For broadcasters that have yet to convert from Serial Digital Interface (SDI) to SMPTE ST 2110 IP production workflows across portions or all of their facilities, three new industry initiatives within and outside SMPTE bode well for accelerating the pace of IP adoption.
While ST 2110 has taken center stage as the driving force behind the industry’s ability to embrace the scaling, remote connectivity and other efficiencies of IP software technology, SDI still serves as the dominant production backbone in 82% of broadcast operations, according to the 2026 edition of Haivision’s annual survey on global broadcast tech trends released last month.
‘It’s a Pain’
As Samuel Recine, Matrox Video’s vice president for strategic partnerships, noted, “It’s not easy to migrate entire facilities to 2110.” Even as new-build requirements and aging SDI facilities unleash inevitable migrations to IP production, ST 2110 users attest to facing hurdles they would rather not contend with.
For example, when executives at a recent industry gathering were asked about their biggest challenges with ST 2110, several singled out problems with using the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) to ensure synchronization across video, audio and metadata streams.
“It’s a pain,” said Peter Wehner, executive vice president of technology operations and engineering at Mobile TV Group, which supplies mobile units for live sports and other productions. “When something goes wrong, there are different reasons every time.”
“I agree; it’s PTP,” concurred Jason Taubman, senior vice president for technology at Game Creek Video, another mobile production fleet supplier. In addition, while “we’re all in on 2110,” another big issue has to do with scaling, where managing “tens of thousands of signals is a huge challenge,” he said.
But the good news is “we’re now feeling comfortable with IP interoperability,” Taubman added. “We can cherry-pick vendors from off the shelf.”
Indeed, there’s every reason to expect the pace of ST 2110 adoption will accelerate as interoperability extends into other areas vital to usage. This includes vendor compatibility enabled by the IP Media Experience (IPMX) standard backed by the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), the Linux Foundation-backed Media eXchange Layer (MXL) software development kit (SDK) and SMPTE’s emerging ST 2138 standard, also known as Catena.
So far, when it comes to live venue-centered production, “2110 in the field is typically limited to large deployments—big trucks, big network centers, where you need lots of streams, lots of devices,” Cobalt Digital Chief Technical Officer Ciro Noronha noted. “All those big guys are going to 2110.”
Bringing Pro AV Into the ‘MiX’
This has been a major step toward minimizing the amount of field-deployed equipment via remote connectivity over IP to core production centers. Now, thanks to IPMX, these benefits can be more readily exploited in smaller live broadcast productions as well as a vast range of other use cases that have been off limits to ST 2110, including Pro AV, corporate media and education productions that traditionally rely on High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) switchers and cable for digital operations.
This year’s ISE in Barcelona demonstrated how suppliers are rapidly adopting IPMX as a software upgrade to existing ST 2110 products and as the foundation for a new generation of products that work at extremely low latencies with asynchronous and synchronous sources in compressed or uncompressed modes without requiring the use of PTP. “I call it ST 2110 made easy,” Noronha said.
At the 2026 NAB Show, Cobalt is introducing IPMX in one of its audio monitoring units along with the new blueCORE “processing box” supporting 2110 input and output gateway functionality. “Everything we do from now on will be
IPMX-compliant,” Noronha said, bringing “all the benefits [of ST 2110] without the big price tag.”
Elsewhere on the show floor, Imagine Communications is promoting features unrelated to IPMX that have been added to its ST 2110 products, but in the broader scheme, the company is highly focused on bringing the new standard into its portfolio, according to John Mailhot, Imagine’s senior vice president of product management. The company will soon obtain certification for products already in line with the standard, he said, while “others will be compatible
over time.”
For now, Imagine will concentrate on touting ST 2110-related advances like a new graphics workflow enhancement to its recently introduced XVR playout engine and an expansion of multiview capabilities in workflows under control of its Selenio Network Processor. In the latter case, Mailhot said, Imagine is leveraging technology obtained with its recent Pixel Power acquisition to “present operations people everything they need to see all their work in one solution,” including low-latency remote feeds from satellites and other sources.
Matrox, another supplier all in with IPMX, has exploited the compatibility between IPMX and ST-2110 to the fullest extent by offering each of its ST-2110-related products as a “superset” that can be deployed with software tuned to either mode.
For example, Recine said, an IP/SDI converter that’s used in a complex ST 2110 broadcast environment where all live flows must be synchronized can also be purchased in IPMX mode for conversions in business, education or other more limited production situations where PTP synchronization isn’t essential, including portions of a broadcast facility that aren’t involved in “the mission-critical part of producing live content.”
Media eXchange Layer
Meanwhile, another realm of versatility that alleviates ST 2110 usage burdens is opening with the introduction of the MXL software development kit (SDK). By creating a template for packaging video, audio and data essences as microservices in container-virtualized data centers, MXL “is a way of breaking down the barriers, not having to encapsulate 2110 every time you want to do another bit of processing in the workflow,” said Daniel Robinson, product manager for MXL at Matrox Video.
MXL has strong industry support with collaboration from the EBU, the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA) and a growing coterie of European and Canadian media companies such as CBC/Radio-Canada, BBC, France TV, RTÉ (Ireland), SRG SSR (Switzerland), SVT (Sweden), SWR/ARD (Germany) and VRT (Belgium). Extending the reach to global proportions, including the U.S., are vendor “implementers” Appear, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Grass Valley, Imagine Communications, Intel, Lawo, Matrox Video, NVIDIA, Riedel Communications and Telos Alliance.
Matrox is one of about six vendors “that have actually got it working in our product,” Robinson said. Many components in the Matrox product line were already configured to work in the containerized environment, but there is greater demand for the cost savings that come with such efficiencies in an open-source environment, especially one that avoids a drawn-out standardization process, he noted.
Hardware Control
The third initiative, SMPTE ST 2138, would expand interoperability essential to speeding the transition to IP by defining an open-source media control system that securely connects all devices pertinent to broadcasters’ IP-based production operations, regardless of whether transport is via ST 2110, NDI or something else.
This includes support for connecting everything that receives production output, as well as devices supporting data-center lighting, power maintenance and other operations, noted Chris Lennon, a SMPTE fellow serving as director of standards strategy at Ross Video, who has been a key figure behind the initiative.
“From our perspective, SMPTE ST 2138 is driven by customer demand,” Lennon said. “It’s hard to deny we have a serious problem with well over 200 proprietary control systems in operation.” The open-source OpenGear Protocol (OPG) developed years ago by Ross Video is the foundation for ST 2138, which has been greatly enhanced for today’s cloud operations with microservice-based scalability and other innovations, he explained.
It’s hard to deny we have a serious problem with well over 200 proprietary control systems in operation.”
Chris Lennon, Ross Video
At press time, five documents defining the 2138 protocol stack were slated for posting for input from the community at large, with a tentative cutoff date six months from now, depending on whether there’s enough consensus to merit the final push to standardization. It remains to be seen how broad industry support will be at this early stage, as other approaches to a universal IP device control system take hold in other industries’ forums.
“Luckily, many of them can work with the rapidly growing standards like 2110 and IPMX,” Sam Racine noted. One aspect that could be critical to broadcast industry buy-in to ST 2138 is that it is fully compatible with MXL. “We’ve done proofs of concept to show they are complementary and can work together,” Lennon said.
For many suppliers, the question of incorporating ST 2138 into their software stacks is still on the back burner. “If it’s important to our customers, we’ll support it,” Imagine’s Mailhot said. “Right now, there are a lot of things customers say they want that we’re actively doing.”
But the overall direction in broadcast production is clear. The all-out hunt is on for whatever it takes to make ST 2110 a more viable bridge from SDI to IP.
All of these new initiatives (and more) will be highlighted at SMPTE’s IP Showcase, part of the Tech Chat Theater in the West Hall during the 2026 NAB Show, April 19-22 in Las Vegas. The showcase is sponsored by AIMS, AMWA and the VSF.
