The old-fashioned, one-screen display monitor in TV studios, OB trucks and master control rooms (MCRs) had to evolve technologically because it did only one thing. Or, to be more accurate, because it showed only one thing. The result was the multiviewer, which was—and still is—able to show multiple image sources simultaneously.
While that was a massive step forward and made for more extensive and efficient monitoring, the multiviewer itself is now evolving further. The demands of modern broadcasting and streaming call for something that not only displays pictures but is part of an overall production and distribution infrastructure.
The multiviewer has evolved from a simple “display wall” to a “software-defined monitoring and intelligence platform,” said Suzana Brady, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Cobalt Digital. This allows operators and engineering teams to monitor ever more complicated infrastructures, she explained. “The focus has shifted from simply seeing signals to helping operators monitor, manage and respond to increasingly complex workflows efficiently,” she said.
Shifting Focus
The change is driven by three current trends in broadcast technology: hybrid SDI/IP facilities becoming the norm; the continuing expansion of remote/cloud production; and broadcasters wanting fewer dedicated monitor systems and more integrated tools for monitoring, operations and processing, she said.
Another transformation in how multiviewers are expected to operate is identified by Lawo Product Evangelist Paul Scott. Bigger broadcasters are looking for more flexibility from their monitoring displays, which are often fixed multiviewer installations—typically one per studio—and can be expensive in terms of capex when multiple studios and events are involved, he said.
Manufacturers now offer various options to reduce capex for multiviewing. Lawo’s HOME IP management platform, which includes a range of specialized apps, is based on readily available COTS hardware and works with native cloud and containerization technologies, including NATS and Docker, and monitoring tools like Grafana or Prometheus.
The word “hardware” might seem incongruous when multiviewers are now described as either “software-based” or “software-defined,” Scott agreed. However, he explained, the shift has been away from dedicated processing hardware that performs only one function.
More Formats
A big shift since last year has been the expansion of formats users now work with, said Ketan Patel, project manager for multiviewer systems at Evertz.
People want to have the mixed signal monitoring or multiviewing of the mixed signals, whether it’s ST 2110, SDI or compressed feeds.”
Ketan Patel, Evertz
“People want to have the mixed signal monitoring or multiviewing of the mixed signals, whether it’s ST 2110, SDI or compressed feeds,” he said. “But now JPEG XS is getting added to the mix due to interfacility connections.
“On top of that, we are noticing customers looking for more integrated systems,” Patel added. “They want a single surface where they can manipulate the multiviewers, do their routing and analyze the signals. It’s more like dashboarding, so they want one surface to bring that all together and simplify day-to-day operations.”
John Mailhot, senior vice president for product management, playout and infrastructure at Imagine Communications, confirmed “more functionality” is being “dashboarded” and moved into the multiviewer. This has made multiviewers “the most important part of the facility,” he said, because they connect the operations team to what they are doing.
“The multiviewer is becoming more of an information hub,” he explained. “This is driven by a need for economy within the television operation. In a historical small TV station, you’d have one master control operator running the channel.
“Now that same operator is trying to manage the main channel, cable distribution, OTT, a side channel and ENGs [electronic newsgathering],” Mailhot continued. “Multiviewers are where that all comes together.”
As for the signal formats, Mailhot also predicted the hybrid model would be adopted, adding that SDI will “be with us forever—or at least another 10 to 20 years.”
SDI is among many signal formats that today’s multiviewers must accomodate. As Brady observed, these also include ST 2110, compressed IP streams and cloud feeds. But though the market “has shifted increasingly toward software,” she pointed out, it has not moved entirely to the cloud—relying on gateways between different formats and IPMX, which supports the convergence between broadcast and Pro AV workflows.
The Home MCR
IP and internet connectivity have also furthered adoption of “MCR at home,” where operators working remotely can access all sources and functions they would have on-prem. This technology is typically deployed as a distributed MCR rather than a completely remote setup, Brady said, with the critical signal processing taking place in a secure data center or broadcast facility while operators work through browser-based interfaces on an IP connection.
Lawo’s Scott said MCR at-home functionality can be facilitated through a second output from the multiviewer head as an SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) feed. The company has seen more demand for remote video monitoring, for which it has introduced Workspaces, an HTML-5 virtual user interface that can be used on desktop and laptop computers, tablets and phones, he added.
Evertz has also adopted the MCR at home. To do this, according to Patel, all the necessary controls—not just the multiviewer function—have been integrated and made available on a single browser. Alongside this, Evertz is integrating AI capability into the analytics feature set, including alarm and telemetry data.
“Those are being analyzed to make smarter decisions to present to the users,” Patel explained. “We haven’t automated it completely [to the point] where AI is driving everything, [but] those will be future steps.”
Agentic AI is the form of the technology most suited to multiviewing and monitoring, as it has the capacity to learn what to do. AI agents are “one of the most significant developments in the multiviewer market over the next few years,” Cobalt Digital’s Brady said.
“Everybody is in the experimenting phase” with AI, said Mailhot, noting that Imagine is running “a number of initiatives” around how AI systems within a facility interact with other equipment. “And designing how that works in a way that is both repeatable, reliable and correctly safeguarded,” he added. “You want to make sure these agentic systems can do something useful but, at the same time, that they don’t do anything to endanger your production.”
At this rate—and with the perceived potential of agentic AI—it is likely that multiviewers will have moved on considerably by this time next year.
