that friends, relatives, co-workers and those C-Suite executives that depend on you will look at for expert knowledge on how they can get the best images and sound not only in the office and facilities you work in, but also in their homes. For that reason, some additional details on this breakthrough product are in order.

The Strato K is available now and 8K content will soon be available in SDR and HDR10. For the 4K Cinematic format there are already well over 150 movies already available, and it is worth noting that the 4:4:4 material is newly rendered out to 4:4:4 and is NOT interpolated.

The Player itself, can play out immersive audio formats as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X along with other lossless audio such as Dolby TrueHD and Dolby MAT, DTS-HD High Resolution and linear PCM at 96kHz/24 bit. On the video side there is HDR10 up to 8K (SMPTE ST 2084 and ST 2086) and Dolby Vision up to 4K (of course, all formats are dependent on the specific content). Color spaces up to BT.2020 are supported as are a variety of aspect ratios including 1.78:1 and 2.35:1 with automatic or user interface selectability.

For those already familiar with Kaleidescape, while the 4K Cinematic 4:4:4 titles will obviously have a larger file size, the rental or purchase price is the same as the standard 4:2:0 versions. Even better, if a current Kaleidescape owner upgrades to a Strato 4K there is no extra charge to download the newer version. 8K titles will, however, require a new download at a higher price.

On the storage side, the Strato K has enough onboard storage to hold seven 4K Cinematic files or 10 standard 4K files on its internal drive. Additional storage may be added via the Terra or Terra Prime servers or previously downloaded movies that were purchased, rather than rented, from Kaleidescape may be downloaded again.

There is no front panel display as most installations will use Kaleidescape’s own control system over ethernet through the likes of Crestron, Control4 or other systems or with a smartphone app or an optional remote. From an installation standpoint note that the Strato K requires a wired Gigabit network connection drop for the main unit and any additional Strato K or other Kaleidescape players in a multi-zone system.

By providing the needed third leg of the 8K ecosystem stool as well as giving home viewers higher quality image reproduction thanks to the 4K Cinematic mode, professionals may now have yet another rationale for 8K or high-color sampling content creation as a means of playing it back in the home—or in your viewing rooms—is now available.

The price? At $5,000 US, with availability in Canada at $CN7,05, the UK at £4500 GBP or in Australia at $AUS $7,999. For applications that don’t require 8K or 4:4:4 content delivery/display, the price of the existing Strato V has been reduced to $3,995.

Since its introduction, 8K has been derided by some as having great pictures that can be displayed on large projectors, dvLED walls or the growing segment of 88-to over 100-inch flat panel displays but no way to get native or new 8K scanned transfers, not upscaled, content.

The arrival of the Kaleidescape Strato K puts that objection to rest once and for all as those displays now have viable, certified, way to have a library of that long sought after 8K content delivered. For you, as a TV professional, the excuse no longer holds water. 8K as an end-to-end ecosystem is truly complete and those beautiful displays and projectors will no longer be starved for feature content.

MONTREAL—Grass Valley is launching AMPP Edge Live, a purpose-built production system designed to bring professional production capabilities to enterprise teams. The company will unveil AMPP Edge Live at InfoComm 2026 in Las Vegas, June 17 to 19 (North Hall: N7369-MR).

Media production teams within enterprise organizations such as education, government, corporate communications, houses of worship and live events are often asked to do more with limited resources, yet existing production systems often lack the flexibility to support new workflows without significant additional investment, Grass Valley said.

AMPP Edge Live addresses this challenge by providing a flexible production foundation that grows with organizational needs, by combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration and AMPP OS in a single solution, according to the company.

“Production requirements are constantly evolving as audience expectations shift, creating challenges for enterprise organizations whose production infrastructures were not designed for today’s demands,” said Jonathan Lyth, Product Director for Enterprise Media, Grass Valley. “Businesses need production platforms that combine operational agility with the confidence of reliable performance. AMPP Edge Live delivers both, enabling organizations to adapt and scale production capabilities without adding operational complexity.”

The solution is available in two models that serve different production demands:

AMPP Edge Live 4000 is ideal for live event production and provides the performance to run solutions such as Event Producer X, which brings production switching, graphics, audio mixing, recording, streaming, monitoring and production control into a single browser-based interface.

AMPP Edge Live 6000 adds processing performance for more demanding production requirements and supports Sport Producer X, which combines switching, graphics, scoring, timing, data integration and instant replay for sports production.

Across both models, operators can manage workflows that previously required multiple specialist systems and dedicated personnel, all through one production environment, Grass Valley said.

AMPP Edge Live also simplifies lifecycle management through a unified ownership model. Grass Valley designs, validates and supports AMPP Edge Live as a complete solution, managing hardware validation, software compatibility, updates and support through a single point of accountability. This removes much of the integration burden associated with multi-vendor environments while helping ensure organizations remain ready for future production requirements.

AMPP Edge Live is built on a short-depth 4 RU chassis with redundant power and modular AMPP I/O cards, so connectivity can be tailored to each workflow. It includes enterprise-grade security, centralized management and role-based access controls, and forms part of the Grass Valley Media Universe, supporting on-premise, hybrid and cloud-connected workflows.

AMPP Edge Live is available now in the L4000 and L6000 appliance models, with SDI 8 and SDI 12 AMPP I/O card options and media storage choices of 2 TB or 4 TB.

VIENNA—Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, is collaborating with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to extend playback to TiVo OS smart TVs and devices.

Under the new partnership, Bitmovin and Simplestream have created a fully integrated streaming platform combining Simplestream’s content management and application framework with Bitmovin’s advanced playback technology.

The consolidated platform enables video providers to deliver a consistent, high-quality user experience to viewers with TiVo OS devices, the companies said. Bitmovin’s automated testing system uses AI analysis to process and analyze over a million tests each week to pinpoint root causes of playback issues faster and with greater accuracy to ensure the highest quality viewing experiences. Bitmovin first extended support to include TiVo OS in October 2025.

The companies claimed that the joint solution will help media companies and operators simplify their technology stack to reduce operational complexity and integration risk, while ensuring consistent and reliable playback across devices. It also enables flexible monetization capabilities including support for a range of ad formats such as pre-roll ads and pause ads, as well as standardized accessibility features that support inclusive viewing experiences.

“This collaboration represents an important step forward in simplifying and modernizing OTT delivery for our customers,” said Ashley Reynolds-Horne, Technical Director for Simplestream. “By combining Simplestream’s end-to-end platform capabilities with Bitmovin’s proven playback technology, we’re enabling media companies and operators to deliver reliable, scalable streaming experiences while unlocking new opportunities for monetization and service growth.”

James Varndell, Senior Director of Product Management, Bitmovin, commented: “Video providers want their service to be accessible by as many viewers as possible including those running TiVo OS, which is rapidly gaining traction. By extending support to include TiVo OS and collaborating with Simplestream to simplify launching on TiVo OS, we’re supporting customers to reach more viewers across a wider range of devices.”

Stephane David, Senior Director, Content Partnerships and Business Development EMEA, Xperi, added: “TiVo OS is designed to put great content front and centre. Collaborating with Bitmovin and Simplestream will help more streaming services to launch on TiVo OS with a high‑quality, consistent playback experience, so audiences can find, watch and enjoy more of what they love.”

Developed by Xperi and launched in 2022, TiVo OS is a content‑first operating system designed to make it easier for viewers to find, watch and enjoy great television. The platform powers smart TVs from leading brands, as well as a range of smart TV devices including set‑top boxes.

READING, Pa. and CHESTERTON, In—Miri Technologies has just signed a new distribution partnership with Midwich, a distributor of audio-visual and unified communications solutions for the United States and Canada. The agreement reinforces Miri's channel partnership strategy for meeting the rapidly growing demand for the X510 dual-cellular bonding router and the new V410 4K live encoder/decoder in the world’s largest commercial market.

The Miri X510 router enables resilient internet connectivity anywhere by forging multiple wired and wireless links—including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 4G, 5G and satellite—together to overcome speed limitations and withstand network disruptions even in challenging environments, according to the company. Powered by Speedify channel bonding technology from Connectify, the X510 bolsters internet connectivity for any type of data and supports use cases ranging from live streaming and remote broadcast contribution to trade shows and disaster response.

The Miri V410 live 4K encoder/decoder combines intuitive interfaces with rich functionality, robust connectivity and flexible format support for live streaming, IP-based production and AV-over-IP distribution. It can encode one 4K Ultra HD output at 60FPS or two simultaneous QHD (2560x1440) channels, and can also transcode from NDI® sources to streaming formats. As a decoder, the device can decode two 4K Ultra HD streams concurrently from most supported source formats.

Midwich sees Miri as a great addition to its offering in the Broadcast & Media/Entertainment sector.

“The channel partners we service are constantly looking to create the most complete solutions that solve problems, simplify workflows and open the door to new revenue streams,” said Rich D’Angelo, Midwich executive director of business management for Media & Entertainment. “Miri solutions will complement our existing brands in helping our resellers and integrators achieve these goals. Miri's approach to resilient connectivity and the powerful yet simple interfaces in their products combine with class-leading levels of flexibility and insight that truly set them apart.”

“We’re excited to expand the availability of our solutions by partnering with Midwich,” said David Cohen, vice president of sales and business development at Miri Technologies. “We see tremendous opportunities for synergy between Miri and the many brands that Midwich represents and we're looking forward to growing our footprint across the continent with their support.”

Let’s review some of the important feature sets typically found in a cloud solutions provider.

First, the cloud provider should almost always store or process your data in multiple locations, aka data centers. These data centers provide the physical elements for connecting all of your data, anywhere. Data access will generally include cloud apps, databases and hundreds to thousands of both on-prem and off-prem systems, using “prebuilt” connectors that integrate the solutions handling your data and allow it to be processed through established services.

A cloud provider should be able to effectively leverage your existing infrastructure with an ability to query or analyze your data with features including replication, movement/migration and “rework.”

‘AI-Ready’ Data
Given the global emphasis on artificial intelligence, one would almost expect this service-level statement—“all our data is AI-ready”—given the levels of artificial intelligence that the marketplace continually promotes, irrespective of the reference or workplace. Fig. 1 depicts a workflow inside a cloud that could aid in preparing data for AI-ready states or actions—ideas shown in Fig. 2 generally feed back into systems, as shown in Fig. 1.

AI-ready data means that your information has been systematically prepared, evaluated, managed and governed to meet the needs of AI projects. With financial-related data, expectations are that transaction records are properly prepared before that data is fed into an AI model.

Assume certain checks that your (cloud) services provider can include or package can identify patterns (or repetitive series of characters that could flag harmful routines that might represent fraudulent transactions, loops or means to generate a code sequence that would alter, falsify or get a back door to an unwanted action).

In retail applications, your cloud provider might offer “AI prep” capabilities and readiness for applications such as “demand forecasting,” which uses historical data on sales volumes and costs, as well as comparative product details that can be shared across hybrid and multiple cloud providers located regionally, globally or both.

For organizations (like original equipment manufacturers) storing preventative or predictive maintenance for industrial purposes such as aircraft maintenance, the cloud services provider should be capable of tracking and cataloging short-term and long-term historical data, plus real-time data derived from sensors and performance variables. Applications for the cloud-storage systems would leverage and train AI models to accurately predict equipment repair times, schedules and relative downtime.

Sometimes referred to as a “digital vault,” immutable storage is a paradigm where information, once written, cannot be modified, overwritten or deleted for a specified retention period. It is also referred to as WORM (write-once, read-many) storage or object-locked storage. The opposite term is “mutable storage,” which can be edited, replaced, modified or destroyed at any time.

Unlike mutable values, an immutable value or content cannot be changed without creating an entirely new value. For example, in JavaScript, primitive values are immutable—once a primitive value is created, it cannot be changed, although the variable it holds may be reassigned to another value.

Supply-Chain Security
In an “open source” age, malicious activities are common and almost expected in nearly every software and data system—and especially in cloud services. In e-commerce services (such as eBay or Etsy), users place assurance expectations on their vendor’s services, who in turn rely on the respective e-commerce company to “pre-protect” the data and services of their customers and clients, using industry best practices and some of the services listed in the following:

• For an in-depth understanding of how certain software is protected, Software Composition Analysis (SCA) emphasizes control over inventory, dependency mapping via Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) and license tracking, as well as enforcement policies in pull requests (PR) and continuous integration (CI) before release.

Note that SCA also stands for Strong Customer Authentication, a regulatory requirement under the European Union’s Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), designed to reduce fraud in online payments. Strong Customer Authentication requires at least two of three elements—knowledge (password), possession (phone) or inherence (fingerprint)—for payment validation.

• CVE is a standardized, international dictionary of publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities in software and hardware. Managed by the MITRE Corp. with U.S. government support, it provides a unique ID (e.g., CVE-2024-1234) for tracking flaws. It facilitates fast, secure communication about threats and feeds the National Vulnerability Database. There are currently over 330,000 CVE Records accessible via download or keyword search.

Securing Against Ransomware
A “zero-trust” architecture does not implicitly mean “don’t trust anything,” but it does signify an architecture that is harder to breach and is an upgrade to your access control and much more. Zero-trust often demands multifactor authentication at all access points and insists that all connected devices are regularly updated and well-maintained.

Hybrid Cloud Vulnerability
In today’s hybrid cloud world, enterprises struggle to keep track of the slew of certificates managed by different siloed teams and tools. The lack of a centralized view of health increases the risk of application disruptions due to expired certificates. In the AI and open-source era, vulnerabilities in open-source dependencies expose applications leading to unwanted attacks.

Ignoring production usage of open-source packages can lead to breaches and disruptions. Malicious bad guys often weaponize disclosed vulnerabilities quickly, shrinking your remediation window at each cloud source transition (e.g., in hybrid or multi­cloud). You’ll need regular, thorough monitoring to be sure your access control is tight. And you must improve management by limiting access to individual components in the network.

A Flexible and Forward-Thinking Approach
There’s segmentation, and then there’s ZTS (“Zero Trust Segmentation”). You can be certain of some things—the big ones include:

• Cyberattacks are unavoidable: Statistics show this to be true, yet for many organizations there’s a surprising lack of preparedness.
• Cybersecurity mindsets are often outdated: Even with continued investment in perimeter controls, organizations still get breached. When you recognize and accept that breaches are inevitable and start to assume breach, you can focus on isolating them and stopping their spread. ZTS is by far the fastest and easiest way to do that.

ZTS is a flexible and forward-thinking approach that is “AE strengthened” by default. “AE strengthened” refers to key applications, including structural health monitoring using Acoustic Emission (AE) monitoring or, contextually, the bolstering of organizational or technical capabilities (e.g., AE engineer, Advanced Energy—refer to Fig. 2 for example details).

Who’s Responsible?
Essentially, it is the duty of the cloud service provider and end user management to ensure appropriate safety factors are in place and routinely updated before opening the door to widespread public use of cloud-service capabilities. In a future discussion, we’ll look at cloud egress fees and egress payments, an area that’s becoming a bigger part of modern cloud operations.

As new advances in efficiency and vendor interoperability fuel momentum behind broadcasters’ reliance on production in the hybrid private/public cloud domain, cost challenges posed by AI resource scarcities are moving to the top of industry suppliers’ to-do lists.

The latest, frequently AI-enhanced solutions that came to light at April’s NAB Show have made the hybrid cloud model more attractive than ever amid waning enthusiasm for exclusive reliance on either public cloud or proprietary hardware resources.

In the case of Grass Valley’s customers, for example, “whether broadcasters choose to host aspects to their production workflows on premises or in the cloud can be decided on the basis of architectural complexity and what makes sense for the tasks at hand,” Chief Product Officer Adam Marshall said. “That’s what they’re looking for.”

Like just about everywhere else, AI is playing an ever-greater role at Grass Valley. Marshall said the company uses AI “to accelerate our ability to deliver what our clients need” and to provide a “third-party front door” that allows customers to add their own AI application layers.

The need to secure cloud operations, including vulnerability analysis of the type delivered by Anthropic’s new Mythos AI model, has added to AI processing requirements. Grass Valley will make the technology available if and when Anthropic lifts current restrictions on its release, Marshall said.

Inference Costs
A late 2025 report from Deloitte Insights underscored the immensity of the AI usage challenges facing all industries. That report found enterprises everywhere “are discovering their existing infrastructure strategies aren’t designed for AI’s demands,” Deloitte said.

The mismatch results from “inference,” or the incessant processing required as AI models generate new information based on changing conditions. “While inference costs have plummeted, dropping 280-fold over the last two years, explosive growth in overall AI spending… has dramatically outpaced cost reduction,” Deloitte said.

“Dependence on high-performance compute in the public cloud can get expensive,” Jonathan Gryckiewicz, business development director for cloud solutions at Ross Video, said.

Businesses are adjusting to the new realities “incredibly fast,” he said, but for now, “it seems largely the case that to get benefits from AI, we need to connect the media environment to the [public] cloud” where processing is “gobbling up GPU capacity and prices are getting higher and higher.”

Ross Video’s latest cloud- and AI-related contributions include support for its XPression real-time browser-based graphics creation and monitoring tools via a scalable on-demand service called XPression.cloud, which can be used instead of local XPression hardware. XPression.cloud uses AI to identify appropriate XPression templates and expedite graphics-related asset retrieval, creativity and generation.

XPression.cloud offers customers “a more sophisticated way to manage graphics on their own” without “shipping boxes around,” Gryckiewicz said.

Matrox Video is also riding the market surge toward hybrid cloud-optimized converged production solutions. For the past two years, Matrox has promoted its ORIGIN media-aware content transfer fabric as a way to control high-performance multiprotocol transport and scalability without dedicated hardware. ORIGIN was again a big focus for Matrox at this year’s NAB Show, but with a different emphasis this time, Product Manager Daniel Robinson said.

“We hadn’t seen very many use cases emerging until now,” Robinson said, noting uptake this year involves the likes of industry suppliers Amagi, EVS and TSL, as well as the Canadian multiservice giant Rogers Communications. The difference lies with Matrox’s success in using AI to make it easier for customers to put ORIGIN to work in their products and services, Robinson said.

“We’re not running AI on the software but using AI tools to build things quickly,” he explained, which means executing on projects that might have taken days or longer in a matter of hours. “It’s about shortcutting discovery of information. If you didn’t do that, you’d have AI searching through thousands and thousands of lines of documentation with outcomes that may or may not be the right ones.”

AI Supply Chain
Such uses of AI on the build side of supplier innovation are fueling acceleration in product development for cloud- and hardware-based solutions alike. While these applications don’t incur the ongoing inference processing costs associated with AI applications used in live production workflows, they are vulnerable to hardware capacity and cost trends, noted Stephan Stadler, chief product officer at Appear.

“Being a hardware manufacturer, the AI supply chain is top of mind,” Stadler said, citing Appear’s use of AI not only in “how we plan and build things” but in discovering new opportunities and creating sales messaging. “The big challenge is memory chips for everyone who builds hardware products in this industry,” he added.

Appear has moved into the hybrid cloud production space with the recent introduction of the VX Media (VXM) Gateway, which uses open-source interfaces to enable interoperability with other vendor solutions in commodity cloud support for the dispersed REMI production versatility enabled by its hardware-based X Production portfolio.

“VXM doesn’t replace XP,” Stadler noted. “It’s just an extension of that.”

The company’s release of VXM—even as it registered another big hardware win, with Fox Sports using its X platform to deploy its REMI production workflow for the 2026 FIFA World Cup—reflects the growing pull of the virtualized hybrid cloud opportunity across the traditional broadcast-production hardware supply chain.

Another case in point is the expanded support for cloud production introduced by Sony Electronics’ Nevion unit. Nevion has integrated MOXELA, a new cloud-native software platform, with its cloud-based VideoIPath media orchestration layer to transport, process and monitor production workflows encompassing output from cameras and other equipment supplied by Sony and by other vendors.

“The big problem we’re solving with MOXELA is producers’ need for flexibility to adapt to different workflows by running various processing functions for different streams in parallel across on-prem and public cloud clusters,” Nevion Head of Product and Solutions Jan Helgesen said.

The Impact of MXL
MOXELA aligns with common frameworks like SMPTE ST 2110 and NDI, as well as the emerging industry guidelines shaped by the European Broadcast Union’s open-source Digital Media Facility (DMF) initiative, including the Media eXchange Layer (MXL) specifying containerized microservice support for real-time, in-memory exchanges of uncompressed audio, video and metadata across multiple vendor software applications. This is a big step toward enabling cloud-based live sports and other productions, but there’s much more to come, Helgesen said.

“We’re currently on a cloud production journey from Tiers 3 and 2 to Tier 1,” he explained, noting that getting to Tier 1 still “requires some technical development that’s not completely there yet.” It’s a staged road map that will also bring AI into play to automate the complex troubleshooting, planning and setups that big cloud productions will require, he added.

Implementations of MXL in vendor product lines—facilitated by the Linux Foundation’s release of the first MXL Software Development Kit (SDK)—are fast becoming the norm. This is because the shift toward hybrid cloud production has made just-in-time activations of COTS resources with cross-vendor interoperability essential to cost containment.

Sony, along with a new commitment to the protocol by Ross Video, adds to a list of MLX supporters that includes Appear, AWS, Grass Valley, Imagine Communications, Intel, Lawo, Matrox, NVIDIA, Riedel Communications and Telos Alliance.

Pay As You Go
For Lawo, the growing consensus around the hybrid cloud approach to broadcast production is right in stride with its longstanding promotion of the Lawo HOME management and orchestration platform. HOME runs on commodity servers in private or public clouds to enable discovery, authentication, security management and monitoring of all production-connected devices from a single user interface.

To address cost uncertainties as the hybrid cloud production model takes hold, Lawo has introduced Flex, a payment system built on credits that makes it easier for customers to adjust to changing dynamics in private vs. public cloud resource usage.

“You can buy and use Flex credits like chips in a casino to spend on any HOME app,” Chris Scheck, head of marketing content for Lawo, said. The hybrid cloud model “is where we’re heading,” he added, but uncertainties mandate offering customers as much flexibility as possible in choosing how to spend on cloud resources.

For example, while customers would rather maximize use of private resources, “right now, servers have almost tripled in price because of chip shortages, and it can take six months to get them,” Scheck said. At the same time, as Grass Valley’s Marshall observed, in the public cloud space “we’ve seen processing costs rising at record rates, up 40% during the first part of the year and now up 80%.”

Factor in the complications added by the AI squeeze and it’s clear the hybrid cloud model might not be the cost-saving slam dunk it once appeared to be. But in a live-production environment that needs to accommodate fragmented workflows delivered through ST 2100, NDI, SDI and other pipelines while enabling browser support for executing editing tasks across dispersed locations, the advantages of cloud-based accessibility, agility and efficiency are too compelling to be ignored.

This puts a premium on cloud cost-containment know-how. As Marshall noted, at a moment of growing confusion among producers, figuring out what will work for each customer has much to do with knowing which questions to ask.

HEBDEN BRIDGE, England—Calrec Audio has updated its ImPulseV Virtualised Audio Mixing Engine to expand the market for virtualized audio workflows.

The ImPulseV portfolio now includes two new, smaller DSP package options—96- and 140-path configurations—alongside the existing 256-processing path option. Tailored for smaller systems that still demand uncompromising, broadcast-grade audio performance, all three packages share the same comprehensive feature set, including full processing on every path and support for 5.1 and immersive audio formats up to 7.1.4. DSP resources can also be dynamically allocated across channel and bus paths in real time, ensuring maximum efficiency for any production setup.

Calrec has also introduced shorter, more flexible licensing terms—one year, 12 weeks and four weeks—lowering the barrier to entry and allowing broadcasters to scale their production capabilities with no need for long-term commitments or high upfront costs, according to the company. This makes ImPulseV “an ideal solution for boosting resources for temporary, variable, or one-off productions,” Calrec said.

“Traditional broadcasters are reinventing their operations so that they can produce more content for less, faster and across more diverse platforms,” said Henry Goodman, director of product management at Calrec. “Remote and distributed production, combined with virtualization, reflect the broader trajectory of live production: away from fixed infrastructure and towards flexible, hybrid workflows that blend on-premise, cloud and distributed resources.

“This transition is enabling broadcasters to increase agility and cost efficiency through new business models," Goodman added. “Hybrid workflows that incorporate a blend of existing and new infrastructure allow broadcasters to build resource efficiency into every production—and that is quite an attractive proposition.”

Chyron is introducing PRIME Scorebug, a purpose-built scorebug solution suitable for any sport. Built on the company's PRIME Platform, PRIME Scorebug offers Chyron broadcast-grade graphics along with ease-of-use,, flexibility and unparalleled data integration. Additionally, Chyron LIVE now offers a SaaS scorebug with purpose-built scorebugs and specialized controls as part of its all-in-one workflow.

“In working closely with our sports customers across all tiers, it is clear that the scorebug is the most important graphic element of any live sports production. Scorebugs are not ‘just another graphic.’ They have to be highly dynamic and accurate, and enhance the viewer experience,” said Steve Papadakis, senior vice president of sales, Americas, at Chyron. “Our product offerings are always evolving, and are always based on our customers’ priorities, regardless of whether in the cloud, on-prem, SaaS, subscription or perpetual licensing.”

Key features of PRIME Scorebug include intuitive operator control orchestration, complete API-based data integration, and client-specific choreography.

Since PRIME Scorebug is built on the PRIME Platform, creative teams can easily apply the same assets to scorebugs that they use for all their live graphics overlays, ensuring efficiency and brand consistency, Chyron said. PRIME Scorebug and PRIME CG offers the additional advantage of redundancy, since a single system could be configured to run both the scorebug and CG graphics. Alternatively, organizations may elect to lower costs by investing in a single system to run both PRIME Scorebug and PRIME CG with a single operator.

“Prior to today’s official release, several key customers have successfully put PRIME Scorebug through its paces in real-world sports events and now use it on a regular basis,” states Mark Friedman, vice president of sports sales, North America. “From my career in graphics and design for professional sports broadcast, to the commercial conversations I have now with broadcasters and regional sports networks, I know this is an unbeatable solution for scorebugs. We take the simplicity of specialty scorebug products and blend that with the power of PRIME graphics to offer an ideal solution.”

Scorebugs have also been added to Chyron LIVE, which typically serves lower-cost broadcast needs by offering SaaS all-in-one camera switching, graphics and replay. A primary segment for Chyron LIVE is mid- and lower-tier collegiate sports, one-off events, and large organizations or events that may need to occasionally scale up from their existing control-oom capacity. Recognizing that scorebugs play an important part in the visual storytelling and data display for these audiences, Chyron LIVE now includes purpose-built scorebug graphics, data integration services and dedicated scorebug controls, according to the company.

“Sports audiences across all tiers are more sophisticated and demanding than ever before,” says Friedman. “At Chyron, we ensure that broadcasters of any size can exceed viewer expectations, attract sponsors and advertisers and keep costs low with efficient workflows.”

For more information, visit chyron.com.

SINGAPORE—Globecast has completed a major renovation of its facility here transforming broadcast operations into a state-of-the-art, IP-enabled hub that puts its customers across the Asia-Pacific region at the forefront of technological innovation.

The upgrade follows the recent opening of Globecast’s Westlake Village facility in California, further strengthening the company’s global strategy to modernize its infrastructure. This initiative ensures Globecast’s operations are aligned with the growing demand for hybrid, software-defined media workflows, enabling its customers to leverage flexible, resilient and future-ready solutions worldwide.

Established more than a decade ago with a focus on traditional linear broadcast operations, the Singapore facility has been completely re-imagined to meet today’s cloud-centric landscape. The transformation includes a significant reduction and optimization of physical space, complemented by a strategic shift towards integrated cloud, IP and OTT workflows. These advancements minimize dependency on legacy hardware while enhancing operational agility and flexibility.

At the core of the upgrade is a comprehensive reconfiguration of essential technical areas, including the technical operations center, master control room, and playout control room, which now are optimized to integrate cloud-based processing, IP connectivity and centralized monitoring and control systems, resulting in more efficient, flexible and scalable operations.

In addition to improving operational efficiency and scalability, the upgraded facility offers a more modern working environment for staff. It is also designed to accommodate future developments, such as increased network capacity and strengthened cybersecurity capabilities.

As a fully hybrid environment, the facility can seamlessly support both traditional broadcast services and next-generation IP and cloud workflows. It remains a key point of presence in Singapore, providing connectivity, teleport services, playout and media management for hundreds of channels and services across the region.

“This project went beyond simply upgrading infrastructure,” said Chris Pulis, chief technology officer of Globecast. “It was a complete redefinition of a modern broadcast facility. By integrating cloud, IP and advanced monitoring capabilities into a unified environment, we have an operations base in Asia that is more efficient, adaptable and prepared to support the next generation of media services across the region. It also represents a significant step forward with our broader strategic plan of transforming our operations worldwide.”

The project was largely executed through Globecast’s in-house integration expertise. Its engineering teams oversaw the design, migration and implementation processes.

A central focus throughout the nine-month transformation was ensuring uninterrupted service delivery. Globecast successfully completed the upgrade while maintaining full operational continuity, providing seamless support for customers without any service disruption.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Mounting demand for a next-generation video streaming solution that surpasses the latency and unidirectional limitations imposed by the currently dominant streaming architecture is generating strong support for a new standard known simply as "MOQ" (Media over QUIC).

While by all accounts, it will take at least a few more months before the Internet Engineering Task Force finalizes the MOQ specifications, there are now multiple projects underway allowing producers to try out this new multidirectional, multi-latency approach to streaming.

“There’s a buzz and excitement in the air about MOQ we’ve never seen before,” says Will Law, chief architect for the cloud technology group at Akamai and a leader in the IETF MOQ initiative.

HEIGHTENED INTEREST AT NAB
This was evident at the recent NAB Show where MOQ demos abounded on the exhibit floor and an overflow crowd filled the large meeting room devoted to the NAB’s first-ever session on the standard. Entities announcing infrastructure support for MOQ included public CDN operators Broadpeak, CacheFly, Cloudflare, and CDN77 as well as cloud compute platform providers Akamai, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Streaming software system suppliers demonstrating delivery of payloads and advanced features over MOQ-enabled facilities included Ateme, Bitmovin, EZDRM, Nomad Media, Norsk Media, Oracle Media, Synamedia, Red5 and Wowza,.

While proprietary real-time streaming systems supporting video conferencing and a host of other applications have been around for several years, MOQ is meant to satisfy the need for a standardized, ubiquitously available two-way superhighway over which video flows in any direction at any scale with latencies attuned to specific use-case requirements. That’s why Red5, a successful provider of a highly scalable WebRTC-based streaming platform, is throwing its weight behind MOQ, says Red5 CEO and co-founder Chris Allen.

“WebRTC was designed as a peer-to-peer protocol, which means there’s no standard for scaling the way we do by building out clustered cloud resources,” Allen says. “MOQ was designed from the get-go as a scalable broadcast technology for the internet, which we believe will accelerate adoption of next-generation streaming.”

The foundational set of MOQ specifications, known as MOQ Transport (MOQT), marks an incompatible break with conventional streaming modes like HLS and MPEG DASH that are based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). As a so-called connectionless platform, MOQT employs a simple publish/subscribe approach to streaming by signaling the start and end points of a session while avoiding the thousands of request/response exchanges that transpire between clients and servers in HTTP streaming.

QUIC is a modern transport protocol built on UDP that is designed to make web connections faster, more secure, and more resilient. It was originally developed by Google and later standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force as RFC 9000

Moreover, the new standard provides a way to automatically tune end-to-end latencies to whatever levels meet user requirements, including real-time 200-400ms latencies that are imperceptible to humans as well as what Law calls “interactive live” at 2 seconds for use in sports betting, online casino gambling, banking and similar applications and “conservative live” supporting ironclad HD, 4K, and, eventually, 8K quality persistency at 5 seconds.

ALL YOU NEED IS CACHE
With decoding and other device rendering processes managed through leading browsers, MOQ in most instances doesn’t require client plug-in software. And depending on how MOQ-ready CDNs are designed, MOQ can also support recording live content for short-term replay and catchup and long-term storage for VOD archives and cloud DVR applications. “VOD just means my cache is big enough to hold stuff that was live a while ago,” Law says.

Paralleling MOQT development, there are other initiatives within IETF and through the closely affiliated ad hoc organization known as the OpenMOQ Software Consortium that are aimed at creating a practical operating environment for the transport protocol. They include media layer streaming formats emerging from IETF, a new client player template developed by Red5 and endorsed by the consortium, and several ready-to-deploy players, , including a MOQ-based plug-in for Bitmovin’s new multi-purpose Player Web X platform.

“We have an array of features we enable, and each is treated as an individual plug-in,” says Bitmovin product manager Jacob Arends, who describes Player X as the latest, completely rebuilt version of its popular Web X player. “From a player [configuration] perspective there’s not much more to it than that,” but with MOQ playback departing from the HTTP norms, “it takes a lot of heavy lifting on the cloud side.”

While much of the focus on MOQ has to do with overcoming the limitations of conventional B2C streaming, the protocol also needs to be accommodated in post-production playouts to producers’ broadcast and OTT affiliates, notes Gwendal Simon, senior director for video network technology at Synamedia. “We’re bringing MOQ into our Quortex PowerVu multitrack contribution management system,” Simon says.

NEW YORK— Media technology company Amagi has unveiled a major improvements to its CLOUDPORT platform.

“Over the past year, Amagi has prioritized a fundamental shift in how broadcast infrastructure is designed—moving beyond simple cloud migration to re-engineering the core of playout operations,” said Srinivasan KA, co-founder and president—global business at Amagi. “The latest set of upgrades directly impacts uptime, control and scalability for broadcasters operating in high-pressure, always-on environments.”

With more than 250 features shipped in fiscal year 2025-26, the platform now supports over 100 concurrent feeds with 200-player multi-AZ redundancy in a single tenant, enabling large-scale, distributed deployments with consistent performance and built-in resilience.

The latest upgrade introduces Amagi Monitoring, a proactive monitoring platform purpose-built for CLOUDPORT deployments that is designed to anticipate and mitigate operational risks before they impact on-air output.

The tool surfaces missing assets, schedule gaps, ingest failures, audio misconfigurations and delivery anomalies, while delivering customer-level analytics on playout duration and asset processing. Since late 2025, Amagi Monitoring has helped avert over 80% of potential disruption scenarios, the company said.

Security remains foundational to CLOUDPORT, reinforced through continuous platform-wide modernization. The platform has achieved SOC 2 Type II certification for the second consecutive year, ensuring robust controls across infrastructure, access and data protection.

CLOUDPORT is designed for 99.999% availability, with resiliency embedded across network, infrastructure and operational layers.

At the network level, support for SMPTE ST 2022-7 enables hitless protection switching for RTP-based workflows, ensuring uninterrupted playout even in the presence of network failures.

At the infrastructure level, Active-Active multi-region redundancy and multi-availability-zone deployments, supported by flexible deployment models, eliminate single points of failure while allowing broadcasters to align resiliency with operational priorities. The on-premises Disaster Recovery Box ensures localized continuity in the event of extended cloud or network outages, with support for up to 72 hours of survivability.

CLOUDPORT shifts the broadcast paradigm from static control to adaptive, operator-centric workflows, headlined by about 70% faster playlist publishing via new show-level playlist editing and publishing. The platform introduces a horizontal timeline view for proactive conflict management and consolidates multi-channel operations through a unified interface capable of 16-channel synchronized playout. By offering configurable widgets and streamlined control, CLOUDPORT reduces manual intervention and cognitive load, allowing broadcasters to scale regional and variant feeds with greater agility.

CLOUDPORT advances the standards of modern broadcasting by integrating ultra-low-latency JPEG-XS workflows that reduce transmission lag by up to 1.3 seconds, a critical leap for live sports and interactive viewing. The platform further elevates the viewer experience with support for 4K HDR 10-bit video and Dolby Atmos audio, ensuring premium, cinematic fidelity across HDR10 and HLG formats. To meet global accessibility needs, CLOUDPORT now features Google Speech-to-Text V2 for real-time AI captioning and translation, alongside enhanced HTML-triggered graphics automation for precise, production-grade on-air presentation at scale.

The product further strengthens its cloud-native foundation through a deeper integration with AWS, leveraging next-generation compute instances and Amazon EKS to drive superior playout performance. By implementing Karpenter-based autoscaling and migrating to GP3 storage, the platform significantly improves resource efficiency and deployment agility. These infrastructure optimizations enable broadcasters to benefit from cloud-native advancements, improving scalability, performance and deployment agility without introducing architectural complexity.

The latest enhancements are available as part of the ongoing CLOUDPORT 4.x release cycle.

More information is available on the company’s website.

When you’ve spent enough time around broadcast systems, you start to notice a pattern: every facility grows in layers.

A new requirement comes along, so another piece of gear gets added. Then another. Over time, what started as a clean design becomes harder to follow, harder to maintain, and harder to change. Nobody plans it that way. It just happens. You solve the problem in front of you, then move on to the next one.

For a long time, that was simply how infrastructure evolved. And to be fair, it worked. Broadcasters built serious, dependable operations that way. But the downside always showed up eventually.

More hardware meant more cabling, power, cooling, and space which means more things to manage when something went wrong not to mention trying to sort your way through the additional cables that have accumulated on top of your neatly dressed cable bundles. A modest change could potentially have a large impact. That’s why the conversation around infrastructure has changed over the last few years.

The Consequences of Changing Focus
Reliability and speed are still the primary drivers in live production. However, there is a lot more attention on flexibility and efficiency, and for good reasons. Production teams are being asked to support more formats, take on more responsibility, all while dealing with more variation in how a show gets managed from one day to the next.

The production and audience changes, but the core need remains the same. Teams want systems that can handle change quickly without requiring significant downtime. That sounds simple, but it has real consequences for system design. It affects how much functionality can be tied to software and whether a system has room to grow without major changes to the tech stack.

And it affects costs in a very practical way. This is one reason software-defined infrastructure is getting so much attention. There is a steady interest in systems that can do more over time without demanding a new hardware investment every time the workflow shifts. That matters because most facilities are not static anymore.

A production may still be based on-site, but some of the people operating it may be somewhere else. A plant may still be centered on SDI, but some form of IP may already be part of the picture. A system may be installed for one main use case, then quickly be asked to support something broader once people see what is possible.

Infrastructure is Becoming Part of the Solution
That last part is important. In my experience, users almost always find applications and ways to use equipment that they did not fully predict at the start. Once they get comfortable, they push. They ask for more I/O, processing and monitoring. More ways to adapt the system to the work at hand. That is usually a good sign. It means the infrastructure is becoming part of the solution instead of something they must work around.

It also explains why software defined hardware keeps coming up in these discussions. When teams can reduce the amount of separate gear needed to accomplish the same job, the benefits are immediate. The system takes up less space. It draws less power. It is easier to deploy and easier to support and typically provides significant cost savings. The net effect is that the efficiency adds up.

That is really where broadcast infrastructure is today. Not aiming at a complete reinvention or some theoretical universal model that fits every operation. The smarter path is usually more measured than that.

Build systems that leave room to move. That may be the most useful lesson right now. Because the facilities that will hold up best over time are the ones that can adapt without becoming more complicated. That’s where the industry is headed. Not through a dramatic reset, but through smarter decisions made one practical step at a time.

VIENNA—MUBI, a worldwide film distributor and producer, has selected Bitmovin as the cloud video-on-demand (VOD) encoding partner for its streaming platform.

MUBI replaced its legacy on-premises encoding technology stack with Bitmovin’s encoding infrastructure. The move brings greater scalability and faster turnaround times to MUBI’s growing film catalog, Bitmovin said.

Bitmovin is providing support for three-pass encoding UHD and a multicodec strategy, supporting AVC, HEVC and AV1 for film-grade quality optimization via a managed cloud service, the company said.

“At MUBI, every film we deliver deserves the highest possible quality. We needed an encoding partner who could match our ambitions, not just for today’s catalog, but for where we’re taking our platform,” MUBI Chief Technology Officer Andy Dust said. “Bitmovin’s HDR and AV1 expertise, fast response times and collaborative approach made the decision straightforward. We’re excited to build our next chapter of premium content delivery together.”

A close collaboration between Bitmovin and MUBI has enabled the company to complete a rapid integration and full encoding workflow migration from its legacy solution to the cloud encoding service ahead of a hard deadline for decommissioning the previous approach. The migration took place without disrupting MUBI’s ability to deliver films from its catalog, according to Bitmovin.

“With its carefully curated catalog of film content, MUBI brings quality cinema to film lovers globally. Bitmovin’s VOD encoder delivers outstanding quality of experience as well as multi-codec streaming support, so it is well positioned to support MUBI in this endeavor,” Bitmovin co-CEO Ian Baglow said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

GHENT, Belgium—Limecraft has released Limecraft 2026.3 featuring improvements to make production and post-production workflows more structured and reliable as well as easier to automate at scale.

Limecraft, an AI-powered production platform, enables content creators to store, manage and share projects from initial rushes to thousands of masters. Limecraft workspaces can be customized for specific formats, such as scripted TV, documentaries and non-scripted entertainment, and can manage massive volumes due to finetuned AI services at its core.

The third platform update in its 2026 release cycle, Limecraft 2026.3 focuses on three key areas: file verification with ASC Media Hash List (MHL) support, extended AAF export configuration and faster transcription with broader language coverage.

Ingest workflows now support ASC Media Hash List files using Limecraft Edge. MHL files are created upon card offloads, establishing a persistent, interoperable record of file integrity. As part of this enhancement, users can choose the checksum algorithm employed for file verification. In addition to legacy MD5, Limecraft now supports xxHash64 and xxHash3 64-bit algorithms.

To improve interaction with the editorial workflow, Limecraft 2026.3 extends AAF export templates introduced in the previous release. Users can now define more precisely which material lands on which track in the resulting edit sequence.

Advanced track mapping automatically composes the intended sequence track by track, including master clips or auto-generated group clips, camera and audio device selection, auto-select camera angles, custom labels and per-subtrack labels for multi-channel audio. This is particularly relevant for multicamera, multitrack and high-volume productions where manual timeline preparation is repetitive and prone to errors.

Additionally, Limecraft 2026.3 introduces improvements to automatic transcription. Processing performance has been significantly improved, now accurately transcribing one hour of audio to text in less than a minute. This helps journalists, researchers, editors and subtitle operators use timecoded transcripts more quickly.

The release also broadens transcription language and locale support. Limecraft 2026.3 adds 35 newly supported languages and locales, including Latin American Spanish, Pashto, Somali, Maori, Luxembourgish, Belarusian and Kyrgyz, as well as a broad set of African languages, including Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Wolof, Lingala, Shona, Sepedi, Nyanja, Ganda, Oromo, Kamba and Luo.

Limecraft 2026.3 also offers a range of smaller improvements across the platform. These include workspace-level metadata, improved performance for bulk uploads via shared links, the addition of metadata changes in the Workflow & Activity pane, refinements to configurable AAF export templates and fixes relating to custom status display, table sorting, comments in shares, clip detail URLs, DNxHR transcoding and card offload job visibility in Limecraft Edge.

Limecraft 2026.3 is available now. Limecraft will host a live webinar on May 7 demonstrating the new features and their impact on production and post-production workflows. RSVP at https://us02web.zoom.us/.

See Limecraft at the Media Production & Technology Show, May 13-14, at Olympia London in stand F70.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—Amagi has announced that AccuWeather has successfully completed a major upgrade of its broadcast ecosystem. As part of the upgrade, AccuWeather moved from traditional broadcast infrastructure to a cloud-based, internet-driven system that manages both linear TV and streaming in one place. This eliminates separate workflows, making distribution more efficient, flexible, and easier to scale across platforms.

“At AccuWeather, delivering timely continuous weather content, forecasts and severe weather coverage requires a modern, scalable distribution infrastructure, which is why we partnered with Amagi,” said Helen Swenson, chief content officer at AccuWeather. “By consolidating our linear and OTT distribution on Amagi’s platform, we are simplifying operations and improving efficiency enabling our team to focus on high-quality content and delivering forecasts with proven Superior Accuracy™ our audiences trust.”

The transformation, anchored at Amagi’s state-of-the-art Master Control Room (MCR) in Princeton, N.J., brings both the technology stack and managed operations under a single provider. This enables AccuWeather to achieve a high level of agility and rapid customization of its channel.

“Managed Services is at the heart of this engagement,” said Srinivasan KA, co-founder and president – global business, Amagi. “Our role is not just to provide cloud playout technology, but to actively operate, monitor, and optimize mission-critical broadcast environments with a unified approach. As the entire solution is based on Amagi’s tech stack and managed services, customizations are seamless and faster. With our Princeton MCR overseeing Linear and FAST channels, AccuWeather gains both cloud-native agility and broadcast-grade operational assurance—a combination that is critical, but rare in the market.”

The expanded engagement builds on a successful initiative launched in 2021, when AccuWeather introduced its FAST channels. Amagi described the advantages of its Managed Services model for AccuWeather:

• Enhanced Distribution Efficiency: Transition to a fully IP-based distribution model to improve reliability and reduced costs.
• Optimized Regionalization at Scale: Advanced sub-feed capabilities enable efficient management of multiple regional feeds with customized graphics.
• Real-Time Agility for Live Events: Faster workflows allowing for instant delivery of breaking news and critical weather updates across all platforms.
• Accelerated Innovation Cycles: A unified technology approach enables quicker deployment of new features and workflow enhancements.

For broadcasters and streamers, a migration to the cloud is no longer a simple technical upgrade. The era of merely replicating on-premise infrastructure in a virtual environment — the so-called lift and shift — is over.

The most successful organizations are embracing the journey as a fundamental operational and creative transformation, requiring a phased approach that addresses architectural resilience, cultural change and the accelerated adoption of new technologies like AI.

The initial hurdle for many is realizing that the journey to the cloud is less about IT infrastructure and more about people.

“Cloud migration isn’t just a technical decision. It’s a creative and operational one,” Sami Aziz, executive producer and founder of Pale Blue Originals and former head of live broadcasts at NASA, said.

“The organizations that navigate the move to cloud best treat it like a production: a phased approach, very clear communication, investment in training and intentional standardization across tools.”

Any move to the cloud comes with challenges, including managing real-time media workflows that demand low latency and high reliability.

“To tackle this, it’s important to ensure workflows are consistent to reduce training time and use real-time monitoring tools to keep an eye on network and media performance,” said Bryan Bedford, director of consumer industries and business solutions at Cisco Systems.

“Automation and orchestration can simplify operations and help scale efficiently. Plus, collaborating with vendors and adopting open standards ensures everything works well together.”

Reliability Concerns

Reliability, especially for real-time media workflows that demand low latency, remains a constant challenge. Organizations must design their systems to survive multiple problems, from public internet performance issues to data center and region outages.

Mike Pilone, enterprise architect at National Public Radio, suggested that any system deployed in the cloud has to “utilize multiple regions to ensure they can survive an interruption. Using multiple cloud providers can give you an additional layer of availability as well as flexibility if a provider is no longer attractive due to service or pricing changes.”

Content protection and ownership in a cloud-first world are also new challenges facing content owners, especially with the need to protect their assets and set clear parameters in case a platform goes down.

“Most broadcasters don’t ask these questions until something goes wrong,” Aziz said. “Redundancy and contracts with clear data ownership language are two critical starting points. Security should also be treated as an ongoing operational priority, not just a one-time setup. The same care you would apply to protecting a finished master should apply to every stage of your cloud pipeline.”

The growth of AI is also linked to the move beyond a basic cloud deployment. Most AI tools, such as automated captioning, content tagging and quality control, are cloud-based. AI models are resource-intensive operations that may only be practical in a shared computing environment such as the cloud.

“As we see more AI adoption in various use cases, we can expect to see greater use of the cloud to provide the core models and compute,” said Jon Cyphers, senior manager of product and support, distribution at NPR.

AI is transforming how broadcasters operate in the cloud, Bedford agreed, helping to automate and optimize media production and delivery, making workflows more efficient and reducing manual errors.

“Combining AI with cloud and edge computing opens up exciting possibilities like personalized content delivery and intelligent network orchestration,” he said.

“This integration helps broadcasters stay competitive by enhancing efficiency and creating new ways to engage audiences.”

According to Aziz, organizations that have already started migrating to the cloud will be able to adopt and adapt to AI incrementally, with human judgment still a large part of the workflow.

“Organizations still anchored to legacy systems will have a harder time making the leap all at once,” he said. “We’re all watching how quickly AI is evolving. The honest truth is, it’s moving faster than any of us can set editorial and ethical standards, and that’s a conversation our entire industry needs to be having.”

© 2026 NAB

Microsoft is no longer content being the silent backbone of the media industry. Heading into the 2026 NAB Show, April 19-22 in Las Vegas, the tech giant is pivoting from 'enterprise provider' to more of a software-defined broadcasting leader, powered by Agentic AI and high-profile sports partnerships.

In a recent Q&A with TV Tech, Simon Crownshaw, Worldwide Media and Entertainment Director at Microsoft, discussed the company’s plans for the NAB Show and how he thinks the company’s role in M&E is evolving.

Crownshaw admits that although Microsoft has been a household name for decades, the company wants to do a better job telling its story.

“Microsoft has been a bigger part of the media and entertainment industry—and sports, for quite some time,” he said. “I think we may not be the most vocal about how we engage and where our customers spend time with us, but obviously, we're one of the largest enterprise platforms in the world, and a lot of media companies over the past five years are really looking to extend how they think through that enterprise platform.”

The Increasing Value of Partnerships
Crownshaw says the value of Microsoft’s impact comes through its partnerships with some of the more “pure-play” media tech companies.

“We partner a lot with the likes of Avid and Adobe and we have other extended partnerships with Evertz as well and we’ve partnered with Vizrt and Ross Video, where we spend a lot of the time helping customers think through their production workflows,” Crownshaw said. “And I would argue that, as we've become more and more known for AI and everything else we're doing in that realm, we've now started to figure out ‘how do we bring the kind of core elements of our platform closer to media?’ But also with the expectation that our customers—who either have a traditional linear broadcasting feed or a stream platform—want to leverage more of their linear platform, more of their broadcasting platform, to do more with their enterprise components.”

Microsoft also has a large role in sports broadcasting as well, Crownshaw said.

“We have some pretty amazing sports partnerships; we do a lot of things with the NBA, NFL, the Premier League in the UK, everything from thinking through broadcast production workflows with partners like MediaKind for example,” he said. “And thinking about how we transform processes for SRT feeds using AI optimization of workflows and network components, and infrastructure to deal with issues of disaster recovery, and making sure that we can optimize for personalization at every level.”

Being that live sports is among the most valued franchises in media and entertainment, security is paramount. Although Microsoft retired its Azure Media Services in 2024, moving towards a partner-ecosystem model rather than a first-party service, Crownshaw stressed that its platform continues to emphasize the critical role Azure continues to play throughout its M&E offerings.

“With Azure Front Door, we have PlayReady from a DRM perspective, so for anything running on Windows it’s obviously using PlayReady from a DRM,” he said. “We spend a lot of time with customers, thinking through how they can use that security foundation and obviously, we're streaming platforms with a lot of leakage, whether that be through IPTV or others and working through that in a more rigorous way with new partners—that's the focus of our work with the NBA going on right now. And we're also working through the very first direct-to-consumer experience for the Premier League in Singapore with Premier League Plus.”

A Holistic View
For broadcasters who want to bridge the gap between traditional media and online streaming and social media, Crownshaw says Microsoft has the capability to help its customers view their media ecosystem holistically.

“Traditional broadcasters, especially the ones that we work with, have struggled to figure out how to modernize their technology stack,” he said. “They realize the platform proliferation, the fact that speed of service is really critical—especially if you're trying to compete with TikTok, for example—we spent some time with local broadcasters trying to figure out how we can do multiplatform publishing at the speed and size that like a Tiktok would do.”

“On our end, I think it's realizing that there is a place for everybody and those systems have to modernize,” he added. “There's security around data, there's security around content. There's also speed and agility around the systems that need to update and to be modernized to some degree. We do a lot of analysis on the content that comes in, figure out the metadata that could be deployed, make sure people can search for a faster client, and automate some of those processes. We also work with partners to figure out how to build new architectures.”

NAB Show Buzz
Crownshaw discussed what he thinks will be among the most important conversations will be around artificial intelligence at the NAB Show, including the use of agentic AI in the media production chain via its Copilot AI.

“We're leveraging Copilot to replace some of the automation that goes in or replacing some of the workflows that exist,” he said. “We may use Copilot Studio to build custom copies, where we can use agentic or agent-to-agent type workflows. We can basically start to replace commodity hardware or other processes with Copilot.”

Crownshaw used newsrooms as an example of how Copilot can enhance operations and workflows, highlighting the use of Copilot Studio to build "agent-to-agent" workflows that can replace commodity hardware. In a newsroom setting, this means a producer can task an AI agent to validate archives or run origination tasks automatically, significantly cutting down on manual search time, he added.

Microsoft’s message at the 2026 NAB Show will focus on the company’s role throughout the media chain, from origination to distribution, as well as its role in software-defined production, Crownshaw said.

“Microsoft plays a pretty critical role between what we do from a hyper-converged infrastructure perspective, and enabling the connective tissue between the intelligence of all of the different layers that exist within media—from everything coming directly off the camera, all the way to the the ingestion process, through to the production and through the distribution component,” he said. “I would argue that if you look at the things that we enable across our platform, we play a pretty important role. I cannot overstate the importance of the software-defined broadcasting process that I think we are at the forefront of.”

Microsoft will be in Booth W1731 in the West Hall of the LVCC.

LAS VEGAS—Sony Electronics has announced its lineup of new and returning products and services that it will be showing at the 2026 NAB Show, April 19-22 in Las Vegas, demonstrating the latest technologies designed to address emerging challenges and needs in broadcast and production.

“At this year’s NAB Show, Sony’s theme is ‘The Power Behind Your Story’ which demonstrates how our technologies are the driving force behind various forms of storytelling,” said Anthony Kable, CCS Group Manager, Sony Australia. “From products to workflows, and acquisition to delivery, Sony has the right people, tools and expertise to enable creators to capture their vision and communicate their truth with quality and authenticity.”

Sony says its new solutions address the entire production workflow, providing authenticity and provenance, creating more personalized and emotional viewing experiences, and supporting XR and spatial content creation.

At the Sony booth, the company will showcase its live production solutions including the evolution of Sony’s “Networked Live” ecosystem, as well as new system cameras, enhanced workflows for news production, the latest in virtual production tools and processes, and a comprehensive lineup of imaging solutions.

Cameras and Production Workflow
Sony will present its new “R Series” system camera range, which join the company’s existing HDC-5000 and HDC-3000 series camera lineup. The “R Series” significantly enhances image performance, allows system expansion through additional transmission pathways and infrastructure options, and usability that enables consistent color matching across models.

Additionally, the new series features an expanded dynamic range for enhanced details, and operation modes to address different lighting environments. Models include HDC-5500R, HDC-5500RV, HDC-3500R, HDC-3500RV, and HDC-3200R, along with related products such as the HDCU-3500R Camera Control Unit and the HKCU-LUT35 3D LUT option board. The models are expected to be available in mid-2026.

Sony will also demonstrate newly released firmware updates for the PTZ auto-framing cameras BRC-AM7 (Ver. 3.0), SRG-A40, and SRG-A12 (Ver. 4.0). Leveraging Sony’s latest AI technologies, these updates expand functionality to support increasingly diverse production needs, including sports broadcasting, education, and corporate content creation.

For the first time at NAB Show, Sony’s recently launched PXW-Z300 XDCAM handheld AI-powered camcorder—the world’s first to support the C2PA standard for video authenticity—will demonstrate the growing demand for trustworthy news reporting through authenticity and provenance.

Sony will also present an end-to-end workflow that leverages camera-originated authenticity files and metadata from the field through immediate production and editing. This workflow is achieved with the LiveU TX1, a compact IP bonding-capable data transmitter (announced in September 2025), the PDT-FP1 portable data transmitter, and the newly announced PWA-RXS Network RX Station.

In addition, LiveU has announced a further expansion of its integration with Sony’s PWA-RXS through an optional license. A reference demo will showcase a new workflow powered by Sony’s cellular connectivity management system, featuring real-time carrier optimization and seamless global connectivity for creators.

Sony will also show an expanded lineup of Alpha cameras and lenses, including the Alpha 7 V capable of 4K 60p capture without crop. The 33 MP (approx.) full-frame hybrid model incorporates a BIONZ XR2 processor with an integrated AI processing engine to facilitate subject recognition and Auto Framing. Additionally, the latest version (Ver. 2.6) of the Monitor & Control app, which enables video monitoring and remote control from smartphones, tablets, and Macs, will be showcased.

Sony’s diverse Cinema Line cameras will enhance their functionality. The FR7 cinematic PTZ camera recently added AI-based Auto Framing and support for OpenTrackIO protocol through a Ver. 4.0 firmware update, while the FX6 full-frame Cinema Line camera rolled out BIG 6 home screen display support for easy access to top functions.

Additionally, experience spatial content creation brought to life through the VENICE Extension System Mini (Rialto) combined with the glasses-free 3D Spatial Reality Display.

Media Processing
Sony will also demo MOXELA, a new software-based media processing platform running on COTS (commercial off the shelf) servers or in the cloud, designed to transform how broadcasters, production companies, and media organizations transport, process, and monitor live video, audio, and data.

Additionally, attendees will see demonstrations of new features for the MLS-X1 multi-format switcher, enabling efficient production by sharing input and output signals across multiple studios. Sony will also debut the ICP-X7000A, a control panel featuring a newly developed XPT operation panel that significantly improves visibility and operability and is planned to be available in late 2026.

Virtual Production and Spatial Content Creation
To manage its ecosystem of virtual production solutions that include cameras, camera tracking and LED walls, Sony will showcase firmware updates to its Virtual Production Tool Set Ver. 3.0.

Sony will also launch the XYN Spatial Capture Solution, which generates photorealistic 3DCG (3D Computer Graphics) assets from photographs taken with mirrorless cameras. This professional solution, which will be shown at NAB Show and is expected to be available mid-2026, is comprised of three tools designed for use across virtual production and a wide range of 3DCG content creation workflows. XYN Spatial Scan Navi is a smartphone app[5] that guides efficient image capture. XYN Spatial Scan is a web application that delivers studio-grade generation quality. Finally, the XYN Renderer Plugin, enables highly realistic rendering for virtual production studios.

Additionally, Sony will host many engaging presentations and talks on trending topics throughout the show featuring notable industry voices. For more details about the company’s presence, visit Sony’s NAB Show website.

Sony will be in Booth C8401 in the Central Hall of the LVCC.

Lawo and swXtch.io, a provider of software-defined networking for media workflows, have announced that groundSwXtch, swXtch.io’s software-defined multicast overlay for on-prem and hybrid ground/cloud networks will be integrated into Lawo’s HOME management platform for IP media infrastructures.

This integration integration “enables high-performance multicast IP networking across hybrid cloud and on-premises environments, delivering greater flexibility, scalability, and efficiency for live production, remote workflows, and compact infrastructure deployments,” the companies said.

groundSwXtch extends swXtch.io’s cloudSwXtch technology to physical, ground-based networks, providing software-based multicast capabilities, protocol flexibility, and low-latency media transport without reliance on traditional hardware switches.

“Partnering with swXtch.io allows us to further enhance the software-based capabilities of our HOME ecosystem and deliver even more agile solutions to our customers,” said Axel Kern, Senior Director of Cloud and Infrastructure Solutions, LAWO. “By integrating groundSwXtch, we hope to turn on-prem and cloud networking into a unified fabric, empowering broadcasters to handle dynamic production demands.”

The envisaged partnership supports several key customer use cases that will be highlighted during the NAB Show:

Use Case 1: Private Cloud-Based Production with Remote Contributions. Building on private-cloud-centric workflows, this scenario incorporates contributions from external remote sites such as arenas, town halls, or mobile production units.

Essences generated at remote locations feed into the local production environment, which is orchestrated and controlled from a central site. Program-ready signals are distributed to the main facility for final output and dissemination. The integration of groundSwXtch ensures reliable, low-latency transport between remote sites, cloud resources, and on-prem infrastructure.

Use Case 2: Peak Utilization and Cloud Bursting. Customers facing sudden spikes in demand — such as breaking news coverage or major sports events — can rapidly provision additional compute resources. Lawo HOME Apps run in the cloud with management and workflow control from the main site.

Media essences (audio and video) feed production tools including DSK/switchers, multiviewers, and video processors. IP streams return program signals and visualizations to the main facility, and finished program feeds route directly to distribution channels.

“groundSwXtch brings the power of software-defined multicast and hybrid networking directly to on-prem media operations,” said Brent Yates, CEO of swXtch.io. “Our collaboration with Lawo demonstrates how combining our virtual overlay technology with Lawo’s renowned open HOME platform create powerful new possibilities for broadcasters transitioning to IP and cloud-native workflows.”

Details about the LAWO-swXtch.io integration will be given at the NAB Show in Las Vegas (April 18–22, 2026). Interested visitors are invited to contact Axel Kern (Lawo, booth C2108) or Jerry Schall (swXtch.io, booth W1377HS).

For more information, visit www.lawo.com and www.swxtch.io.

For much of its history, the multiviewer has served a straightforward purpose: Provide a quick visual check that channels were present and behaving. Operators watched feeds, listened to audio, and scanned captions for obvious issues. That approach worked when facilities monitored a relatively small group of linear channels.

Today’s environment is more demanding. Operations span linear broadcast, OTT, FAST, and pop-up services, often supported by teams that haven’t grown at the same pace. Add hybrid SDI/IP infrastructures and issues that don’t show up visually, and the limitations of traditional monitoring become clear. In response, the multiviewer has had to grow into a far more capable operational tool.

The Classic Multiviewer: What It Solved — and What It Missed
Legacy multiviewers excelled at confidence monitoring. They confirmed feed presence, audio activity, and the basic health of captions and formats. Their shortcomings became more visible as operations expanded.

Many were hardware-bound, difficult to scale, and reliant on constant human attention. Operators could easily miss issues that weren’t visually obvious, such as loudness violations, subtle compression problems, caption sync drift, or packet-level instability in IP streams. These systems also sat apart from deeper monitoring tools, forcing operators to jump between systems to determine the cause of an issue.

As more services came online and distribution moved across multiple platforms, that model stopped being sustainable. The traditional multiviewer simply couldn’t keep pace with the volume and complexity of signals in play.

Why Operations Teams Are Feeling New Pressure
Operations teams today face a convergence of added responsibilities and tighter resources. Channels have multiplied across linear, OTT, and FAST workflows, yet staffing often remains flat. Many teams now work across facilities, regions, and time zones, making coordination more complex and increasing reliance on automation.

Hybrid SDI/IP environments add challenges of their own. Timing drift, jitter, packet loss, and hardware instability can degrade service even when the video looks fine. Operators don’t just need to see that something is wrong on a multiviewer; they need insight into what’s driving those issues across the chain.

The Evolution of the Multiviewer: From Passive Display to Integrated Intelligence
The expanding scope of modern operations forced the multiviewer to evolve. Alarms and basic QC overlays were early additions, but they didn’t go far enough. Teams needed a clearer understanding of what was happening behind the picture.

Modern multiviewers now incorporate QoE and QoS metrics, loudness levels, caption behavior, SCTE-35 markers, transport stream data, network timing, and encoder/decoder health. Seeing these signals alongside video transforms the multiviewer from a passive display to an intelligence tool.

That change shows up in everyday workflows. Compression artifacts that appear intermittently, caption drift that worsens over time, or missing SCTE markers that disrupt ad delivery are often overlooked during visual monitoring alone. When these conditions are visible in the same place as the video, operators spot patterns sooner and can move more quickly toward root-cause analysis.

Enhancing Situational Awareness for Lean, Distributed Teams
Teams overseeing growing volumes of content need tools that help them focus on what matters. Modern multiviewers use metadata stacks, color cues, and KPIs to help operators evaluate issues at a glance. These cues highlight whether a problem affects the viewer and offer clues about its origin without requiring multiple toolsets.

The way alerts are handled is just as important. When thresholds and priorities are tuned correctly, automated alerts elevate meaningful events and help operators avoid distraction from less critical noise. Automation doesn’t override human judgment; instead, it supports exception-based monitoring, which has become essential for teams working across different locations. Shared dashboards also give operations, engineering, and IT a unified view of system health and service performance.

Multiviewers in IP Architectures — and the Arrival of Intelligence Platforms
As more facilities move toward IP-driven workflows, the link between network behavior and video quality becomes impossible to ignore. Packet loss, jitter, buffer instability, congestion, and PTP timing drift can disrupt service even when the picture appears stable on screen.

A modern multiviewer needs to surface transport—and network-level insight directly alongside video feeds so operators can interpret issues more accurately. This combined visibility helps close the long-standing gap between traditional engineering and IT/network teams.

At the same time, software-based, scalable multiviewers are replacing fixed hardware systems, giving teams the flexibility to run monitoring on standard servers or in the cloud. This makes it easier to expand monitoring capacity as workloads increase or change.

More advanced analysis capabilities are following the same path. Pattern recognition and intelligent correlation can help highlight trends or emerging failures before viewers notice anything is wrong. To support modern operations, next-generation multiviewers should unify monitoring and visualization, provide real-time actionable insight from anywhere, and correlate issues across the entire workflow. The aim is simple: help teams identify problems sooner, resolve them efficiently, and maintain high-quality service without adding operational burden.

As channel counts rise and workflows become more distributed and IP-driven, teams need tools that reveal insight rather than simply presenting imagery. For many organizations, the multiviewer is increasingly becoming that central surface — a place where video, metadata, network signals, and diagnostic context come together. For teams evaluating new platforms, the focus should be on flexibility, integrated intelligence, and the ability to support lean, distributed operations with confidence.

NEWARK, NJ—Panasonic Video and Audio Systems North America has announced a partnership with NEP Group, integrating Panasonic’s Kairos IP live production system with NEP’s recently announced NEP Platform, a new software orchestration system.

The companies said the integration enables media companies and live events service providers to deploy flexible and scalable production workflows that bridge traditional and IP-native infrastructure without vendor lock-in.

“Media, broadcast, and streaming companies are rapidly shifting to software-defined, IP-based production architecture. Operators face mounting pressure to reduce infrastructure footprint, increase workflow agility, and support hybrid cloud–on-premises models without compromising the frame-accurate reliability live production requires,” said Steve Milley, Vice President, Professional Video and Audio Systems at Panasonic. “Our partnership with NEP marks a meaningful step forward for Kairos’ open-platform vision, giving customers a clear, validated path to IP. With flexible, scalable workflows, Kairos is designed to eliminate the integration challenges that have slowed adoption of software-defined production.”

NEP Platform allows broadcasters to customize and optimize their production environment, saving valuable time and resources. By achieving certified interoperability with Kairos, the two platforms share a unified control and data plane that allows operators to dynamically allocate production resources, trigger Kairos' multiviewer and production switching events, and synchronize metadata from a single interface.

The integration between Panasonic and NEP delivers operational advantages for production teams by streamlining control, scaling flexibility, and reducing deployment time, according to the companies. Operators can manage Kairos production switching, NEP routing, and resource orchestration through a single unified interface, eliminating the need for constant context switching. Additionally, the pre-validated integration was created to significantly reduce system commissioning time, with the goal of a faster, more efficient deployment.

“Through our ongoing partnership with Panasonic, we've been able to bring together best-in-class technologies into a unified, software-driven ecosystem,” said Dan Murphy, VP of NEP Platform. “Integrating NEP Platform with Kairos demonstrates how open, standards-based innovation can simplify complex workflows and deliver the performance and reliability live production demands.”

The collaboration builds on Kairos’ open architecture and established use across broadcast and live production environments worldwide. The platform exposes fully documented APIs through the Kairos Alliance Partners program, enabling third-party integrations and interoperability. Built on standards including SMPTE ST 2110 and NMOS, Kairos supports true software-defined workflows without legacy SDI constraints. The platform also aligns sustainability goals through its COTS-based, software-first approach, designed to reduce power consumption and physical infrastructure requirements.

The companies will showcase a joint demonstration at NAB Show 2026 in Las Vegas from April 19-22 at Panasonic’s booth (#C3509).

XenData, the provider of cutting-edge data storage solutions, has announced the availability of three products that enhance LucidLink functionality: Backup for LucidLink, Archive for LucidLink and Cloud-Connect for LucidLink.

This suite of products will be demonstrated for the first time at the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 19 to 22 on the XenData booth W2811.

All three products run on a Windows platform, typically a cloud-based virtual machine such as an EC2 instance from AWS.

"LucidLink is the leading provider of shared cloud storage for real-time collaborative video editing," said Dr Phil Storey, XenData CEO. "We are delighted to be offering enhancements that provide independent backup and archive plus Cloud-Connect, which makes it easy to integrate existing multi-tiered cloud archives with LucidLink."

Backup for LucidLink provides an enhanced disaster recovery strategy. While a LucidLink Filespace offers excellent redundancy and availability, XenData’s Backup for LucidLink synchronizes the content to an entirely different storage location. It supports backing up to any AWS, Azure, Seagate Lyve or Wasabi datacenter. Data integrity is ensured using end-to-end logical block protection and individual files may be downloaded independently of LucidLink.

XenData said that Archive for LucidLink is ideal for offloading finished projects. It allows an administrator to easily move files and folders from a LucidLink Filespace to standard object storage on one or multiple public clouds, including AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, Seagate Lyve and Wasabi object storage. Archive for LucidLink provides a web portal that displays previews of all video and image files written to the cloud archive, including files that are stored on inaccessible storage tiers such as AWS Glacier and the Azure Archive Tier. Furthermore, it allows users to rehydrate files to an accessible tier and then to download to their local Mac or PC.

Cloud-Connect for LucidLink allows files stored in existing AWS and Azure object storage, including on inaccessible tiers, to be easily added to a LucidLink Filespace. The software continuously indexes the object storage repository creating a file-folder structure that can be browsed via a Cloud-Connect web portal. Users can rehydrate selected files from inaccessible storage tiers such as AWS Glacier and the Azure Archive Tier and then connect them to a LucidLink Filespace.

Blackmagic Design announced a range of new products it will launch at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas, led by its first immersive camera system for Apple Vision Pro.

The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive 100G is being billed as the world’s first immersive cinema camera designed for live production with Apple Immersive Video. Featuring dual 8Kx8K RGBW sensors with 16 stops of dynamic range, URSA Cine Immersive 100G uses 100G Ethernet to deliver the bandwidth needed to output live immersive video for the first time.

Also new for the camera is the Blackmagic URSA Live Encoder, a live processor module that compresses live immersive video into Apple ProRes for output as SMPTE-2110-22 IP video, allowing customers to combine the stereo, high frame rate image streams into a single 100G Ethernet connection.

“Live immersive production is here, and it’s extraordinary,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “URSA Cine Immersive 100G makes it possible, and the images from this camera are just incredible to watch. It truly feels like you’ve been transported to the middle of the action. From sports to concerts, this opens up an entirely new world in live production!”

URSA Cine Immersive 100G features new sensors designed for incredible quality images at 8K x 8K per eye. Using the same revolutionary RGBW sensor design as URSA Cine, the new dual sensor layout features larger photo-sites, delivering 16 stops of dynamic range. The unique RGBW architecture provides equal amounts of red, green and blue pixels for incredible color super sampling. This means it is optimized to deliver incredibly rich colors and provide the ultimate in image quality and flexibility, even at the high frame rates live immersive video requires, the company said.

The Blackmagic URSA Live Encoder enables the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive 100G to be used for live immersive production. It encodes live video into ProRes for output as SMPTE-2110 IP video via the high-speed 100G Ethernet port, creating an entirely new live immersive viewing experience. Plus, the camera data rate is under 50 Gb/s, so customers can combine two cameras into a single 100G Ethernet connection.

The URSA Cine Immersive 100G was recently used for Spectrum Front Row, a series of live Lakers games in Apple Immersive during the 2025-2026 season, which are now available to watch on demand using the Spectrum SportsNet and NBA apps for Apple Vision Pro.

Blackmagic’s first immersive camera, the URSA Cine Immersive has been used on a number of high-profile immersive productions, including MotoGP: Tour De Force, Debut at the BBC Proms, an upcoming documentary featuring Real Madrid, and NASA’s recent Artemis II launch.

Blackmagic will also debut its Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF 100G, with 100G Ethernet for high frame rate SMPTE-2110 live production output up to 440fps. Building on the digital film features of the URSA Cine 12K LF, including the large format RGBW 36x24mm sensor, the new model adds dramatically faster networking for cinematic live production workflows.

The camera will be available Q3 from US$8,995.

Software Updates
DaVinci Resolve 21 will be demo-ed at the Blackmagic booth, updated with a new Photo page,which enables colorists and photographers to use Hollywood’s most advanced color tools for still photos.

Other updates include new AI tools such as IntelliSearch for fast content searching, CineFocus for focal point adjustment, tools for facial refinement, and more. The Krokodove toolset adds over 70 new graphics to Fusion, Fairlight folders simplify audio track management, plus there are improvements to keyframing, MultiMaster trim passes, layer list node graphs and more.

DaVinci Resolve 21 public beta is available for download now from the Blackmagic Design website

Also new is Fairlight Live, a new software-based live audio mixer with spatial audio mixing and SMPTE-2110 broadcast workflows. Fairlight Live easily handles thousands of audio channels, working with standard computer audio or USB audio from ATEM live production switchers. Fully customizable, it has built-in effects and professional features such as a cue player, talkback busses, snapshots and more.

(Fairlight Live public beta is available immediately from the Blackmagic Design website free of charge)

Switchers
Two new additions to Blackmagic’s ATEM live production switchers platform, the ATEM 4 M/E Constellation IP and ATEM 4 M/E Constellation IP Plus are fully SMPTE-2110 native. They retain the features of the existing ATEM Constellation SDI based switchers, so they are familiar to users, allowing a seamless transition between SMPTE-2110 and SDI based switchers in facilities that have both.

Designed for high end broadcast and live production, the new design features front-to-back cooling, extensive redundancy, support for SMPTE-2022-7 on all 100G video ports, redundant PTP clock connections, 2 x 10G Ethernet for control ports and redundant AC power supplies.

The ATEM 4 M/E Constellation IP will be available in June from US$7,995.

Also new is the ATEM Monitoring Rack Panel, a new combination monitoring converter and control panel that can be used with ATEM Constellation IP live production switchers. It converts SMPTE 2110 IP to HDMI and 12G-SDI for connecting to monitors, however it also has front panel input buttons for controlling the switcher as well as an LCD and talkback connections.

It will be available in June from US$995.

Storage, Recording and Cloud
The new HyperDeck ISO Recorder 100G is a new SMPTE 2110 IP video recorder with 100G Ethernet that lets customers record all their cameras for live production. This means customers can also use DaVinci Resolve for live action replay. HyperDeck ISO Recorder 100G uses a single 100G Ethernet connection to connect all 8 video channels, plus it records high-quality Apple ProRes video to network storage via 100G Ethernet.

It will be available in June from US$4,995.

Blackmagic Cloud Store Ultra provides ultra-high performance flash storage with up to 48TB capacity and two independent 100G Ethernet connections that lets customers record and edit simultaneously without either workflow interfering with the other. Available in 24TB and 48TB models, it also features RAID 5 support, dual redundant power supplies and Blackmagic Cloud sync.

It will be available in June from US$8,835.

Conversion and Connectivity
The Blackmagic SDI Expander 8x12G converter lets customers connect all their 12G-SDI gear to the latest 100G Ethernet SMPTE-2110 IP systems. The converter supports 8 bi-directional 12G-SDI connections and has 2 separate 100G Ethernet connections allowing SMPTE-2022-7 redundancy.

It will be available in June from US$2,995.

The Blackmagic Media Dock Ultra is a new high performance dock for Blackmagic Media Modules with two fully independent 100G Ethernet ports. It also features SDI and HDMI status monitoring and Blackmagic Cloud sync that lets customers use Blackmagic Media Modules as extremely high performance removable storage.

It will available in June from US$2,995.

The new Blackmagic StudioBridge 10G PWR lets customers bridge eight separate 10G Ethernet SMPTE-2110 connections into modern 100G SMPTE-2022-7 redundant systems, allowing users to combine up to 8 separate cameras or converters into a 100G Ethernet IP video system. If the 10G Ethernet products use a single connection, then the Blackmagic StudioBridge 10G PWR will also bridge into the 2 x 100G Ethernet connections for a redundant broadcast system. Plus this converter has four separate internal power supplies so it can provide each of the 10G Ethernet connections with 90W PoE++ power.

It will be available in June from US$2,495.

The Blackmagic UpDownCross 100G standards converter lets customers simultaneously convert up to eight separate channels of SD, HD and Ultra HD video to any other standard. The new converter has redundant 100G Ethernet for full SMPTE 2022-7 compliance and a dedicated NMOS control port.

It will be available in June from US$2,435

The Blackmagic Ethernet Switch 820 is a new high performance, low latency model designed for advanced broadcast systems. It includes 8 x 100G and 2 x 10G Ethernet connections plus simple front panel SMPTE-2110 routing. Blackmagic Ethernet Switch 820 also has two redundant PTP clock Ethernet connections, a separate NMOS control port and a dedicated management port.

It will be available in June from US$2,295

Blackmagic Design will be in Booth N2502 in the North Hall of the LVCC.

BURLINGTON, Mass.—Avid is launching new integrated newsroom capabilities for Avid for News at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18–22 in Las Vegas.

The company said it plans to demonstrate how Avid Content Core connects planning, production, and publishing across MediaCentral, Wolftech News, iNEWS, Avid NEXIS and Stream IO, enabling news organizations “to produce and deliver content within a single, coordinated workflow across multiple digital and linear platforms—without disrupting existing operations.”

With Avid for News now powered by Avid Content Core, Avid says the integration allows its News platform to now connect the full production lifecycle – linking newsroom systems, creative tools, and media infrastructure into a unified, story-centric environment. This approach enables news teams to develop and deliver stories in parallel across real-time digital platforms and scheduled broadcasts.

“Avid Content Core is an intelligent layer that sits across the entire newsroom production lifecycle, linking stories, workflows, and teams – helping organizations get more value from their media assets, while ensuring continuity as they transform their operations,” said Wellford Dillard, Chief Executive Officer at Avid. “With Content Core now available commercially, Avid has delivered a unified foundation that makes news and media organizations faster, more efficient, and better aligned.”

Avid for News provides real-time visibility into content, context, and progress as news stories develop. Unlike point solutions that operate in isolation, Avid integrates stories, teams, and workflows within Avid Content Core’s shared platform. Built with an API‑first approach, Avid Content Core provides an open platform that integrates with existing newsroom systems and third‑party technologies, allowing organizations to evolve workflows while still leveraging current infrastructure.

By linking editorial systems with professional media creation and storage, Avid for News enables:

• Coordinated planning, scripting, editing, and publishing within a single environment
• Visibility into content and story development throughout the production lifecycle
• Faster creation of platform-specific versions for broadcast, digital, and social
• Reduced duplication and fewer manual handoffs between teams
• Streamlined review and approval workflows within a unified workspace
• Advanced browser-based editing and multi-platform publishing for fast content creation and versioning across broadcast, web, and social formats

“At NAB Show 2026, we’re showing how news teams can move from siloed workflows to a unified, story-centric approach – without adding complexity,” said Arne Berven, SVP of Broadcast Strategy at Avid and CEO of Wolftech. “The future of news is not digital-first or linear-first – it’s both. With Avid for News, teams can now work from the same core story, collaborate in real time, and deliver platform-specific versions in parallel.”

Accelerating Production with AI-Powered Content Intelligence
Avid will also demonstrate how AI-enabled content intelligence within Avid Content Core enhances how teams discover, manage, and develop content—leveraging Avid’s deep understanding of media assets and workflows.

Key content intelligence capabilities include:

• Faster content discovery with AI-powered semantic search across newsroom systems, creative tools, and media storage
• Deeper content context by connecting scripts, media, versions, and outputs across the production lifecycle
• Improved access to related content to surface assets, versions, and previously produced materials across systems
• Reduced manual effort through AI-assisted workflows that automate repetitive tasks while keeping teams in control

Connecting Cloud and On-Prem Production Without Disruption
Designed to operate in hybrid environments, Avid for News enables teams to work seamlessly across on-premises or cloud-based systems—without requiring costly migrations or workflow changes.

At the show, Avid is demonstrating how organizations can extend their current environments with cloud-enabled capabilities, including integrations with the Avid NEXIS storage solution and Avid Stream IO—the recently updated video ingest and playout solution. These integrations enable more flexible, distributed production while maintaining the performance, reliability, and control required for professional news operations.

Stream IO also now includes content sub-clipping and trimming, giving operators more control and accelerating fast-turnaround workflows.

Previewing Newsroom Tech Advances

• Visitors to the Avid booth (N2226) will see previews of key Avid for News technology innovations, including:
• Advanced web-based editing with Avid Content Core (powered by CuttingRoom)
• Newsroom and rundown workflows integrating Wolftech News and iNEWS for efficient story-centric collaboration
• A next-generation, web-based Newsroom Computer System (NRCS) with Rundown powered by Wolftech

Avid also announced earlier this month that it will demonstrate Avid Content Core running on AWS, providing a “cloud native” foundation for connected media workflows built on AWS for news organizations, broadcasters, studios, and streaming services. At the same time, Avid said it is “renewing its focus” on Avid NEXIS and Avid Media Composer on AWS.

As UHD, HDR, live sports streaming, immersive audio and even 8K experimentation move into the mainstream, encoding has become a core business strategy. Broadcasters and streaming providers must elevate the viewer experience while reducing bandwidth and infrastructure costs.

Advances in AI-driven optimization, content-aware encoding and next-generation codecs enable operators to deliver higher-quality video at lower bitrates — fundamentally reshaping the delivery of premium video experiences.

Encoding as a Strategic Business Driver
Every additional megabit per second carries a cost — in CDN fees, transport, storage and processing power. At scale, even marginal bit rate reductions translate into substantial operational savings. Conversely, any visible drop in video quality risks churn, particularly in today’s competitive market where viewers can instantly switch services.

The challenge is inherently complex. Service providers must optimize three compression variables simultaneously: video quality, bitrate efficiency/processing power and latency. Improvements in one area often affect another. For example, reducing latency can come at the expense of the bit rate efficiency. Improving video quality by keeping bit rate low can increase computational load. Adding immersive formats increases complexity across the pipeline.

Modern encoding strategies recognize and treat compression as part of the overall delivery strategy, not just a codec setting.

The Rise of AI and ML Encoding Innovations
One of the most significant encoding developments in recent years has been the integration of machine learning into the encoding workflow. Several key enhancements are enabling broadcasters and service providers to deliver higher video quality, lower latency and greater efficiency.

Content-aware encoding
An advanced technique, content-aware encoding identifies visually important regions within video content — such as faces, text overlays or high-detail textures like grass — and prioritizes them for perceptual quality, (Fig. 1). Rather than treating every frame equally, content-aware encoding analyzes content characteristics in real time and allocates bits where they matter most.

Less critical areas receive fewer bits, preserving overall bandwidth while maintaining viewer satisfaction. Sophisticated rate-control algorithms can deliver significant bitrate savings, in some cases up to 50% without visible quality loss.

Real-time VMAF prediction
Today’s advanced encoding solutions can estimate perceptual quality metrics such as Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF) during live encoding, enabling service providers to detect potential degradation before it reaches viewers. Real-time VMAF prediction models can achieve high correlation with offline measurements, up to 95%, allowing accurate quality assessment in live workflows and preventive encoding adjustments.

Automated quality analysis
Embedding AI into quality monitoring shifts service providers from reactive troubleshooting to proactive quality management. AI-driven regression testing and automated quality analysis enhance reliability by identifying deviations across nightly and weekly test streams. The result is a more resilient encoding pipeline where quality is continuously optimized. Service providers benefit by delivering better perceptual quality at lower bit rates, reducing distribution costs.

Intelligent node rebalancing
AI-driven algorithms assess system load, content complexity and processing demands to guide dynamic node rebalancing. This encoding approach enables more consistent resource allocation and stable video quality across distributed deployments.

GPU enhancements
GPU-accelerated enhancements play a pivotal role in the next generation of encoding. By integrating AI-driven pre-processing (like superscaling, denoising or deinterlacing) and GPU-enabled encoding control (like fine-grained Quantization Parameter -QP- control into the GPU pipeline), modern encoding platforms can deliver significant gains in performance and efficiency.

Preparing for the Next Generation of Codecs
While AI optimizations improve encoding efficiency within existing standards, broadcasters and service providers must also prepare their workflows and infrastructure for next-generation codecs.

Versatile Video Coding (VVC) promises up to 50% bitrate savings over HEVC while maintaining exceptional visual quality and is the selected codec for next-gen broadcasting standards like DTV+. Historically promoted as a royalty-free codec alternative, AV1 continues to gain momentum in OTT ecosystems with an improved efficiency compared to legacy codecs. And Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding (LCEVC) offers a scalable enhancement layer that can improve compression efficiency without requiring full codec replacement.

Audio codec innovation further expands the scope of modern encoding platforms. Object-based formats such as MPEG-H and Dolby AC-4 enable immersive, personalized experiences. Dialog separation and accessibility features enable broadcasters and service providers to deliver personalized audio experiences to audiences. Moreover, support for object-based metadata for both MPEG-H and AC-4 enables precise audio rendering and personalization.

To accommodate for all these changes, a key strategic consideration for encoding is flexibility. Broadcasters and service providers cannot afford disruptive, large-scale infrastructure replacements every few years. Scalable encoding pipelines — capable of supporting multiple codecs, base layers and enhancement layers — allow gradual transitions aligned with market and business demands.

Powering Next-Gen Video with High Density, Low Latency and Immersive Readiness
Delivering next-generation video experiences requires broadcasters and service providers to handle intensive workloads with precision and reliability. Advanced encoding architectures are being designed for high-density and error-resilient performance. This, in turn, is laying the foundation for higher resolutions, lower latency, immersive formats and emerging viewing experiences.

Certain applications such as live sports streaming highlight why high-performance encoding architectures are essential. For instance, live sports streaming and interactive applications require high quality and a low degree of latency. Optimized pipelines reduce glass-to-glass delay while maintaining compression efficiency. This is essential for betting integrations, synchronized second-screen experiences and social engagement.

At the same time, experimentation with 8K and immersive video formats is accelerating. Encoding technology providers like Harmonic are trialing OTT profile ladders derived from an 8K source stream, processed in the cloud using both CPU and GPU resources. The profile ladder showcased in Figure 2 was processed in the cloud and would have been cost prohibitive two years ago. These trials illustrate the industry’s move toward higher resolutions delivered efficiently through hybrid compute architectures.

Even if 8K remains niche in the near term, the underlying engineering advances — high-density processing, scalable cloud-native workflows and error-free multi-profile generation — lay the groundwork for spatial computing, VR and headset-based experiences.

The New Compression Imperative
Ultimately, the latest encoding innovations enable broadcasters and service providers to deliver superior video quality at lower bitrates while reducing costs. Content-aware encoding, AI advancements and emerging codecs all have a role to play in helping service providers deliver premium experiences with the utmost efficiency.

In an era defined by subscriber churn, cost cutting and relentless viewer expectations, video compression remains a strategic necessity. Service providers that treat encoding as a core priority will be best positioned to thrive in the next phase of video evolution.

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO has announced a major evolution of its aiTrack dynamic content insertion technology for NAB Show 2026, transforming the original aiTrack workflow into a fully cloud-native, automation-agnostic platform designed for modern broadcast environments.

The company will demo the new features at Booth C2116 in the Central Hall of the LVCC during the show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas.

Built to meet the growing demand for timely, localized and engaging content, aiTrack enables broadcasters to instantly generate, customize and schedule AI-driven audio segments for live and automated programming.

Accessible through any web browser for the first time, aiTrack allows on-air and production teams to create broadcast-ready content in seconds using advanced generative AI models and natural-sounding synthetic voices. From breaking news, entertainment, weather and sports updates to sponsored segments and localized content, the platform delivers seamless insertion into live broadcasts or scheduled playlists across terrestrial and streaming platforms.

“aiTrack represents a fundamental shift in how broadcasters approach content creation and delivery,” said Ken Frommert, President, ENCO. “By removing infrastructure barriers and simplifying AI workflows, we’re giving stations of all sizes the ability to produce high-quality, real-time content that connects with audiences in more meaningful and personalized ways.”

aiTrack's architecture combines large language models, real-time data integration and advanced prompt engineering with high-quality synthetic voice technology. A unique “foundation prompt” framework streamlines complex AI processes into intuitive templates, allowing users to generate consistent, on-brand content simply by entering key variables such as location, format or sponsorship details, according to the company.

The platform’s automation-agnostic design ensures compatibility with any broadcast system, enabling seamless delivery of generated audio files into existing workflows from anywhere in the world. Its role-based interface supports collaboration across teams, while integrated scheduling tools allow users to plan and automate content delivery through a centralized calendar.

aiTrack also introduces significant advancements in audio realism and flexibility, including multi-voice capabilities, language localization and voice cloning technology derived from ENCO’s SPECai platform. These enhancements bring AI-generated audio closer than ever to human performance, enabling broadcasters to maintain a consistent and authentic on-air sound.

As broadcasters navigate staffing challenges and increasing content demands, aiTrack provides a scalable solution that reduces production overhead while expanding creative and revenue opportunities. Stations can deliver more frequent updates, personalize content for local audiences, and incorporate branded or sponsored segments—all while maintaining operational efficiency, according to the company.

“By combining dynamic content generation, flexible scheduling and cloud-based delivery, aiTrack redefines what’s possible in live broadcasting, empowering organizations to do more with less while enhancing audience engagement,” said Frommert.

Lawo announced this week the debut of Edge One, a new device that provides combined, expandable connectivity and functionality for both video and audio in a compact footprint. Edge One will be demo-ed in the company’s booth (C2108) during the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas.

Edge One features SMPTE ST2110 native support with a bandwidth of up to 25Gbps. It is equipped with both RJ45 ports incl. PoE++ and SFP ports. For applications that don’t require a network connection, the company says Edge One matches and surpasses previous Lawo solutions that are still popular for audio de-embedding, shuffling and embedding.

One side of the device is equipped with 8x bi-directional HD-BNC connectors for SDI signals, that can function either as inputs or outputs, and 4x HDMI outputs, two of which can alternatively be used as inputs. Furthermore, SFP ports for MADI I/O, GPI I/Os, an audio interface via USB-C and Sync, Reference and Wordclock connectors are also available.

On the other side of the device, three audio interface modules cover a variety of I/O applications: Mic/Line inputs only; Mic/Line inputs and Line outputs; as well as a module specifically for commentary applications. The audio interface modules can be easily swapped by the user for agile utilization scenarios.

Since not all connectors and software functionality may be needed in every use case, Edge One supports Lawo FLEX. Lawo’s software-licensable functionality allows users to activate what they need and leave out what they don’t. For out-of-the-box deployment, Edge One is available in three intuitive packages: Audio, Video and Audio + Video.

The following functions can be licensed if they are not included in the selected package: video signal instances (in or out), video frame syncs, JPEG XS en-/decoding, the Edge One Commentary App, audio MADI I/O with built-in SRC, and the mc²-grade audio DSP for low-latency local mixing.

While Edge One can be rack-mounted (1U) or installed in a convenient location using an optional mounting bracket, it is also compact enough to be carried from one assignment to the next, while being protected with rubber bumpers.

“Despite its impressive specifications, Edge One is first and foremost about convenience and agility for broadcast and AV professionals,” says Lucas Zwicker, Senior Director, Workflow and Integration, CTO Office at Lawo. “A single stagebox can be used to connect microphones, speakers, cameras, monitors, projectors and more.”

Christian Struck, Lawo’s Senior Product Manager, Audio Infrastructure, adds: “Most productions require a limited number of audio and video connections, and some applications can be handled more efficiently by placing compact stageboxes close to the sources and destinations in a distributed fashion. This is where Edge One shines.”

FRANKFURT, Germany—At the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas, Manifold Technologies will discuss its participation in NEP Platform, the new software orchestration system launched by NEP Group.

Manifold CLOUD—the company’s software-defined media processing platform—will be available as a deployable application within NEP Platform, enabling broadcasters and rights holders to instantiate manifold’s FPGA-accelerated multiviewer, UDX conversion, and graphics services on demand, across NEP’s global fleet of mobile units, flypacks, and facilities.

NEP Platform represents a fundamental shift in how live production infrastructure is deployed and managed. Rather than building fixed, dedicated systems per function, the platform provides an orchestration layer that deploys and runs trusted third-party broadcast software on shared commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) compute in modern IP environments. Approved application versions and configurations are validated for deployment, lifecycle actions—bring-up, scaling, tear-down - are automated, and telemetry provides real-time health, performance, and usage visibility.

For manifold, this integration is a natural alignment: manifold CLOUD was built on the principle that processing should be decoupled from proprietary hardware, running on COTS FPGA accelerator cards from multiple vendors. The platform delivers broadcast-grade services—multiviewers, UDX conversion and graphics insertion—with deterministic performance and subframe latency, combining the elasticity of cloud-native orchestration with the reliability that Tier One live production demands.

Within NEP Platform, manifold CLOUD joins a lineup of industry-leading media production specialists, and together their applications will be deployed and scaled dynamically, enabling production teams to configure the right setup for each event at the click of a button and adjust resources on demand.

The integration will be demonstrated at the NAB Show 2026 in NEP’s meeting space, N253, located in the North Hall Meeting Rooms, Level 2, as well as at manifold’s booth, which it shares with technology partner arkona (Booth C.1808). Visitors will interact with the NEP Platform user interface, select manifold from the application catalogue, and watch as the software is deployed onto shared COTS compute.

Once deployed, manifold appears as a virtual device within NEP’s TFC orchestration layer, where operators complete configuration and run a live workflow—demonstrating how software-defined processing can be instantiated in minutes, not days, and terminated just as quickly when the production ends.

manifold says the demonstration underscores a broader industry shift, and for manifold, NEP represents more than a distribution channel. Instead, they are a proving ground for software-defined, FPGA-accelerated production, highlighting how ‘software-first’ approaches grant immense amounts of operational flexibility, speed, power and adaptability, whilst maintaining the reliability and simplicity of traditional, fixed, single function, studio-rooted hardware approaches.

“Collaboration with our partners, including arkona and manifold, has been instrumental in turning the vision of NEP Platform into a practical reality,” said Dan Murphy, VP of NEP Platform. “Manifold’s FPGA-accelerated infrastructure harnesses the flexibility of COTS and software-defined processing capabilities with the power of hardware acceleration. This architecture combines deterministic performance with the scalability and agility modern productions demand. It is exactly this kind of partnership that enables us to deliver next-generation broadcast workflows for our customers worldwide.”

Aleksei Shevchenko, CEO and co-founder of manifold technologies, added: “NEP has always understood that the future of live production isn’t hardware or software alone - it’s how effectively both integrate. With NEP Platform, they’ve built the orchestration layer that makes that integration repeatable, scalable, and secure - and allows various service providers to come together and collaborate in order to offer a product which benefits the industry as a whole. We’re proud to be part of that vision and to have our technology available to NEP’s customers around the world”.

TV Tech: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2026 NAB Show?

Scott Kewley: We’re seeing a clear shift toward open, software-based infrastructure. Broadcasters are prioritizing vendor-agnostic technologies like TAMS and MXL because they finally enable them to modernize workflows without being locked into proprietary systems. These frameworks give teams the one thing they need most: the flexibility to do more with less.

Another important trend is the rise in sophisticated SCTE-based monetization. As output scales—especially for live—broadcasters want more granular ways to insert and manipulate SCTE 35 and SCTE 224 markers downstream of playout. The goal is simple: unlock new revenue opportunities with minimal compute and maximum agility.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

SK: At NAB Show, we’re showing the most ambitious evolution of tx darwin yet. It now moves beyond its roots in switching and SCTE 35 manipulation to become a modular live media processing framework deployable across production, contribution, and delivery. First, tx darwin now natively supports both MXL and TAMS, enabling time-addressable access to content and efficient cloud-scale storage workflows.

Second, a new uncompressed processing suite brings resolution scaling, deinterlacing, HDR–SDR conversion, and HTML5 graphics keying—letting broadcasters conform and enrich content without leaving the platform.

Finally, for distribution, tx darwin takes on satellite replacement with high-performance SRT transport, SCTE 224, ESAM support and at-scale affiliate delivery. And our consumer multiview tools enable broadcasters to build branded, multi-feed fan experiences—especially valuable for live sports.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

SK: tx darwin is different because it processes as much as possible within the industry-standard transport stream domain, meaning lower cloud compute, lower data costs and far more predictable performance.

Because it runs on standard cloud instances or on-prem servers, broadcasters can scale up or down instantly without relying on specialist hardware. And its ability to deliver visibly seamless switching between non-coherent transport streams is unmatched, enabling powerful MCR-grade workflows in the cloud.

The result is a single platform that empowers media companies to adapt, conform, monitor, protect, and transform high-value live content at scale, while maximizing monetization through sophisticated SCTE 35 manipulation.

TVT: What is it about NAB Show that brings you back every year?

SK: Major media projects only succeed when vendors and customers work closely together, and NAB Show is a great place for that collaboration to happen. It brings the whole ecosystem into one space, accelerating problem-solving and sparking ideas that carry far beyond Vegas. The U.S. is a key and rapidly growing market for us, with an expanding team on the ground and a strong base of customers who rely on our technology every day. Every year, the conversations we have at NAB Show directly translate into better outcomes for the broadcasters with whom we work.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems said today it is collaborating with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), establishing OCI as a certified infrastructure platform for deploying the full TAG monitoring suite, and will feature the collaboration during the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.at any scale.

"Our goal is to empower users to deploy their workflows on any cloud platform they choose, seamlessly integrating into their specific cloud or hybrid environments," said Golan Simani, director of cloud and tech operations at TAG Video Systems. "By adding OCI support, we are reinforcing our commitment to staying ahead of the pace of change, continuously evolving to support the new infrastructures and technologies our customers need to succeed."

OCI offers a free egress tier and bandwidth pricing that represents a departure from standard hyperscaler rates. Combined with deterministic network performance and flexible compute built for always-on broadcast workloads, OCI is well-suited to being home to mission-critical monitoring at scale.

"OCI is purpose-built for the performance and cost requirements that media and entertainment organizations demand. Working together with TAG means broadcast teams can now get world-class monitoring and quality control without compromising on infrastructure economics,” said Kip Schauer, who is responsible for media partnerships at OCI Media Services.

TAG's Realtime Media Platform is now deployed and certified on OCI. Work is also underway to bring the full TAG product portfolio to the platform. Broadcasters working with OCI will be able to count on a fully supported, production-validated monitoring stack that integrates natively into their OCI-based workflows.

The TAG Realtime Media Platform on OCI offers:

• End-to-end IP-native signal visibility from ingest to playout on a cloud infrastructure designed for high-throughput media workloads.
• Scalable, flexible compute that adapts to the bursty, always-on nature of live broadcast without overprovisioning or cost surprises.
• A jointly supported deployment path, backed by TAG's integration expertise and OCI's enterprise infrastructure, for broadcasters migrating from legacy on-premises or alternative cloud environments.

See the joint TAG-OCI solution in NAB Show booth W2323.

More information is available on the TAG Video Systems and Oracle websites.

PITTSBURGH—NEP Group has announced NEP Platform, a new software orchestration system designed to help its customers improve their management of media infrastructure and hybrid workflows.

NEP Platform unifies the deployment of critical production applications from multiple vendors within a single, secure interface. Currently deployed in many of NEP’s own facilities worldwide, including new “software first” mobile units recently launched in Australia and Norway, NEP Platform is commercially available for customers who wish to integrate it into their own facilities, backed by the ongoing support of NEP’s engineers.

NEP Platform offers today’s largest collection of trusted software applications for media production, so that NEP customers have more choice and control over their workflow design. Essential production functions like vision mixing, audio mixing, replay, infrastructure, multiview, and measurement are available from Bridge Technologies, Calrec, Grass Valley, Lawo, Manifold, Panasonic, Sony and Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations, with plans to add more. At a click of a button, operators can configure the right setup for each event and adjust resources on demand, creating a truly dynamic, adaptable and scalable environment, the company said.

“The NEP Platform launch marks an important step in NEP’s innovation journey as well as how the industry uses software,” said Martin Stewart, CEO of NEP Group. “Companies are delivering more content, across more markets, to more audiences than ever before, and that requires great agility. Our goal has always been to simplify content production so our customers can easily and securely deliver their content at scale. I’m delighted that NEP Platform offers that long-term solution with the ability to change as our customers do.”

With NEP Platform, capabilities can be added through new applications and software updates instead of major rebuilds. It takes the efficiency of software a step further by automatically allocating resources as production demands change, ensuring teams only use the computing power they need. This provides clear insight into how infrastructure, licenses, and resources will be used, so costs can be forecast accurately.

In addition, NEP’s team of experts ensure that NEP Platform deployments are secure and that the system is resilient. NEP Platform provides continuous vulnerability scanning, strong identity and access controls, encryption, and ongoing monitoring to protect customer environments and keep productions on air. It also validates application versions and configurations at each deployment, avoiding many of the common pitfalls of software.

By scaling intelligently, NEP Platform supports more sustainable practices by helping productions reduce power consumption and the need to ship hardware, the company said.

“NEP Platform gives customers real choice without added complexity,” said Dan Murphy, vice president of NEP Platform. “From a single interface, teams can launch the applications they prefer, deploy workflows in minutes and scale as production needs change.

“With this new way of managing infrastructure, customers can transition to software-based solutions that seamlessly operate with existing hardware. This not only protects our customers’ investments; it positions them to take advantage of future technology.”

NEP will demo NEP Platform at the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 18-22. To make an appointment, visit https://platform.nepgroup.com.

TV Tech: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2026 NAB Show?

Jan Eveleens: We’re going to see the industry continue moving toward software-based and cloud-ready solutions, whether that means on-prem deployments or public cloud. And of course, AI will be everywhere. A lot of what’s promoted as “AI-powered” will still be more hype than real substance, but there will be meaningful applications emerging, especially where automation can remove friction or simplify workflows.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

JE: We’re bringing a lot of exciting new innovations across audio, video, and control. For the first time at NAB, we’re introducing hi human interface, a powerful, vendor-agnostic control system designed for both broadcast and AV environments.

We’re also expanding our Bolero wireless intercom family with Bolero Mini, a compact, lightweight option that delivers the same reliable performance that users expect.

On the video side, we’re unveiling a powerful, native, low-latency ST 2110 multiviewer as part of our successful MediorNet lineup. And for our SmartPanels, we’re showcasing an advanced and innovative commentary app built for our new DSP-1216HL Desktop SmartPanel.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

JE: At Riedel, we put innovation and quality at the center of everything we build. Every product we bring to the market has been designed to be a bit “different”—for us, that means helping customers do their work better, faster, and more efficiently.

Multifunctionality is one of our hallmarks, and we match that with long-term durability. Robustness, reliability and longevity are our main priorities. Our goal is to give customers the type of technology that not only performs exceptionally well but also lowers total cost of ownership over the long run.

TVT: What is it about NAB Show that brings you back every year?

JE: Riedel has experienced tremendous growth in the Americas over the past few years, and we’re aiming even higher in the years ahead. NAB Show is where important conversations happen; it’s our chance to truly connect with customers, partners, and the broader industry. Showing up in a big way each year helps us support our growing footprint and stay close to the people who rely on our solutions.

LAS VEGAS—Live-event transmission solutions provider PSSI Global Services has hired Ben Bradshaw as director of product and network development.

The 20-year veteran returns to the company after five years at EA Sports, where he led a team in creating fully virtualized production platforms that have expanded the video game maker’s cloud production capabilities, PSSI said. He brings experience in transmission, network engineering, and cloud services to his second stint at PSSI, the company said.

“Ben has spent the past five years at the cutting edge of remote production, cloud-based workflows and IT networking,” PSSI CEO Derek Blount said. “His appointment is a big step toward expanding our company. While our best-in-class remote transmission solutions and event management remain the core of our portfolio, Ben will be bringing exciting new products and services to market while expanding the knowledge bases of our engineering and project management teams.”

Bradshaw will be tasked with evaluating and enhancing PSSI’s strategies for content distribution, storage and protection, the company said. He’ll bring a deep understanding of what content owners and rightsholders need to ensure seamless signal flow across multiple transmission delivery methods, the company said.

“I am thrilled to return to PSSI at such a pivotal moment in its expansion into exciting new frontiers of content distribution,” Bradshaw said. “Our field engineering and project management teams are the best in the world, and I’m excited to provide them with new tools and strategies to help our customers navigate the complexities of live content workflows. It’s great to be back!”

Clients can meet Bradshaw and learn more about his new role at NAB Show in Las Vegas (April 19-22), Booth W1543.

The DPP has published a new report exploring how media companies are using data to drive better decisions, stronger engagement, and improved commercial outcomes.

Making Data Pay is the result of input from over 70 contributors representing 19 content organizations and 19 vendors.

It explores data across four key areas of the media business: management and operations, audience engagement, business strategy, and the technology foundations that support them.

According to the DPP, despite significant investment in data capabilities, many organizations are still struggling to translate that investment into measurable impact. Making Data Pay examines where data is already delivering value, where complexity is emerging, and the practical lessons the industry has learned so far.

The report adds that while data is abundant, impact is uneven, suggesting that media companies are “drowning in data but lacking alignment” and need “data coherence”.

It suggests companies should begin by defining the questions and then find the data points to answer it. “Without purpose, dashboards multiply but strategy stalls,” states the report. “Data must drive decisions, not simply score past performance. Metrics that only look backwards aren’t enough to shape the future.”

The DPP urges companies to “measure what matters” by focusing on the metrics with the greatest strategic importance rather than those which are the easiest to measure.

“Across the industry there’s strong belief in the power of data, but turning that belief into measurable impact remains a challenge,” said David Thompson, technology strategist at the DPP.

“Successful data strategies aren’t just technology projects,” added Thompson. “When the questions being asked of data aren’t clear, organisations quickly end up measuring everything but understanding very little.”

The report is available for DPP members to download here.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand TVBEurope.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden—Net Insight has announced Nimbra 520, a high-density media processing node designed to simplify live contribution and distribution across both managed and unmanaged networks. The company will demo the new node at the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 18-22.

Built as part of Net Insight’s Nimbra Live execution layer, the company says Nimbra 520 brings consistent, deterministic performance into hybrid live media environments where operational simplicity, cost control, and confidence under pressure matter more than individual device features.

Nimbra 520 extends Net Insight’s Live Intelligence approach into live media execution. Rather than optimizing isolated functions, it delivers measurable performance across real-world networks, helping operators stay in control during peak events, failures, congestion, and rapid change.

With support for multichannel HEVC and AVC, Nimbra 520 enables up to 50% bandwidth savings compared to legacy workflows, allowing customers to scale contribution and distribution capacity without expanding network infrastructure.

Nimbra 520 is designed to change the economics of live media operations. Combined with Nimbra Edge, it enables a simple and flexible per-stream cost model, centralized orchestration, and automated lifecycle management. This reduces operational overhead, avoids over-provisioning, and lowers the cost and minimizes the impact of failures.

The new media processing node supports unmanaged internet contribution, hybrid cloud workflows, and fully managed IP networks. When deployed in managed environments, it integrates seamlessly into Net Insight’s platform-based operations. In unmanaged environments, it delivers the same predictable behavior through Edge-orchestrated workflows. This flexibility makes Nimbra 520 well suited for broadcasters, service providers, regional sports networks, and cloud-connected production.

“Live media operations must scale without driving complexity or cost,” says Andreas Eriksson, CEO of Net Insight. “With Nimbra 520, we extend our Live Intelligence architecture into a simpler, more flexible execution layer, giving customers predictable performance and lower cost per stream.”

Nimbra 520 features multichannel HEVC and AVC processing with professional broadcast quality, including UHD workflows, 10-bit video, and low-latency operation. Its high-density architecture enables significant bandwidth and infrastructure savings while maintaining predictable performance across managed and unmanaged IP networks.

Net Insight will be in Booth W1653 in the West Hall of the LVCC.

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Harmonic has introduced Spectrum X Plus, the newest generation of its Spectrum X media server, offering double the channel density of previous generations. The company will showcase the new server at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas.

Harmonic says Spectrum X Plus dramatically simplifies video ingest and playout functions for broadcasters and content owners, significantly lowering the total cost per channel for broadcast delivery. Spectrum X Plus strengthens Harmonic’s playout-to-delivery solutions by enabling broadcasters to deploy high performance playout infrastructure on premises, in the cloud with Harmonic’s VOS360 Media SaaS, and in hybrid environments, according to the company.

“As broadcasters face growing cost pressures and increasingly complex workflows, Spectrum X Plus provides the flexibility, performance and future-ready architecture they need to modernize ingest, production and playout operations,” said Stephane Cloirec, vice president, video appliance and software product management at Harmonic. “With Spectrum X Plus, we’re responding to customer demand for higher channel density and lower cost per channel without compromising the outstanding quality and reliability that Harmonic solutions are known for. The next-generation media server also paves the way for future integration of AI-based applications such as Harmonic’s AI orchestration service.”

Offering up to eight HD channels or two UHD channels per server, Spectrum X Plus significantly reduces rack space, power consumption and operating costs for broadcasters and content owners. The high-performance baseband video server supports multichannel ingest, studio and news production, channel-in-a-box and integrated playout workflows.

Spectrum X Plus streamlines video playout with integrated onboard graphics, audio loudness control, MCR switching and subtitle insertion. The media server also provides innovative capabilities for next-generation production including support for UHD workflows such as 3D LUT-based HDR conversions, immersive audio formats such as Dolby Atmos and MPEG-H as well as multiple resolutions, frame rates and codec formats.

LUT-based HDR conversions, immersive audio formats such as Dolby Atmos and MPEG-H as well as multiple resolutions, frame rates and codec formats.

Built on a flexible, software-based architecture, Spectrum X Plus eliminates the constraints of traditional hardware-centric systems, Harmonic says. The next-generation media server enhances performance for SMPTE ST 2110 environments, supporting SDI and SMPTE ST 2110 IP I/O, or hybrid configurations. This advanced feature enables broadcasters to transition seamlessly from traditional SDI to fully IP-based workflows.

Spectrum X Plus shares the same file and graphics formats with VOS360 Media and can be controlled by the same automation and traffic systems. This enables broadcasters to easily expand any Spectrum X system with cloud playout resources. The transition is seamless for broadcasters, allowing hybrid playout infrastructures to support service continuity and the rapid launch of pop-up channels in the cloud through fluid operations.

The media server’s software-driven architecture also enables GPU acceleration and deployment of AI-based capabilities such as automated captioning, translation and other value-added workflows, helping broadcasters further streamline operations and reduce costs.

Harmonic will demonstrate its new Spectrum X Plus media server at its NAB Show Booth, W2831, in the West Hall of the LVCC.

NEVADA CITY—Media workflow tech provider Telestream has expanded Telestream Cloud Services with the introduction of UP, a new cloud-native solution designed to support global ingest, orchestration, review, and real-time monitoring in modern production environments. With UP, Telestream extends its cloud portfolio beyond high-scale cloud processing and hybrid workflow extension, addressing the growing operational demands of distributed, IP-based media production.

In making the announcement, Telestream noted that cost pressures, audience fragmentation, and increasingly distributed production models has pushed media organizations to adopt cloud solutions rapidly but unevenly. Some companies are extending trusted workflows into elastic cloud environments. Others are building cloud-native production pipelines from the ground up.

UP furthers Telestream’s mission to deliver a unified global ingest strategy that spans live, camera card, and file-based workflows. With cloud capture and monitoring plus system-aware metadata, technical teams can achieve precision, flexibility, and speed, no matter the format, source, or operational environment.

“Media companies are modernizing in different ways and at different speeds,” said Charlie Dunn, executive vice president, products, Telestream. “Some are evolving established infrastructure. Others are launching fully cloud-native operations. Our approach is to give customers flexible options, whether they’re scaling global processing, extending existing workflows, or operating real-time production entirely in the cloud. With UP, we’re expanding our cloud services to address the operational layer of that transformation.”

The launch means that Telestream Cloud Services now includes three distinct offerings:

• UP – A modular, cloud-native service layer for ingest, orchestration, review, and monitoring
• EDC (formerly known as Encoding.com) – API-first cloud media processing at scale
• Vantage Cloud – Extending Vantage workflows into cloud environments for hybrid operations

Each service addresses different operational requirements.

UP expands the portfolio into cloud-native operational control, supporting ingest, workflow automation, collaborative review, and live signal monitoring in distributed production environments.

EDC provides highly parallel, API-driven AI analysis, transcoding, QC, captioning, and audio processing for OTT platforms, FAST channels, and global content distributors. Designed for elastic scalability, EDC enables high-throughput media processing without infrastructure management overhead.

Vantage Cloud allows existing Vantage customers to extend trusted workflows into cloud environments, enabling burst capacity, geographic flexibility, and hybrid deployment models without re-architecting established pipelines.

UP brings ingest, orchestration, review, and live monitoring into a single operational environment and is built for distributed and hybrid production models, UP gives teams real-time control and visibility across cloud-based workflows.

At launch, UP includes:

• UP.Capture – Elastic live and file-based ingest in the cloud for multi-source, fast-turnaround production.
• UP.Review – Proxyless playback and annotation with growing file support to accelerate editorial decision-making.
• UP.Workflow – Low-code automation for ingest, QC, AI tasks, captioning, and delivery.
• UP.Lens – Cloud-native multiviewer monitoring and intelligent alerts for SRT and other live contribution feeds.
• UP.Ingest – Professional camera card and file-based ingest for sports, news, and mobile production.

UP supports deployment as managed SaaS, within customer-controlled cloud environments, or connected to on-prem infrastructure, allowing organizations to modernize without abandoning existing systems.

“For nearly three decades, Telestream has helped the industry navigate major technology shifts,” said Benjamin Desbois, chief growth and strategy officer at Telestream. “With UP and our expanded Cloud Services portfolio, we’re giving customers the freedom to modernize on their terms, connecting Global Ingest, automation, and monitoring into a unified operational layer that’s ready for wherever their workflows need to run next.”

To learn more about Telestream Cloud Services and the new UP offering, visit: https://www.telestream.com/up/.

BRUSSELS, Belgium—Mediagenix, a global provider of media business management platforms, has announced that it is advancing its Semantic Intelligence capabilities to help studios and networks unlock greater value from their catalogs.

The company says that strengthening the semantic foundation across title and rights data enables media organizations to transform metadata into actionable commercial intelligence, empowering sales and licensing teams to maximize catalog monetization while laying the groundwork for agentic AI across title management, curation, scheduling and monetization workflows.

As distribution models evolve and licensing strategies grow more complex, maximizing catalog monetization has become increasingly challenging. While media companies have extensive metadata and performance dashboards, they often lack a connected understanding of how titles relate to one another, to rights availability and to buyer demand. Without structured meaning behind each asset, teams struggle to fully utilize their libraries, and AI cannot operate effectively in commercial workflows.

Mediagenix embeds advanced semantic modeling across its portfolio, including within its Title Management solution. This capability is powered by recommendation and personalization intelligence originally developed by Spideo, which Mediagenix acquired in 2024. By connecting title data, rights intelligence and audience signals, the platform enables sales and licensing teams to identify opportunities faster, package content more strategically and drive stronger catalog ROI.

“Metadata describes an asset with information such as genre, cast, runtime and synopsis. Semantic Intelligence understands it,” said Gabriel Mandelbaum, vice president, Content Strategy & Management for Mediagenix. “It structures the meaning of content and connects it to rights and audience demand. With that level of detail and context, sales and licensing teams have a much clearer view of the catalog and how best to monetize it.

"The result is higher catalog utilization, smarter packaging, and improved content ROI," Mandelbaum added. "And critically, this semantic intelligence and well-structured repository becomes the prerequisite for deploying agentic workflows across your library.”

Mediagenix has embedded semantic structure within its Title Management solution and continues to advance it by deepening contextual modeling inside the content catalog and linking it directly to rights intelligence and recommendation data. By strengthening the relationships between assets, audience behavior and commercial signals, Mediagenix says it reinforces the operational backbone required for intelligent automation. When meaning is structured, AI does not function as a black box; it enables explainable personalization, more precise licensing strategies and data-driven portfolio optimization, transforming AI from experimentation into operational advantage.

Mediagenix will host a webinar on March 26 to explore how the underlying Semantic Intelligence can optimize title management: “From Catalog to Content ROI – How to Unlock Hidden Value in Your Content Library”.

The company will also demonstrate its enhanced Semantic Intelligence capabilities at NAB 2026.

Additional downloads:
Whitepaper: “Content Value Management From Catalog to Capital: Turning Existing Content Into Lasting Value”
Thought Leadership: From Metadata to Meaning: Why Semantic Intelligence Is Media’s Next Competitive Advantage.

CESSON-SEVIGNE, France—Broadpeak has announced that it will showcase its latest innovations for broadcasters and streaming platforms at 2026 NAB Show April 18-22 (booth W3034), with a particular focus on premium live streaming performance, advanced advertising capabilities, and enhanced anti-piracy protection.

“Content providers need to deliver flawless live experiences especially for record-breaking live audiences, grow advertising revenues, and protect their content at massive scale,” said Jacques Le Mancq, president and CEO of Broadpeak. “At NAB Show 2026, we’re demonstrating how our customers can elevate their streaming services through premium-performance video delivery, advanced ad technologies, and real-time security.”

During the show, Broadpeak will be showing attendees a number of new technologies. Those include:

• Multiview: Broadpeak’s new approach for enabling viewers to watch multiple events simultaneously, or switch between different camera angles - all while removing client interoperability issues and reducing delivery costs.
• Dynamic ad insertion innovation: Enhanced ad insertion capabilities to expand inventory and drive ad revenues. BannersIn2 introduces new formats including pause ads, overlay ads, ad squeeze-back and content squeeze-back, increasing premium ad inventory while maintaining viewing quality. Click2Cart, enabling viewers to add products directly to a merchant’s cart via connected devices, driving measurable performance-based advertising and deeper viewer engagement.
• Media over QUIC (MoQ): The new protocol offers enhanced live streaming performance with faster zap times, lower latency, and reduced re-buffering.
• AI-powered subtitling and dubbing: Supporting global reach and accessibility through intelligent, automated language services.

Broadpeak will also demonstrate the latest enhancements to its solutions enabling content providers to stream live events while protecting revenue with anti-piracy measures:

• Stream at scale with premium QoE: Broadpeak’s purpose-built video CDN, including its HyperPoP architecture and Advanced CDN technologies, is designed to support high-audience streaming with broadcast-grade quality of experience (QoE). The solution, available for on-prem and cloud deployments or as a service, enables scalable, efficient video delivery while maintaining low latency and operational efficiency during major live events.
• Advanced real-time anti-piracy: Specifically created for streaming services and integrated directly into Broadpeak’s CDN, the solution integrates anti-token sharing, AI-based pattern recognition, quota management, and real-time content replacement to detect and mitigate piracy threats immediately – including credential abuse, scraping and unauthorized access.

Designed to scale during high-traffic live events, Broadpeak’s solutions support flexible deployment, including software-based installations, cloud-native architectures, SaaS via broadpeak.io, and managed services.

Visit Broadpeak at NAB Show 2026 in the West Hall, booth #W3034.

MURRIETA, Calif.—DigitalGlue, creator of the creative.space on-premise managed storage platform, says it will launch creative.space Intelligence (CSI) at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas. The company describes CSI as “a first-of-its-kind Managed Creative Operating System designed to solve the dual crisis of physics and cognition currently facing the professional video market.”

DigitalGlue says media organizations currently face a two-fold crisis. As global archives are set to reach 174 exabytes, media organizations are having to deal with video files that are becoming too massive.

Traditional cloud storage introduces latency and punitive egress costs, which DigitalGlue describes as a “Cloud Tax" that breaks production budgets and makes large files too "heavy" to move. In addition, production houses are drowning in “Dark Data,” unsearchable, untrackable footage.

“Highly paid creative professionals currently lose up to 25% of their work week acting as librarians, forced to manually log and search media because current tools lack narrative intuition,” the company said.

DigitalGlue says it has solved this physical and cognitive conundrum by unifying high-performance, on-premise hardware (The Body) with a forensic AI engine (The Brain) into a single ecosystem.

At the center of this system is a content-addressable identity system that categorizes media into Core Assets (the underlying DNA of the footage) and Versions (proxies, high-res masters, web exports). Instead of fighting physics by pushing petabytes of video into a slow cloud, CSI brings the Intelligence directly to the source. This creates Data Gravity, where the platform analyzes media exactly where it sits, eliminating costly migrations and instantly linking every Version back to its Core Asset, the company said.

While most industry AI remains "context-blind," DigitalGlue says it is establishing a new standard for creative operations. "Most AI tools just point out objects in a video (a car, a person, a tree),” the company said. “creative.space Intelligence (CSI) does something much more valuable: it tells you why your video matters, how it makes the audience feel, and how to repeat that success."

Because CSI understands the Core Asset, it generates “Contextual Wisdom” that reveals the hidden architecture of successful content, automates the path to delivery, and serves as an indispensable co-creator by mapping narrative beats, simulating audience pulse, and predicting reception before a single dollar is spent on distribution, according to DigitalGlue.

At NAB 2026, DigitalGlue will demonstrate how CSI wraps an unmatched AI engine in the workflow primitives that modern studios require:

• The Vault (Universal Asset Library): Replaces folder-based browsing with Agent-driven ingestion and CSI ID fingerprinting for instant duplicate detection and version tracking.
• The Oracle (Semantic Multimodal Search): Natural language search that understands emotion and mood (e.g., "Find high-energy celebration moments").
• Consensus (Review & Approval): An agentic review experience that summarizes massive feedback threads into actionable change requests and uses "Annotation-to-Action" to generate edit commands.
• Launch (Distribution Hub): Automated multi-platform publishing with AI-driven compliance checks for duration, aspect ratio, and content warnings.
• The Crew (AI Agent Workforce): Autonomous agents - The Librarian, The Researcher, and The Compliance Officer - that work 24/7 to catalog and protect assets.
• Nerve Center (Intelligence Dashboard): Real-time analytics on asset utilization, content velocity, and storage cost intelligence.
• The Bridge (Integration Ecosystem): Users don't have to copy their media assets to work with them; CSI plugs into the user's existing creative.space, local, and cloud storage.

DigitalGlue will also offer a sneak peek at CSI Studio, a unified generative production environment. Designed to bridge the gap between pre-production logic and post-production assets, CSI Studio allows creators to move from a logline to a fully visualized animatic in a single session, utilizing "Character Lock" and automated script breakdowns to reclaim hours of manual labor.

In addition to live demos of CSI, the company will also showcase its Neuro-Seismograph, which visualizes tension and engagement in real-time.

DigitalGlue will be in Booth N3152 in the North Hall of the LVCC.