As the worlds of AV and broadcast move closer, are the AV products and infrastructure in place to achieve the quality level that’s expected? Paul Milligan finds out.
For years the AV industry was dominated by talk of AV/IT convergence at trade shows, awards shows, client meetings (and late-night hotel bars too). The IT industry was going to swallow the AV industry whole; IT engineers were coming to take AV jobs away for good. The actual reality of AV/IT convergence was a gentle evolution from a reliance on black boxes to a more IP-based and more software-centric AV world.
And this same evolution will probably be the end result of the current conversational hot topic of AV and broadcast convergence. There is absolutely no doubt the two worlds are starting to collide, we’ve seen companies such as Blackmagic Design, Ross Video, Vizrt, AJA Video, who have built their reputations in the broadcast sector over many years, slowly increase their presence in the AV world as a clear business opportunity has presented itself.
What began more than a decade ago with IPTV transmitting corporate messages is now a situation which see corporates - but also houses of worship, retail and transport venues - all starting to explore broadcast technologies such as HDR, UHD (4K and 8K), and higher frame rates, to up the quality of how they reach their target audiences. This article will explore if the current infrastructure in place at those organisations is ready to handle the leap in quality to 4K (or even 8K), how the industry is coping with complex broadcast systems being installed, and just how big the opportunity could be in having both broadcast and AV skills for the AV industry.
First of all, why are we talking about this? Because it’s a jump in quality. “You can get wonderful cinematic motion and look combined with HDR and 4K. It’s such an engaging experience. You can see why all of the big brands are wanting to deliver it in places such as airports. It’s so compelling, you really have the ability to produce something that makes people stop and look,” says Andy Bellamy, technical director, AJA EMEA.
As seen in the Transformation Church case study (Inavate August 2025), HDR which has been associated with high-end broadcast and cinematic workflows, is beginning to capture the attention of AV buyers in other sectors. But are venues truly ready for the shift? The operational demands that HDR places on the video pipeline are from source to display; does the infrastructure, from cameras to switchers to encoders, support it yet? It would’ve been a different conversation a couple of years ago, but now it feels mature all the way through says Bellamy. “In terms of acquisition to delivery, everything is in place. We’ve got everything in-between they will need to take those signals all the way through.”
Bellamy says a significant part of his job is dealing with queries coming in from clients and dealers who want to know how to build a pipeline. “How do I go through it? It’s very rare that we ever say that doesn’t conserve the HDR for you all the way through, and it’s definitely more legacy and older products that don’t support it.”
Venues that have already made the shift to AVoIP, especially those using NDI, are ready for the shift says Liam Hayter, product manager, Vizrt, but “those utilising traditional baseband and less open AVoIP approaches will require a bigger lift and shift to deliver HDR.” Endpoints such as PTZ cameras are catching up to the world of HDR he adds, “The majority still support SDR today, but I’d expect that to change in the near future.”
People are asking about UHD production, UHD transport and then UHD output recording adds Nacho Lee, programme manager for special events and integration projects, Riedel, even if it doesn’t always translate into completed projects. “As a manufacturer we’re really trying to propose UHD or HDR, but it doesn’t always work with the capabilities of the venue, that’s the tipping point for the discussion, whether they are actually capable of receiving that solution.”
Riedel MediorNet IP delivered high-quality video for an esports event produced by Quince Imaging.
For a global systems integration group such as Kinly, with a client portfolio predominantly in the corporate world, it’s starting to see a bit of HDR filtering down says Stuart Davidson, group operations director. “It’s within certain product sets. Distribution for example is starting to support HDR in some form, but it’s not really standard yet within a meeting space, for example, to have HDR in terms of cameras and full end-to-end. As we get more towards event technologies and corporate comms and high impact presentations that our customers do, we can see more. To do it properly obviously requires HDR end-to-end and a lot of planning, you’re not talking minor upgrade spaces, you’re talking end-to-end design to incorporate HDR from source all the way through to display.”
Demand for UHD and HDR is coming from esports and high-end corporates. Diversified is another global integration group but can liaise with its own broadcast arm, which has been active for some time in its US operations, on corporate or HoW projects. It’s already working with big corporates, banks and tech companies on broadcast installs says Francis Williams, technical and commercial director, media and entertainment, Diversified EMEA. “One of the key drivers is everybody requires content now and the big corporates have competition on what their output looks like now from TikTok and YouTube etc.” Williams recently worked on a project with a bank to build a TV studio and auditorium, on which Diversified used broadcast equipment, took away the AV switchers and moved it all into a new workflow.
That was driven by two things he says: “The first is [a demand for a higher] production value, but it’s also driven by workflow. In the workplace everybody is being urged to engage their employees more. You have to create an experience. An auditorium town hall isn’t what it used to be, now it’s a show, they need high production levels, they want glitz and glam, they want nice graphics on the screen behind them while they’re giving presentations, and you’ve got to bring other video feeds in too. The top and bottom of it is you can’t really achieve that with just an old school AV infrastructure. We’re not necessarily going to move everybody into a full Sony world but there are halfway houses [you can choose]. You need to think about it more professionally now.”
Are clients asking for 4K, or even 8K? It’s a bit of the first, hardly any of the latter it seems. “People talk about 8K, but it’s not a reality,” says Lee. “Audience feedback across all markets is proving that the added cost-benefit of delivering above 4K is not actually worth it,” says Hayter. “Audiences can’t really tell the difference. The majority of HDR enquiries we’re seeing today are for 4K UHD and HD resolution content.”
Something else helping this process is that broadcast systems,known historically for their complexity, are getting easier to operate. “Some of the workflows which were quite complex even as little as three to five years ago have been simplified, so there is the ability to bring in somebody who may be medium skilled, but with a small AV background and get them infused with some broadcast knowledge on a simple course. Getting them up to speed doesn’t take too long,” says Bellamy.
Microsoft Production Studios, a Diversified installation.
We’ve established large-medium corporates are building internal studios for things such as CEO messages and quarterly reports. They are regularly run by very small teams, often one or two people. With this in mind, do we need control rooms to be more flexible? Are there products to help with that? “If you look at it from medium-large corporate perspective they are operating lighting consoles, music consoles and PTZ control, or even KVM switches. The people in charge of these things need to talk to each other and they have different expertise. We’ve clients such as Google and Facebook who want a small but efficient control room setup, but at the same time they want people to talk to each other instead of using WhatsApp or Teams or Zoom, but they are not really in the same encrypted secure area so intercom becomes a big topic for us to help them to be efficient and collaborate,” says Lee.
Most clients can’t afford to take on permanent staff to run just one show a week says Williams, and they’ll bring them in on an event-by-event basis. For example, one of Diversified’s biggest clients has one in-house person who’s responsible for the production space and the events. “They’ll do a lot of the preparation, come the actual day of the event, Diversified provides what we call Adopt, where we supply an operator a few times a month,” explains Williams.
Small control rooms run by one to two people are now so commonplace that AJA puts on demos from the point of view of how to operate kit with less people. “We give the operator the flexibility to shuffle through devices within a web browser, through tabbed windows, to make it really easy. We also have ways of nesting our gear within a single control interface as well. They’re working from a single location, but they have access to multiple devices. Within the devices themselves we’ve always had an emphasis on presets and the ability to upload settings to devices as well. That can come in really handy for these smaller groups where there are less people,” says Bellamy.
Making products easy to install and use is fundamental for Riedel says Lee. “Our intercom is now plug-and-play, it’s one antenna, we don’t use a base station, once people put it in their studio, as long as the power is on it’s ready to go. We have a video replay system in our touchscreen, they don’t need to be an EVS operator (Enginious Video System - an accredited video replay system), they don’t need to be really tech-savvy, they can just drag and drop the video clips, export and then do the production very easily.”
It’s not just control rooms that can exist with minimal staff, filming content too can be done via remote systems, so you barely need anyone in the room to film a CEO interview for example, as Willams explains. “We would need somebody who could mic everybody up and turn the lights on and we could do all of the rest remotely if we had PTZ cameras on tracks. In a small space we could produce that remotely with just two chairs and a backdrop in the room itself. For the backdrop the image is sent remotely, and someone can do the audio levels remotely too.”
Esports is a key area for AV/ broadcast infrastructure, as AV integrators working in this segment are working with NDI/IP video, PTZ cameras, live switching, KVM, and intercom systems to build esports gaming arenas. So what are the demands that esports arenas place on infrastructure? Having three elements in one show makes it very tough. You have the competition showing the competing players on stage, you have the live event itself, where the AV works so the crowd can see and hear what the players are doing, and the last element is to provide all the action for an online audience at home.
“The infrastructure has to accommodate multiple computer feeds potentially running at higher frame rates such as 60fps. Because esports is a global phenomenon you have the complexity of bringing in multiple commentators, perhaps in different languages, for sharing content around the world,” says Bellamy. For data heavy projects such as esports, AJA is seeing a rise of bridge products which allow users to take multiple NDI feeds and bring them all into a single 1U chassis supercomputer and then, by either working directly or remotely, they’re able to configure an audio map of all of the multiple inputs coming in. The investment of esports is probably two or three times more than a traditional venue explains Lee. “They want the highest resolution, they want the highest speed. They want the quickest response. It’s a very stressful environment.”
Finally, as we have tried to illustrate above, AV professionals who understand KVM, IP video, HDR, and live workflows will be best placed to lead in demanding environments such as esports and corporate media. But is that message getting through to the wider AV industry? Diversified has identified it as a key move forward for the business admits Williams. “This opportunity is aligned with AVIXA data that’s shown that corporate broadcast is one of the biggest potential areas of growth over the coming years. While the rest - meeting rooms etc - is going to slow down. Are people going to be well positioned to take advantage of that? We’ve taken on really technical capable staff because it is another level. People who are doing complex spaces and immersive projects are probably in a better position than others to move into this area because they’ll have some of that in-house skill set already.”