Coming out of InfoComm 2026, one thing is clear for every visitor: the walls between enterprise IT, commercial AV, and broadcast have come down. Not \u2018soon\u2019 or \u2018in theory\u2019, but in real-time and in practice.<\/p>\n
IN THIS ARTICLE<\/strong><\/p>\n Perhaps the clearest signal came from the exhibitors. EVS Broadcast and Lawo, both broadcast infrastructure companies with deep roots in live production and media, had a booth at InfoComm for the first time. Alongside established crossover names like Ross Video, Riedel, VIZRT\/NDI, Audinate, and Providius, that alone tells you where enterprise broadcast is headed.<\/p>\n Enterprise meeting rooms are no longer just a place for video calls. The town hall is no longer just an internal stream. The boardroom is no longer just screens, cameras, and codecs. Increasingly, enterprise AV environments are expected to deliver broadcast-grade production values, IT-grade manageability, and commercial AV-grade simplicity simultaneously.<\/p>\n This convergence is often misunderstood. It does not mean forcing all workloads onto a single generic network and hoping the architecture holds. Hope is not a strategy! It does not mean treating video, audio, control, security, collaboration, and production workflows as \u201cjust packets.\u201d And it certainly does not mean pretending that enterprise broadcast is already as simple as mature commercial AV-over-IP.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n Video over IP has become far more predictable because the industry, including NETGEAR, has spent years solving the real-world challenges that matter most, from multicast behavior and switch profiles to IGMP, QoS, VLAN design, endpoint validation, rack-friendly hardware, and repeatable deployment models.. In many cases, an integrator can now design, preconfigure, and commission an AV-over-IP network with a level of confidence that simply did not exist half a decade ago.<\/p>\n Enterprise broadcast is moving in the same direction, but it brings five hurdles to overcome.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n Timing<\/strong><\/p>\n Broadcast workflows depend on synchronization. Standards like SMPTE ST 2110 and production environments built around PTP are far less forgiving than conferencing or signage deployments. If timing is inconsistent, the problem may not look like \u201cthe network is down.\u201d It may look like audio drift, lip-sync errors, frame slips, or intermittent production faults that are difficult to reproduce.<\/p>\n Bandwidth and burst behavior<\/strong><\/p>\n Enterprise broadcast can involve many simultaneous feeds, contribution sources, multiviewers, encoders, decoders, recorders, replay systems, and distribution paths. The network has to handle sustained media flows, not just peak data throughput. Oversubscription that looks acceptable on a traditional IT spreadsheet may fail under real media load.<\/p>\n Multicast <\/strong><\/p>\n Enterprise IT networks were historically optimized for unicast traffic. Broadcast and AV-over-IP often depend on predictable multicast behavior at scale. IGMP snooping, querier placement, PIM boundaries, fast leave behavior, and multicast containment are not optional details. They determine whether the system feels deterministic or fragile.<\/p>\n Security <\/strong><\/p>\n Enterprise security teams want Zero Trust, identity-based access, segmentation, logging, and policy enforcement. Broadcast and AV teams want low-latency media, stable device discovery, and production workflows that do not collapse during a live event. The future is not \u201csecurity versus performance.\u201d The whole idea that this is a slider is just wrong. The future is security designed into the architecture early enough that it does not become a last-minute firewall exception.<\/p>\n Operational ownership<\/strong><\/p>\n Currently, IT owns the network, and AV owns the experience. Broadcast owns the production outcome. When something fails, the executive audience does not care which domain caused the issue. They only know the stream glitched, the town hall failed, or the CEO could not be heard. Converged environments require converged accountability, shared language, and tools that both IT and AV teams can use and understand.<\/p>\n That is why the next phase of enterprise AV is about deterministic design, validated interoperability, repeatable configuration, and support models that recognize how high-pressure these environments have become.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n We also launched the Align Controller at InfoComm 2026, NETGEAR\u2019s first AV-platform. By the time the show closed, it had picked up Best of Show awards from\u00a0rAVe, Installation, AV Technology, Sound & Video Contractor, and The Tech Effect award for Best Enterprise Solution, alongside\u00a0with\u00a0the CTI Spotlight Award and the PSNI Future Ready Award\u00a0that NETGEAR AV received.<\/p>\n The response reinforced what we heard throughout the week: the industry is looking for simpler ways to design, deploy, manage, and scale increasingly complex AV environments.<\/p>\n\n
How we got here, and what comes next<\/h2>\n
Five hurdles<\/h2>\n
The industry responded<\/h2>\n