Broadcasters heading to the 2026 NAB Show in April will find a range of new developments and technologies enabling more efficient, secure and reliable workflows for live production.
Perhaps the most discussed advance is the industry’s continued transition to the cloud and aligning the demands of “broadcast quality” with the promise of IP. With much of the industry still using SDI, most broadcasters are adopting a hybrid approach, according to Ian Wagdin, vice president of Technology and Innovation at Appear.
“The most important trend NAB attendees should look out for is the shift toward truly hybrid live production, where linear IP video is combined with on-prem processing and cloud-based workflows to operate as a single, unified system,” he said. “Standards such as SMPTE ST 2110 and SRT, alongside emerging frameworks DMF and MXL [see sidebar], are helping to define a universal architecture model including flows, timing and control across both on-prem and cloud environments.”
Going All In
This software-based approach is gaining steam, but hesitation remains, said Deon LeCointe, director, networked solutions for Sony Electronics.
“Since many customers aren’t yet ready to dive into a fully software-based environment, I’d expect to see a push around hybrid operations that allows customers to take advantage of their existing hardware with software augmenting those operations,” he said.
Adam Marshall, chief product officer for Grass Valley, said that for the last 12 to 18 months, the company has seen “a real inflection point” in market adoption of software-defined production (SDP), adding that the practical driver is simplification.
Although 2110 may be a heavy lift for existing facilities, new projects are moving towards full 2110 deployments as the standard matures, according to Joe Davenport, director of business development, hyperconverged solutions for Ross Video.
“We’re seeing 2110 taking more market share of greenfield system builds, where scale and flexibility are paramount and there’s a budget to support it; there’s also plenty of people sticking with baseband deployments,” he said. “But 2110 is almost 10 years old, and many kinks have been worked out. Interop between vendors is largely stabilized now, and we’re seeing broadcasters implement best-of-breed technologies across their facilities.”
A hot topic on the show floor will be the evolution of MXL (aka Media eXchange Layer). Launched by the EBU, the North American Broadcasters Association and the Linux Foundation a year ago, MXL is an open-source 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.
MXL uses shared compute memory to enable 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 a stabilized v1.0 SDK is expected by the NAB Show.
Broadcasters that have taken the lead on the project include CBC/Radio-Canada, BBC and France TV.
In a recent webinar on the topic, Daniel Robinson, product manager with Matrox, discussed the company’s early forays into the architecture with its Origin platform.
“In 2019, we actually started building some of our next-generation Origin platform, which is trying to harness the power of generic IT compute where it runs in an asynchronous system,” Robinson said.
Robinson adds that the framework of MXL will allow broadcasters to choose “best-of-breed” solutions and not be locked into one vendor.
“No single vendor is going to own all the platforms, and customers want to have the choice to be able to swap in and out different components,” he said. “So, our interest really in MXL is around being able to extend the reach of our system to be able to get additional signals in and contribute signals to some downstream equipment. And, ultimately, you know, we recognize not a single vendor is going to own that whole broadcast chain.”
Mike Palmer, assistant vice president of enterprise media management at Sinclair, said MXL will play a critical role in enabling practical, mixed-vendor architectures, which are an essential requirement for broadcasters transitioning to cloud and hybrid environments.
“By allowing applications and plug-ins to share media directly through shared memory on the same hardware, MXL removes the need for traditional SDI or IP connections and cabling in many workflows,” he said. “This approach allows multiple applications to better run within the same compute frame, whether on-prem or in the cloud, significantly reducing the number of virtual machines and interconnections required, lowering compute costs, and minimizing latency between processes.
“From both a technical and business perspective, MXL enables more efficient system design, more targeted spending and better overall performance, making it a key enabler of scalable and cost-effective media operations,” Palmer said.
— Tom Butts
Dave Van Hoy, president of systems integrator Advanced Systems Group, said the democratization of production gear, driven by lower costs and wider availability, is giving more broadcasters the ability to focus on lower-profile events and leagues. The days of focusing on only the most popular sports on the high school or college level are over, he said.
“With Title IX in play, schools need to be able to cover less popular sports,” he said, referencing the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in educational programs. “This is now possible because the cost of distributing the content has become low operationally.
“I expect there will be a plethora of tools for a far wider cost range than we’ve seen before, Van Hoy added. “As live production has become increasingly popular with viewers, the ability to produce live content across a broad range of production values is necessary.”
Staying Connected
Distribution and connectivity are among the pillars of a successful live production and the need to find reliable ways to bring live feeds into production environments and deliver produced shows affordably wherever you are in the world is a continuing challenge, said Rick Young, senior vice president, head of global products at LTN.
The upcoming C-band spectrum auction will force many broadcasters to find alternatives, in which case they should consider IP, Young said.
“The right IP transport options can provide the required reliability, but more so provide significant advantages when it comes to latency, flexibility and ability to fit into various complex workflow scenarios,” he said.
Picking the right provider can help lessen the impact of changes, Young added, particularly with personnel.
“Live events and sports production demands ultrareliability and low latency for feed acquisition with minimal overhead in terms of people required to manage the acquisition process; basic, best-effort protocol only solutions often result in on-air issues,” he said. “Further, perhaps equally important, SRT and other options force scarce human resources to spend valuable extra hours monitoring and rerouting feeds when the internet does what it does—which is to play havoc on nonmanaged, nonnetwork-based options.”
A Year of Progress
John Mailhot, senior vice president of product management at Imagine Communications, agreed, adding that a lot has changed just since the last NAB Show.
“Each year brings a wider range of IP-based products, giving production teams more flexibility in how they design and scale workflows,” he said. “As budgets are planned, that flexibility matters—the ability to handle both larger and smaller productions using the same investments in equipment and training is a hallmark of IP.”
Some of the larger station groups are taking matters into their own hands. At the 2025 NAB Show, Sinclair launched “Broadcast as a Service (BaaS),” which enables station owners to eliminate much of the on-prem infrastructure, maintenance and technical operations traditionally required for master control, including content preparation, playout and monitoring, according to Mike Palmer, assistant vice president, enterprise media management.
“The service is fully turnkey and is operated using the same cloud-resident systems, workflows and technical staff that run Sinclair’s own stations every day,” Palmer said. “This allows customers to benefit from proven, broadcast-grade operations while taking advantage of cloud-scale economics. For many operators, this represents a practical and lower-risk path to cloud adoption, shifting broadcast operations from capital-intensive infrastructure to an operating-expense model without sacrificing reliability or control.”
Cost remains the primary gating factor in any move to the cloud, Palmer added, and must be evaluated first as a business decision. “Smaller station groups and individual stations often struggle to achieve cost-effective cloud operations on their own, as they do not qualify for the same volume-based discounts offered by cloud service providers to their largest customers,” he added. “As a result, standalone cloud deployments for smaller groups or individual stations can be economically challenging.
“BaaS addresses this directly by allowing smaller owners to aggregate demand, leverage large-scale cloud pricing, and access enterprise-class workflows developed and proven by Sinclair,” he added. “This enables cloud economics that would otherwise be out of reach while preserving margins in competitive markets.”
Kyle Walker, vice president of technology for Weigel Broadcasting, is still skeptical that cloud is for everyone just yet, emphasizing that the flexibility must be balanced with the cost.
“For consistent applications such as news production, I’m not convinced that cloud-based production is the best solution,” he said. “The payback of on-prem equipment is fairly obvious, even if some flexibility is lost. However, for applications such as REMI, the benefit makes more sense.”
Dr. Ciro Noronha, chief technical officer for Cobalt Digital, is excited about new developments on the IPMX (aka IP Media eXperience) front, a new standard that extends the benefits of 2110 to the Pro AV market.
Calling IPMX “ST 2110 made easy,” Noronha said the standard doesn’t need PTP, uses NMOS for control and supports HDMI, which means IMPX simplifies the deployment and operation of the IP production network.
“The first IPMX certification test happened in January 2026, ensuring that devices from different vendors fully interoperate,” he said. “IPMX makes IP production possible for the smaller operators, which have not made the transition due to the cost and technical complexity of the full ST 2110 standard.”
Christian Scheck, head of marketing content for Lawo is excited about what IPMX could offer.
“Content producers have started exploring production tools originally conceived for the Pro AV space, such as robotic and PTZ cameras, virtual user interfaces, and compact solutions for ingesting and transmitting signals without compromising on quality,” he said.
What to See on the Show Floor
Although exhibitors are still finalizing plans for the NAB Show, some of them were able to share them with us.
Sony plans on showing advances in the company’s “Networked Live,” LeCointe said. “This includes enhanced format support on our powerful Virtuoso platform, significant advancements in cloud-based production and orchestration leveraging our M2L-X software-based switcher and the VideoIPath Orchestration platform, and new features on our MLS-X1 scalable production switcher platform.”
Marshall said Grass Valley will demonstrate what it terms “practical approaches” to software-defined, IP and hybrid production that scale without reintroducing complexity—grounded in real operational needs.
“A key focus will be the operational layer required to run these models day-to-day, including orchestration, security and identity, and end-to-end observability, alongside ‘open-by-design’ approaches that support a true multivendor ecosystem,” he said. “This is fully aligned with the principles behind JT-DMF and the momentum behind MXL.”
Ross will focus its continued work on bridging networks and standards, with a new release of its Ultricore control and orchestration system designed to manage Ross Video’s routing and hyperconverged infrastructure.
“Broadcasters and production teams want to collapse the technology stack, reduce middleware and standardize integration through multivendor partnerships so deployments become repeatable and agile,” he said.
“Our Ultricore release 7.0 integrates NDI Router functionality into Ultricore BCS, allowing operators to connect and manage NDI endpoints using the same workflows they already use for SDI, ST 2110, and other formats,” said Davenport. “We also have other things in the works including ongoing expansion of native format support in Ultrix that enhance its format-agnostic capabilities and support low-latency, bandwidth-efficient workflows.”
Young said LTN will showcase the company’s IP transport solutions and workflows for both full-time and event-based use cases. “The upcoming FCC driven C-band spectrum auction and the need for content creators to drive more efficiency and reliability out of some of the early experimentation with best-effort, protocol-based solutions like SRT is driving our focus, investment and roadmaps,” he said.
Appear said it will highlight how hybrid IP and cloud-based production are being delivered in practice across real-world workflows, including a focus on its VX Media Gateway, introduced at the 2025 NAB Show.
“The VX Media Gateway, a software-based, cloud-ready solution, simplifies media transport across hybrid on-prem and cloud environments, supporting software-defined and scalable production architectures, said Wagdin. “Appear will also showcase X5, the latest compact addition to the X Platform, demonstrating how low-latency hardware can support encoding and decoding for AVC and HEVC, and hardware-accelerated SRT for secure, cost-efficient remote production.”
In addition to launching its HOME Commentary app, for remote-style commentary, Lawo will also focus on the convergence between broadcast and Pro AV.
Mailhot says Imagine will showcase HDR and 1080p production and playout capabilities, along with increased scalability enabled by IP-2110 architectures.
“We will also highlight our new Prismon multiviewer line—which brings compressed and IP-2110 workflows together into a fully scalable enterprise solution—and our Aviator Orchestrator deployment toolchains, designed to support rapid spin-up and spin-down for occasional-use workflows,” he added.
