TV Tech: What do you anticipate to be the most significant technology trends at the 2025 NAB Show?
Chris Scheck: One important trend no doubt is the migration towards hardware-agnostic processing on COTS servers and in the public cloud. The CPU and GPU technology employed for this is evolving at such a staggering pace that building one’s own proprietary hardware simply no longer makes sense. Lawo prefers to stand on the shoulders of giants in this respect. This trend is already accelerating the virtualization of live production workflows, with more and more processes providing more creative and flexible options than the hardware from which the original concepts may have been derived. The new implementation options are so diverse, however, that simply lifting and shifting existing approaches would cause users to miss out on the most interesting bits, hence the importance of a future-oriented microservice approach.
AI will probably be announced or claimed by many in one way or another. It certainly deserves the industry’s full attention. But so does AR for production, and that is being addressed by Lawo Workspaces.
TVT: What will be your most important product news?
CS: Lawo’s most important product news will be HOME Apps with an integrated “Workspace” user interface, under the “do more with less anywhere” motto. Built for specific tasks, Workspace UIs run in the HTML5 browser on your laptop, tablet, phone and your AR headset, for untethered yet perfectly secure pro-grade operation. Each UI controls a full-time HOME App running on a COTS server somewhere in the world, with minimal latency and robust security. The HOME Commentary app is downright spectacular: it is a virtual, broadcast-grade commentary station for off-tube and in-venue jobs. In its simplest form, it can be operated with a USB-C microphone and a pair of headphones for world-class storytelling.
Two additional HOME Apps with Workspace UIs will also be on display: HOME Video Monitor, which delivers low-latency video monitoring for busy broadcast/AV professionals; and HOME mc² crystal Controller, which acts as the missing link for high-end audio mixing scenarios involving crystal consoles.
The new HOME Power Core app, for its part, leverages the agility of Lawo’s HOME Apps platform to provide instant processing, mixing, routing and monitoring for radio and TV workflows. Derived from Lawo’s physical Power Core unit, this app allows users to choose among a compact, a large, and an XL instance to make optimal use of the available CPU power.
TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?
CS: HOME Apps with a Lawo Workspace add a new dimension to how HOME Apps can be used to contribute to the content creation chain. While more such apps are already in the pipeline, the HOME Commentary app makes it easy for commentators and sports celebrities to contribute to the live coverage of events from their homes, their holiday resorts, etc. This was already possible, but it used to require quite some hardware that had to be configured beforehand.
All new HOME Apps are, of course, members of Lawo’s unified, open platform whose core mission is to provide content creators with at least one workflow—usually multiple workflows—for each building block along the storytelling journey. As more functionality is delivered via servers, operators benefit from more flexibility and agility, as well as the convenience of shrinking data centers.
TVT: What is it about NAB Show that brings you back every year?
CS: NAB Show is one of the main trade shows in North America. It is where the industry introduces new products and where new projects and cooperations are discussed and signed. No industry pro can afford to miss NAB Show.
