As the annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas for NAB Show 2025 nears, it’s time once again for industry suppliers to put forward their solutions and tools for all things content, creation and monetization. AI is, of course, top of mind for anyone in the business of developing and marketing new technologies and will undoubtedly be a big trend to follow before, during and after the big event. But what about the ongoing transition to IP and the promise of greater flexibility, scalability and efficiency?
Not to worry, experts say, IP is here—and here to stay. In fact, according to the annual Big Broadcast Survey produced by industry research and analysis firm Devoncroft, IP networking and content delivery has ranked as the No. 1 most commercially important technology trend for four years running. It’s just that IP isn’t everywhere yet and likely won’t be for quite some time.
Not Just Plug ‘N’ Play
Going IP takes training, according to Stan Moote, chief technology officer for the International Association of Broadcast Manufacturers (IABM), the industry’s trade association for technology suppliers. “With SDI there are patch panels and one can trace/bypass the signal flow in an instant,” Moote said. “With IP it is an entirely different approach, and these skills must be learned.”
Like most innovations and technological transitions, the move to IP has been subject to circumstances and making the right decision based on your respective business goals. Whether you’re operating local, remote, on- or off-prem, using SDI, IP or a combination of both, there are definite challenges and benefits to every scenario.
“I’m super-positive on moving to IP because of the huge benefits,” Moote says. “Actually, though, in some cases, SDI may still make perfect sense, especially if the facility is small, has little interest in live remotes or scalability and has no concern about the constant need for different formats and flavors of both video and audio.”
What, then, can folks planning their NAB calendars expect to see? The benefits of IP seem to be making the largest impact in the production world in several different ways. One is by removing the limitation of distance inherent in SDI connectivity. Using the ubiquitous availability of IP networks to their advantage and leveraging cloud applications as well, broadcasters have incorporated IP into their workflows strategically to gain efficiency. Industry suppliers have countless ways to deliver efficiency with IP.
“There are definitely specific cases now where it’s obvious that IP provides a cost-effective option that didn’t previously exist,” says Imagine Communications Senior Vice President of Product Management John Mailhot, who received SMPTE’s 2024 David Sarnoff Medal for his work in developing the SMPTE 2110 standard.
“For years using SDI, the limitations of the geometry of routers became an impediment—there was constant fighting over who gets which router ports,” he says. “In IP, every single thing is hooked to the network and inherently routable.”
Flexible, Efficient and Infinitely Scalable
This key characteristic of an IP network not only creates enormous flexibility but also makes an IP-enhanced workflow almost infinitely scalable. Former SMPTE President Renard Jenkins, president of I2A2 Solutions and Labs, a technology consultancy and R&D lab focused on innovation, says he has seen this scalability have a tremendous impact on the creative process, as well.
“With video over IP, you can easily increase the number of inputs, which means that you can have better coverage for a single event … more cameras, more microphones, more inputs into your router then you would have if you were dealing with tons of copper cables,” Jenkins says. “This increase in content gathering, especially in live sports and events, allows you to have better, and more, coverage, which on the back-end allows you to create more engaging content and have better creative flexibility.”
This flexibility leads to more efficient workflow setups that enable users to configure their equipment based on the specific needs of one show and then easily reconfigure for another without the need to physically move wires.
One of the keys to capturing these efficiencies is by incorporating a workflow control and orchestration system that allows operators to easily manage a combination of traditional SDI signals along with IP. This is critical not only because the technology works so differently, but because there’s a skills gap—most broadcast engineers weren’t trained to operate within IP networks because they had traditionally been the domain of IT professionals.
Bridging the Gap
Mobile production leader NEP began adopting IP technologies into its workflows early and provided some unique insights in a case study recently published by Cisco Systems.
“We deliver a remote production, a centralized production, where we put product people in one place and we have cameras and lenses in another place across the wide area network—and we’re doing that basically every day,” Marc Segar, NEP Group’s senior vice president of technology, explains. “What we holistically want to do is use hardware wherever it happens to be, and for that you’re going to be completely reliant on the wide area network and the infrastructure you put underneath. But you can’t do that unless you can manage the network and you have control over the network and you have the right tools to be able to do that well.”
Adds Jenkins, “Control and orchestration tools, with an intuitive UI design, that bridge the gap between (networks built using) copper cable and IP networks—along with the knowledge that you need to understand how to operate in both spaces—is paramount for the growth of what we’ve begun to accomplish within our industry today.”
Many vendors will certainly have control and orchestration for IP and hybrid networks near the top of their “things to see” lists at NAB Show. Imagine’s Aviator Orchestrator is one example.
“What Aviator does is it uses ‘cloud-
inspired’ deployment and management mechanics to also deploy and manage applications on-prem,” Mailhot explains. “So, you can deploy on-prem or you can deploy to the cloud over IP. You can use things the same way and create the same on-air look and use the same playout chain.”
The IP Showcase, sponsored by AIMS, AMWA, and VSF, will return to the 2025 NAB Show as part of the Tech Chat Theater in the West Hall. This year’s IP Showcase will specifically highlight the whirlwind of activity as IPMX becomes a fully complete standard, as well as how the tech behind AV-over-IP and IP for broadcast are converging.
The importance of developing consistency in how these so-called hybrid networks are managed can’t be understated. Much as ST 2110 opened the door to interoperability and relatively smooth sailing in IP content transport, standards are needed to ensure the same can be applied to workflow setup and control. IABM and SMPTE are working together to bring this to fruition.
Moote says the IABM, in conjunction with SMPTE, has established a control-plane working group that is developing an open-source, open-standard approach to this challenge. Once it’s ready, a control-plane standard should provide a smoother road to incorporating IP into existing workflows, or new ones, that can easily scale for even the largest and most complex productions.”
Vendors and broadcasters alike are invited to check-in with IABM in the North Hall (N257) while in Las Vegas to learn more.
