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.

As the broadcast industry moves further into the IP/cloud and software-based environment, the need for interoperability and scalability has increased. In response, many vendors are coalescing around the Media eXchange Layer, (aka MXL) to solve such issues and give customers more flexible solutions.

This was the topic of discussion for TV Tech’s most recent webinar, "MXL in Action: Real-World Interoperability for the Software-Defined Era," the second part of a two part series produced in conjunction for TV Tech sister brand TVBEurope (Click here for Part 1).

Launched by the EBU, the North American Broadcasters Association and the Linux Foundation, MXL is an open-sourced initiative designed to work within the IP environment to allow software-defined processes from competing vendors to work together, allowing broadcasters to choose best of breed applications.

It uses shared compute memory to enable the processing of video and audio streams to enable faster and more efficient transport within a live production. This “Open Source Initiative,” part of the EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) architecture and implemented via an SDK, is currently in the candidate stage, but development of an SDK is moving quickly.

Broadcasters that have taken the lead on the project include CBC-Radio Canada, BBC and France TV.

TV Globo
The webinar started off with a keynote from Helio Eufrauzino, media solution specialist at TV Globo, who discussed how Brazil’s largest broadcaster is approaching the type of software-defined production MXL promotes.

Although MXL is not yet fully developed, Eufrazino explained how TV Globo ran a proof of concept (PoC) in AWS at the broadcaster’s hub in São Paulo, using SRT to move signals to and from the cloud and an asynchronous media framework inside the cloud with multiple vendors’ tools.

For the project, TV Globo used Matrox Origin/AWS as the media-transport layer in the cloud. The results?

• A clear signal with good visual quality and no stuttering;
• Studio-level objective metrics: PSNR and MSE comparable to broadcast studio production;
• Low internal latency: Even though SRT adds some latency to/from cloud, the Matrox internal processing introduced no noticeable latency during switching or operations, and
• Consistent timing: Input and output latency matched across the system.

The outcome showed that asynchronous media frameworks—similar in concept to MXL—can reliably distribute live media inside the cloud with quality and latency comparable to hardware-based workflows. However, more work still needs to be done on designing cloud-native applications, containerization and orchestration, improved security and the development of operational and support models customized to software systems, he said.

The best result, Eufrazino stresses, should be a hybrid ecosystem where hardware-centric and software-centric production coexists.

Eufrazino said that the results were promising enough for further research with plans to go live soon.

“At the end of the year, we hope to have a prototype capable of covering a live production, maybe a news program, soccer game, something that we can have to prove that we can cover a certain time and type of event,” he said.

Bringing Broadcasting into Compute
During the panel discussion, Adam Marshall, chief product officer with Grass Valley, explained how MXL will allow live production to operate in a more compute-centric environment.

“As we move into a more software-defined world, having multiple applications from multiple vendors all running on the same same block of compute—especially if we had to use those linear standards—is just not sufficient," he said. “It adds encapsulation delay, it doesn't work in a way that computers work.”

Marshall added the importance and effectiveness of developing MXL as an open source protocol and pointing to GV AMPP as the company’s approach to visual computing.

“MXL is effectively the evolution, or the next step, of what we have in our memory share technology with frame cache,” he said, adding that “we're working together collaboratively with other vendors on co-developing that as an open SDK, so that it makes interop much easier between vendors, and ultimately makes it easier for customers.”

Mike Cronk, vice president of strategy for TVU Networks said the company has been doing shared, memory-efficient transfer of uncompressed video between computers for about a decade, using Linux tmpfs, (a type of technology that's fairly standard in the IT industry), but says he’s optimistic about the prospects MXL could promise.

“The exciting thing about MXL and the Open Source Initiative is everybody's going to have a common way of doing it,” he said. “Interoperability promotes a ‘rising tide that lifts all boats.’ And you get the benefits of compute efficiency.”

Cronk added that MXL brings media production architectures more in line with how computers traditionally work.

“When you think about software-based live production, you're paying for the software, but how many compute cores do you need?” Cronk mused. “How much storage do you need? That's where the price tag goes up, and because it [MXL] is so much more efficient than doing all this effectively needless work in terms of packetizing the bits that MXL is really going back to the first principles of video and computers and how they work together.”

Russell Trafford Jones, industry engagement manager at Techex, commented on how current workflows will become more efficient under MXL.

“Time and time again, we're seeing people making compromises, and they don't want to make those compromises, but fundamentally, there are some times when you have to do that,” he said. “One of those is the lack of MXL, so for us, we're really interested in making sure that we've got a solid foundation MXL-wise to build not only tomorrow's workflows, but literally the ones that we're already operating today, using other technologies, pushing things together.”

Drew Martin, head of video product management for Riedel Communications, sees MXL as the next step in bringing more leverage for operations relying on COTS servers.

“After going IP, people started using COTS servers, and they wanted to get more efficiency out of them,” he said. “So having vendors work together to make an SDK and on a standard so that other people can integrate with it without having to go through all the hoops and jumps that you have to do when it comes down to other protocols… I think it's very important for Reidel to be a part of this and for our future products to be handling it natively.”

Moving Forward
Marshall commented on how fast the process has moved from what was initially discussed during the 2024 IBC Show to where it is now.

“The CBC Radio Canada team was instigating the discussion, saying ‘look, guys, let's get together on this,’” he said. “It took just over 12-13 months, effectively, to where a release candidate was announced on Christmas day [2025]. And the really amazing thing there was, it actually worked the first time. There wasn't a long drawn out process.”

The cost savings realized by MXL could be significant, Cronk adds.

“People want to provide more content to generate more revenue and do it more efficiently, and there's cost precedence, with rights deals going up and up and those types of things,” he said.

Cronk says the current ability for broadcasters using software and elastic compute could has some "room for improvement" and pointed to research TVU had done on the potential for savings. “We did a study… a 20-camera soccer match with standard pricing on AWS EC2 [Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud], for 90 minutes. It was less than $15, which is just mind boggling.”

Cronk stressed though, that the same standards that have driven broadcasters for decades still apply.

“So there's this tremendous, potential economic promise, but you have to have the right quality, you have to have the right latency.”

With MXL allowing broadcasters to pick and choose which applications they want to use and when to use them, Martin says this will help lower costs as well.

“Allowing us to have the ‘best of breed,’ hopefully running on the same VM or interconnected and not having to use all the compute to compress, decompress, encapsulate, decapsulate, and being able to do that will one make cloud productions much more feasible when it comes down to pricing,” he said.

Trafford-Jones likes the idea of an a la carte economic model.

“Sometimes it just doesn't make sense to have a feature, but you need that, right? So maybe you need to plug in the gaps, or you're able to then flexibly say, ‘well, this part of my workflow is working well, but I heard that this one's going to be better. It's got a better flexibility of a pricing model,” he said.

Eufrazino says one of the biggest challenges facing the adoption of MXL is getting more participation.

“We need to have more vendors involved, because to have the best solution for each part—the best solution for the production switcher, the best solution for the audio—the best approach is the multivendor scenario.”

Both webinars are now available on demand:

MXL Architecture and Its Capabilities: Unlocking the Future of Live Production

MXL in Action: Real-World Interoperability for the Software-Defined Era

In advance of the 2025 IBC Show, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Grass Valley has announced two new partners for its AMPP OS (Agile Media Processing Platform Operating System) platform.

Audinate is bringing native Dante audio networking to AMPP via its Dante AV-over-IP platform and Hitomi’s Hitomi's trusted timing measurement capabilities are being integrated directly into AMPP environments through MatchBox Software Analyser, MatchBox Probe, and MatchBox Renderer applications. MatchBox Software solutions operate entirely within AMPP's virtualised infrastructure.

The Audinate partnership brings seamless Dante connectivity directly into AMPP OS, allowing users to discover, manage, and route Dante audio streams without external hardware. With support for up to 128×128 bidirectional channels and latency as low as 1ms, the integration delivers robust audio capabilities across any AMPP-powered workflow.

By incorporating Dante into AMPP, Grass Valley is enabling agile, software-defined audio routing that aligns with modern production demands, whether in a studio, on location, or in the cloud, the company said. The new functionality is fully integrated into AMPP’s microservices architecture, and is deployed, scaled and managed like any other AMPP service. This allows operators to mix Dante sources alongside other IP audio formats within the GV Media Universe.

For the first time, Dante I/O is available through AMPP’s flexible licensing model, offering hourly and monthly subscription options. This gives customers instant, cost-effective access to professional audio networking enabling rapid deployment for short-term productions, seasonal events, or dynamic scaling needs.

The integration benefits a broad range of users across sectors including broadcast, live events, corporate AV, worship, education, and esports—industries increasingly turning to remote production and distributed workflows.

“This partnership reflects the accelerating shift to IP-based media infrastructure,” said Chris Ware, Senior Vice President, Product Development at Audinate. “By integrating Dante into AMPP OS, Grass Valley is offering a powerful platform for modern audio workflows, built to scale for everything from small studios to enterprise-grade distributed productions.”

The solution also supports the use of Dante Domain Manager for effective device management across complex network installations, including the creation of multiple clocking domains, management and routing of signals across VLANs and subnets, creation and management of AES67 & ST2110 device domains, and effective monitoring of the overall Dante system status.

The Hitomi partnership addresses one of broadcasters' primary concerns about migrating to software-based production: maintaining precise timing and synchronisation throughout complex virtualised workflows. Integrating MatchBox Software Analyser, MatchBox Probe, and MatchBox Renderer applications into AMPP's virtualised infrastructure enables engineers to position timing measurement probes throughout their broadcast chain without signal conversion or external routing. This provides true end-to-end visibility, allowing broadcasters to monitor timing at multiple points from a centralized web interface whilst maintaining the same millisecond-accurate measurements that broadcast professionals rely on worldwide, Hitomi said.

"Traditional workflows using hardware analyzers require video signals to be routed out of software-based environments and converted back to SDI for analysis, which not only adds complexity but can introduce the very timing errors customers are trying to detect," explains Russell Johnson, Director at Hitomi Broadcast. "Our native AMPP integration eliminates this problem by enabling in-situ timing measurement within the software infrastructure itself."

"Managing sync and latency is one of the key concerns about the migration to cloud production," notes Matthew Yates, Director of Strategic Alliances at Grass Valley. "Hitomi's MatchBox solutions demonstrate exactly the kind of integration the Alliance is built for: delivering precision timing measurement that broadcasters require whilst working seamlessly within AMPP workflows."

The partnership reflects Grass Valley Alliance's focus on creating integrated solutions that work together out of the box, rather than requiring weeks of custom integration. MatchBox Software Analyser can manage multiple probes simultaneously, providing the scalability essential for modern virtualized broadcast operations while reducing infrastructure investment and maintaining precision.

Grass Valley will be in Stand 9.A01.

MONTREAL—Brazilian broadcaster Globo announced today that it is deploying Grass Valley’s AMPP as the backbone of its future production operations.

The announcement marks an expansion GV has with Latin American’s largest broadcaster and is part of a major initiative to modernize and future-proof its live production capabilities. The agreement marks a new phase in Globo’s long-term technology transformation program, centered on the deployment of Grass Valley AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform).

Since 2022, Globo and Grass Valley have worked closely to deploy AMPP across Tier 3 content production environments, embracing a flexible, software-defined architecture. The success of this initiative laid the groundwork for this next chapter: a multiphase migration of Globo’s primary production control rooms, including those used for marquee Prime-Time events, to a platform powered by the AMPP ecosystem, Grass Valley said.

A clear example of this technology in action was seen during the 2024 and 2025 seasons of Big Brother Brasil, one of Globo’s largest and most complex live productions. The project combined a full 2110 IP infrastructure with AMPP’s on-premises microservices architecture, showcasing how native-IP workflows and software-defined control can co-exist in high-pressure environments.

In this deployment, AMPP was used as a 24/7 time-shifted playout system for 100 consecutive days, all within a highly integrated IP-based setup. This strategic partnership has been formally sealed through the signing of a multi-year Enterprise Agreement, ensuring the joint evolution of the AMPP ecosystem in close collaboration with Globo’s technical and operational teams.

At the same time, Globo is expanding its 2110 IP-based infrastructure through a major new project signed alongside the Enterprise Agreement, a critical step in preparing for Brazil’s next-generation digital broadcast standard, DTV+ (TV 3.0). As part of this evolution, the new AMPP-based control infrastructure will also support 4K workflows, meeting key DTV+ requirements and reinforcing Globo’s commitment to scalable, future-ready production.

“With this shift to a software-defined platform, we are enabling agility and scalability in our production supply chain in order to respond quickly to the demands of a constantly evolving market”, said Mauricio Felix, Technology Executive at Globo.

“We are honored to strengthen our partnership with Globo in this strategic transformation,” said Tim Banks, CRO at Grass Valley. “AMPP offers a powerful, agile, and efficient hybrid-cloud platform that will support Globo’s most demanding live production workflows now and in the years to come.”

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi and Harmonic have teamed up on an integration of Zixi technology with Harmonic’s cloud-based VOS 360 live streaming platform.

The VOS 360 platform is designed to help content creators and service providers launch streaming channels. To help secure the content in transit through its delivery chain, VOS 360’s cloud infrastructure has integrated Zixi’s Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP), which can receive live video from Harmonic CloudLink, third-party devices and software with embedded Zixi, as well as from customers with deployed Zixi Broadcasters. The joint system can create end-to-end workflows at all stages of the media processing and delivery chain, per Zixi.

With the Zixi integration, VOS 360 will enable content contributors and distributors to scale their video transport to outlets around the world and provide ultra low-latency video.

SDVP uses advanced technologies, network bonding, congestion avoidance and hitless failover to create a coherent stream out of multiple stream fragments using a DNA sequence alignment algorithm.

“Our partnership with Zixi allows us to further enhance our innovative streaming solutions that address the challenges our mutual customers are facing,” said Shahar Bar, senior vice president, Video Products and Corporate Development at Harmonic.

Harmonic and Zixi will demonstrate the integrated technology during a webcast on July 22 at 11 a.m. ET. Registration is available online. 

For more information, visit www.zixi.com.  

WALTHAM, Mass.—CES 2020 is serving as a showcase for Zixi to demonstrate new updates to four elements of its Software-Defined Video Platform—the ZEN Master, Video Solutions Stack, Zixi Protocols and the Zixi Enabled Network.

SDVP has been updated to version 13 that provides new functionalities for the central management of broadcaster video networks with software and integrated devices regardless of the underlying IP. Control functions like monitoring, fault recovery and security are included in every aspect of SDVP, which can be deployed on-premises, through a cloud infrastructure or hybrid IP networks.

First among the four elements of SDVP that Zixi is showcasing at CES is ZEN Master, which features a cloud-based interface that provides visual tools to configure, orchestrate, manage and monitor live and live linear broadcast channels at scale and across industry protocols. With a customizable UI, users can view channels, grid-based object and resource monitoring and channel visualization with debugging and root causes analysis. The platform also facilitates the configuration of notifications and error escalation, free form notes on Zixi Feeder, Receivers, broadcast clusters, sources, channels and targets, as well as cloning of channels and targets, event filtering by Access Tag, creation of sticky search fields and the configuration of panels for display and preview.

Additional ZEN Master features include customizable granular reporting; advanced automation and scheduling capabilities; and integrations with AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Azure for operations within ZEN Master.

The Video Solutions Stack provides foundational software tools and core media processing functions for the transport of live video over IP networks, protocols and cloud providers correcting for packet loss and jitter. Key features on display include Video Solutions Stack’s software algorithms that optimize streams between Zixi Feeders, Zixi Broadcaster and Zixi Receivers and work together to deliver live video over IP and Hybrid IP networks. A Hitless Failover technique provides reliable transport between sources and receivers, while the Hybrid Network Sequenced Hitless Failover uses Zixi’s own extension and improvement of SMPTE 2022-7 with a package sequence alignment to create a coherent stream out of multiple stream fragments. Then a Hybrid Network Bonded Hitless failover enables the blending of internet, fiber, satellite and cellular connections to form a virtual bonded network. Broadcasters also have access to tools to streamline workflows like live 4K transcoding and repackaging, and machine learning based on ePSNR.

With the Zixi Protocol, the company has added machine learning algorithms to power Zixi’s next-gen transport streaming protocol for real-time assessment of networking conditions. The algorithms utilize data like round-trip time, jitter, channel lost rate, burstiness and more to determine the most effective data to FEC overhead ratio. There is also a multilayered security approach to conduct video transportation.

Zixi will also highlight its growing Zixi Enabled Network, which features more than 150 technology partners and media service providers. In 2019, 50 technology vendors joined the network, including AppearTV, ATEME, Edgeward, RedBee MEdia, Telstra, Telestream, Vimond and more.

More information is available at www.zixi.com.