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Evertz and processing specialist Cobalt Digital are also using their 2110 expertise to pursue sales outside of the traditional broadcast market with a variety of products that support IPMX (Internet Protocol Media Experience), a set of 2110-based IP networking standards for the Pro AV market. Evertz views IPMX primarily a way to extend the functionality of its existing 2110 systems, while Cobalt Digital sees it both as a path into the big new market of corporate video and a potential first step into IP for some broadcasters.
“We’ve been living off of the broadcast market for forever,” says Cobalt Digital CTO Dr. Ciro Noronha. “But there’s this other market out there that is about 10 times bigger, and we should be looking at that. And we are.”
IP’s Two Camps
Overall, Lawo still views the adoption of 2110 on a growth trajectory, says Lawo CTO Phil Myers. “If you think of the bell curve of 2110, we’re still not at the peak yet,” he says.
That said, 2110 customers are firmly split into “two camps,” Myers adds. On one side are greenfield sites with customers that aim to build new facilities and go IP-native from day one. But Lawo is seeing an equal number of customers who are looking to gradually transition out of traditional SDI infrastructure by “using a lot of conversion equipment” to get them into the IP domain and start reaping its benefits.
“I don’t think you can say one’s leading the other; they are very different use cases,” Myers says. “But what we do see is really a big uptake in the transition towards IP in the last 12 to 18 months.”
Those in the second camp view purchasing Lawo’s SDI-to-IP “.edge” conversion gear as mid-to-long term investments, Myers says, particularly since those devices can also handle IP-to-IP conversion like taking a compressed feed and turning it into uncompressed 2110.
“Even if you start on Day One by bridging your existing infrastructure, it still has a very good life, because with a software license you can switch it to do something else,” Myers says. “Whether that’s using it for IP-to-IP conversion, frame synchronizing, gearboxing, color correction, audio shuffling or using it to process inputs for multiviewers, that investment actually has a pretty good life in the IP world.”
A positive trend for 2110, Myers says, is the proliferation of high bandwidth, low-cost IP switches from vendors like Netgear and Luminex, particularly ones with Power over Ethernet (PoE) support that allow the switches to be powered directly from the network and thus reduce the amount of equipment needed for portable applications like flypacks.
Most of Lawo’s big 2110 projects still rely on high-end switches from manufacturers like Arista and Cisco working with its VSM and HOME control software. One recent example is the two large 2110 mobile production units with Arista switches that Lawo helped configure for Game Creek Video last year to support NBA and NFL coverage.
Another is HuskerVision, the media organization serving the University of Nebraska’s sports teams which airs over 100 fully produced television shows annually. After upgrading its audio infrastructure to IP in 2023, last year HuskerVision completed an upgrade from its legacy HD-SDI video infrastructure to an ST 2110‑based video infrastructure using Lawo software to control Cisco switches.
The new system, integrated by BeckTV, brings all the university’s major athletic venues into a unified, software‑based production environment with a campus‑wide media fabric that can handle simultaneous shows from multiple control rooms. Feeds from seven geographically dispersed venues on the Nebraska campus locations come together through a single IP backbone to feed three co‑located control rooms inside Memorial Stadium.
Lawo’s .edge platform is used both as a high‑density gateway and as a full IP processing node. Multiple .edge frames provide 3G‑SDI and 12G‑SDI ingest and supply national broadcast trucks with 12G‑SDI, HDR, SDR and ST 2110 feeds without additional hardware. Native ST 2110 connectivity and quad‑25GbE interfaces feed the Cisco-based production fabric.
Workflows inside the control rooms rely on Lawo’s HOME Apps running on COTS servers, including the HOME Multiviewer for monitoring and the HOME UDX app for on‑demand up/down/cross conversion directly in the network. All workflows — video routing, tally, device control and multiviewer changes — are orchestrated through Lawo VSM, giving operators a single, intuitive control layer.
“They’ve got all the benefits of the dynamic media facility,” Myers says. “It’s audio/video processing based on off-the-shelf server technology, so they can spin up for production, spin it down and change the characteristics of the functionality required.”
IP’s Two Camps
Another university taking a big jump into IP is the University of Pittsburgh, which has upgraded its internal production facility to ST 2110 with Grass Valley software controlling Cisco switchers.
Pitt Athletics, which supports 19 NCAA Division I programs in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and produces more than 150 live events annually, did a complete overhaul of a 1080p/59.94 HD-SDI infrastructure it first installed in 2018. It built that facility to be ready for the 2019 launch of the ACC Network in 2018, and “came into it with the expectation of ramping up our streaming productions,” says Patrick O’Shea, director of operations and strategy, University of Pittsburgh Athletics.
Currently, Pitt Athletics produces 400 to 500 hours of live sports each year including about 40 linear events for cable networks like ESPN, ESPNU and ACC Network, another 100 productions for digital platforms like ESPN+ and another 50 productions aimed at in-venue viewing only. Last year’s IP upgrade, managed by systems integrator Tab M Solutions, was aimed at providing even more scale, improving super slo-mo capabilities and supporting HDR in the future.
Pitt Athletics had a 576×576 Evertz SDI router that it was outgrowing, O’Shea says, and the university’s decision to open a new arena for volleyball was the tipping point.
“That’s what drove us to our final decision,” O’Shea says. “We wanted the capability of infinite expansion, which we can do in 2110.”
Another major driver for 2110 was making it easier to do REMI-style productions. Pitt Athletics has started doing REMI productions of women’s lacrosse games at a venue five miles away, using a Cisco switch and two strands of leased fiber to backhaul camera feeds instead of renting a mobile truck to produce games onsite as it did in the past. The Pitt football team plays off campus at Acrisure Stadium, home of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers, and O’Shea is considering doing REMI productions of those games as well.
Pitt is also looking at different business models to fully exploit its new IP facility, including producing games from other college campuses where there is good connectivity,
“We have a very large talent pool, and an abundance of capacity, so we’re looking at bringing stuff back to this facility,” O’Shea says.
The IP upgrade was able to incorporate 14 existing Grass Valley LDX 86 cameras purchased as part of the 2018 installation and included a bevy of new Grass Valley gear. It replaced three V-Series K-Frame switcher frames and three Korona panels with two full-size K-Frame XP frames and three Kayenne panels. The dual K-Frame XP architecture now supports six switcher suites across five existing PCRs and one new control room, yielding expanded ME capacity, shared processing, simultaneous broadcast and videoboard workflows and enhanced resilience.
Tab M coordinated gear from a dozen vendors for the project. Other new gear includes upgraded CCUs and new shading OCPs (operational control panel) for the Grass Valley cameras; Ross XPression graphics; Evertz DreamCatcher replay systems; Cisco switches; EVS orchestration and multiviewer software; monitoring and analysis gear from Telestream, Bridge Technologies and Providius; and control room furniture from Forecast.
While the IP networks themselves have become straightforward to set up and have proven very reliable, there are still occasional interoperability issues in 2110 that must be worked out when combining different vendors’ products, says Tab M CEO Joe Wire. Much of that is due to vendors’ differing implementations of NMOS (Networked Media Object Specifications) device discovery and registration. Wire says the interoperabilty of NMOS is good, but companies have different ways to receive it.
Wire says that broadcasters looking to implement 2110 simply have to accept that working with a single vendor for most critical infrastructure just isn’t feasible like it was in SDI.
“In the IP world, we are at a point where best of breed, even if it’s mixing and matching vendors, is a better way to go than buying into one manufacturer,” Wire says.
Stadiums Stay Strong For Evertz
Evertz is another vendor seeing a boost to its 2110 sales from sports. The company, which not only provides IP routing software to control third-party switches but also makes its own IP switches, had two major stadium/arena 2110 projects in 2025.
One was supplying multiple DreamCatcher replay systems to drive the 4K video boards at Levi’s Stadium, home of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, as the 49ers refreshed an IP infrastructure the team first installed with Evertz back in 2014. The new system, based on Cisco IP switches, was deployed in advance of the 2025 NFL season to ready the stadium for this year’s Super Bowl and the FIFA Men’s World Cup.
A much more comprehensive 2110 project for Evertz was Rocket Arena, home of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and the AHL’s Cleveland Monsters. That facility is using a turnkey 2110 infrastructure from Evertz including its EXE 3.0 core routing switches, MAGNUM-OS control software, ev670-X30-HW IP gateways, SMPTE ST 2110 multiviewers, VUE monitoring, DreamCatcher replay system and Studer audio consoles.
“When you are building a large-scale facility in the NFL or in these other leagues, you are more likely to go in a 2110 direction than you would traditional SDI, just because of the flexibility,” says Mo Goyal, senior director of international business development for Evertz. “The ability to handle large scale events easily makes IP a lot more attractive than sticking with the traditional SDI.”
While Evertz has long worked with third-party switches from Cisco and Arista, the majority of its 2110 installations today use its own switches including the flagship EXE and the compact NATX plug-and-play switch fabric. But Goyal expects to continue to do third-party installations.
“We’re not shying away from working with those companies and we’re putting best offers with them,” Goyal says. “Because the reality is, commercially, there may be an advantage to go with Cisco or Arista for some of these facilities because of a prior relationship or some other contracts that may have. We’re well aware of that.”
Compared to the stadium market the takeup of 2110 across broadcast stations has been far more measured, says Goyal, as most are looking at gradually upgrading “brownfield” facilities. Some have simply stuck with HD-SDI given a lack of the financial resources and/or networking expertise required to make the move. But Evertz is seeing some broadcast momentum for 2110 globally.
“We’re now starting to see a lot more of those facilities that have been probably delaying a lot of their decisions on 2110 starting to deploy it now, because there’s a level of knowledge and comfort level and the toolsets have matured,” he says.
In that vein, at IBC last September Evertz unveiled ENX, a new “media core” product that marries SDI and 2110 functionality and is designed to smooth stations’ transition to IP.
“It takes a lot of the attributes we have with our IP switching, our NATX and EXE, as well as some of the things that we applied into our NEXX [SDI] router, which was that routing and processing,” Goyal says. “Being able to process blades onto the chassis itself to connect those more reliably with high-bandwidth internal connections really helps with rolling out facilities and building advanced capabilities.”
An Easy Button For IP
While early 2110 installations were plagued by interoperability issues, Cobalt Digital’s Noronha says the technology has matured and is now “past the point where you had to babysit each deployment. You just crank it out.” And Cobalt has a full line of products to process 2110 inputs and outputs and perform jobs like color correction and SDR to HDR conversion, which it sells at volume to mobile truck vendors.
But Noronha still sees 2110 as being restricted to large deployments, such as big networks or multi-unit production trucks that have a lot of signals. He says one mobile production customer told him that he put 2110 in his company’s big truck but kept SDI in its OB van because of operators’ familiarity with running SDI routers.
Noronha says local TV stations are wary of 2110: “They won’t touch that with a pole, because it’s complicated, it’s difficult … primarily because it’s expensive. They’re just staying away from that.”
That’s why Noronha sees a big opportunity in IPMX, the set of 2110-based IP networking standards originally created for the Pro AV market. Cobalt showed IPMX support in several products at NAB 20025, and now the company aims for all its 2110 input/output products to support it. It accelerated that process by attending an IPMX certification event in Geneva held by the EBU in January.
At NAB, Cobalt will show enhanced IPMX support across several of its processing and monitoring tools. And it will roll out a new 2110/IPMX product called “Blue Core,” a 1RU processor that incorporates all the video and audio processing the company supports including up/down/cross-conversion, frame sync, color correction and HDR processing.
“IPMX is what I call ‘2110 made easy,’ because the push for IPMX is Pro AV and corporate environments,” Noronha says. “But I also see it as a way to bring that kind of technology to the smaller OB van or maybe to the local TV station that’s running SDI.”
Noronha says that one of the simplifying factors with IPMX is that it doesn’t require Precision Time Protocol (PTP) to synchronize the whole network, so a customer doesn’t have to purchase and configure a PTP Grandmaster clock. And without PTP, customers can buy much cheaper switches.
“You can almost use consumer-grade switches,” Noronha says. “Netgear’s got a line that is not consumer-grade, but it’s a lot cheaper than the full-fledged switches made by Arista and others specifically for 2110. Because you don’t have to do boundary clocks and process PTP. PTP is just not there.”
Noronho says another benefit of IPMX is that control is easier than with 2110. That’s because NMOS is baked right into the IPMX standard and allows for true plug-and-play setup of devices on the network, without having to configure multicasts and UDP ports.
“In IPMX, all of that is hidden from you,” Noronha says. “The NMOS control layer on top of will take care of everything. You don’t need to know what a multicast address is. You just need to know I want that video here, go over there and it just happens.”
IPMX still does carry video and audio flows separately like 2110, so the lack of PTP means that video and audio flows can be out of synch. Noronha says this problem can be solved easily by performing sample rate conversion (SRC) on the audio.
“There is a very minor hit to quality, but I would challenge anybody who’s not a big expert to even notice that,” Noronha says.
While big networks and large stations will still insist on the fully synchronized flows of 2110, Noronha says, IPMX can serve as “entry-level 2110” for everyone else, including small stations.
Evertz is also supporting IPMX in several of its gateway products, as it looks to expand its AV over IP technology beyond the broadcast space. Goyal isn’t sure that managing large-scale IPMX installations would be much simpler for a broadcaster than 2110, as he thinks they would still require a similar level of orchestration and redundancy. But he does see potential for IPMX when used in conjunction with 2110.
Universities are a good place for IPMX applications, Goyal says, as a way to bring 2110 video to classrooms. So are professional stadiums as they look to extend their 2110 video flows beyond in-venue displays, perhaps to offices, concourses or security desks and incorporate things like PTZ cameras and HDMI inputs into the network.
“You start to consolidate a lot of what used to be very disparate and isolated systems, and you kind of merge them together with IPMX to now offer broader services,” Goyal says.
The post Road To NAB: IP Routing Growth Rooted In Sports, Vendors Say appeared first on TV News Check.
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