#streaming
Streaming technology and strategy news from NAB Show 2026 and the co-located Streaming Summit (April 20–21). Topics include OTT delivery, adaptive bitrate encoding, latency reduction, monetization models, and the ongoing fragmentation of sports-rights distribution across linear, SVOD, and sportsbook platforms.
Zixi demonstrates IP-based satellite replacement and dynamic market switching
Zixi used NAB 2026 to position its ZEN Master platform as a satellite replacement, showcasing market switching, ESNI/SCTE-224, and SPTS re-mux.
TV Technology names 80+ Best of Show winners at NAB 2026
TV Technology named more than 80 Best of Show winners at NAB 2026, spanning AI, IP video, cloud playout, codecs, cameras, and storage.
AJA Video Systems acquires GPU encoding firm Comprimato
AJA Video Systems is acquiring Comprimato, a Czech GPU-powered live encoding software developer, to accelerate its BRIDGE LIVE IP product family.
JioHotStar session maps infrastructure for 72 million concurrent live viewers
JioHotStar described CDN strategy, encoding, and capacity management for 72 million concurrent ICC T20 World Cup viewers at the Streaming Summit.
Comcast's RealTime4K delivers 30 Mbps Dolby Vision Super Bowl stream
Comcast Principal Architect Derik Yarnell detailed RealTime4K's 30 Mbps pipeline with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos at the Streaming Summit on April 21.
NBC Sports' Jon Miller: broadcast is stronger than ever, Peacock is complementary
NBC Sports President Jon Miller told Sports Summit that broadcast remains the strongest sports rights platform and Peacock complements rather than replaces NBC.
Streaming Summit panel: esports goes free, niche racing charges $300 a year
World Racing Group charges $300/year for 80–90 races; ESL FACEIT makes all esports content free — two models contrasted at Streaming Summit.
Dolby OptiView adds Ad Engine and personalized fan moments at Sports Summit
Dolby OptiView unveiled an Ad Engine and Sports Intelligence at the Sports Summit, with IBM and AWS joining on personalized sports streaming.
NBCUniversal and Comcast detail Super Bowl 4K AI upscaling and Peacock multiview
Streaming Summit sessions covered AI-driven Super Bowl 4K upscaling and Peacock's evolving live sports multiview from the NBC/Comcast umbrella.
Paramount+ details shared Fire TV architecture for Paramount+ and Pluto TV
Paramount+ engineers explained how a single Amazon Fire TV codebase powers both Paramount+ SVOD and Pluto TV FAST in a Streaming Summit session.
WBD CTO Saxena outlines Max global DTC platform at Streaming Summit
WBD CTO Avi Saxena joined Dan Rayburn at Streaming Summit to discuss Max's international expansion, localization demands, and AI's role in live delivery.
NAB creator panel: the creator-audience bond resists AI replacement
A NAB 2026 creator economy panel pushed back on AI replacement fears, with industry executives arguing the creator-audience relationship is inherently human.
Frequency powers 160+ FAST news channels, targets 100,000 live events in 2026
Frequency announced Studio enhancements at NAB 2026, serving 160+ FAST news channels across 70 million US homes with plans for 100,000 live events this year.
Streaming reaches 47.5% of US TV viewing as ad-tier hits 46% of SVOD subs
Viaccess-Orca data shows streaming hit 47.5% of US TV viewing in December 2025, with ad-supported tiers now representing 46% of premium SVOD subscriptions.
AccuWeather moves broadcast operations to Amagi cloud managed services
AccuWeather migrated from satellite and hardware infrastructure to Amagi's cloud-based Master Control Room, consolidating linear and streaming distribution.
IABM rebrands as IAMT and launches MAI agentic AI discovery platform
IABM rebrands as IAMT at NAB 2026 and debuts MAI, an agentic AI discovery platform built on its accumulated knowledge base.
Castanet launches commercial ATSC 3.0 and 5G Broadcast Internet pilot
Castanet demonstrated a hybrid ATSC 3.0 and 5G Broadcast Internet network in Las Vegas, covering roughly 60% of the US population via LPTV spectrum.
Oracle stages first public multi-vendor MoQ streaming interop demo at NAB
Oracle and five partners ran the first confirmed public cross-vendor MoQ (Media over QUIC) interoperability demo at NAB 2026.
Dan Rayburn opens Streaming Summit with AI trust as the defining challenge
Streaming Summit chair Dan Rayburn framed AI trust — not AI capability — as the defining challenge for streaming operators in his April 20 opening.
NAB bets creator businesses and broadcasters now need the same tools
NAB EVP Karen Chupka says the lines between broadcasters, streamers, and creators have collapsed — and the show floor now reflects that structural change.
Witbe replaces script-based test automation with AI-native monitoring
Witbe replaces scripted test automation with natural language commands across real devices and networks, with AI root-cause analysis built in.
TVU Networks and Tencent Cloud launch joint cloud production platform
TVU Networks and Tencent Cloud announced a cloud-native media production and distribution platform at NAB 2026 opening day, built on TKE container services.
Sports Summit opens with rights and revenue panel on NAB's first floor day
The Sports Summit's opening session assembled Genius Sports, Utah Jazz, and Oklahoma City Thunder for a 45-minute overview on rights, reach, and revenue.
Quickplay launches AI social clip tool, lands Gray Media and TVNZ as customers
Quickplay debuted Social Signals at NAB 2026, an AI tool that turns trending moments into social clips in minutes, with Gray Media and TVNZ as new customers.
MediaKind MK.IO Multiview reaches 20 million subscribers via Charter and Comcast
MediaKind's MK.IO Multiview serves over 20 million North American subscribers, with Charter deploying for NCAA and Comcast adding viewer-assembled NFL layouts.
ICC CEO Sanjog Gupta brings cricket's 72M-concurrent-viewer milestone to NAB
ICC CEO Sanjog Gupta joins the NAB Sports Summit representing one of streaming's largest platforms — 72 million viewers watched the ICC T20 World Cup.
BritBox CEO opens Streaming Summit with North America SVOD strategy keynote
Robert Schildhouse, BBC Studios' Direct-to-Consumer CEO, opens the 2026 NAB Streaming Summit keynote on April 20 — the first BritBox leader to headline.
AWS Elemental Inference adds automated vertical cropping and clip detection
AWS Elemental Inference automates vertical video reformatting, key-moment clip detection, and personalized video generation for media workflows at NAB 2026.
Atomos Sumo PRO-19 combines 4K monitor, recorder, and switcher for $2,899
Atomos debuts a 19-inch 4K HDR monitor-recorder-switcher with NDI HX3, direct cloud upload, and 8Kp30 recording capability, shipping May 2026.
Knox Media Hub: cloud cost control, not adoption, is the real NAB 2026 pressure
Knox Media Hub analyst Clara Aler argues NAB 2026's headline themes reduce to one pressure: speed, cost visibility, and ownership over cloud infrastructure.
Jeff Kagan: AI separating broadcast winners from losers at NAB 2026
Analyst Jeff Kagan argues NAB 2026 marks an AI inflection comparable to the commercial internet shift, with carriers and cloud providers racing to react.
Streaming Summit confronts fragmented sports rights across broadcast and SVOD
Two Streaming Summit sessions on sports rights fragmentation and live UX place rights-map complexity at the center of the 2026 Streaming Summit agenda.
Streaming Summit adds AI-in-the-stack session on encoding, QC, and delivery
A Streaming Summit session puts operational AI inside encoding, QC, and delivery workflows — separate from the chatbot discovery and AI governance sessions.
Streaming Summit 2026 frames five tracks around unit economics, not growth
The Streaming Summit organizes 85 speakers around bundling, churn, FAST/AVOD models, workflow cost, and discovery — all pointing to monetization over growth.
Google Cloud cites 35% ROAS lift and MLB Scout as agentic AI proof points
Google Cloud names Cadent's 35% ROAS increase, Gray Media's 1,300-touchpoint AI operation, and MLB's real-time commentary as agentic AI at production scale.
FOR-A GoVertical AiDi ships to NBC Sports with on-device 9:16 autocrop
FOR-A's GoVertical AiDi converts 16:9 feeds to 9:16 in real time on-device via NVIDIA RTX 5090/5070 Ti GPUs, now in commercial deployment at NBC Sports.
AV1 reaches mainstream planning threshold: 40% targeting 2026 deployment
Dan Rayburn analyzes NETINT's survey: AV1 will reach 57% deployment reach by end of 2026, with hardware acceleration diversifying away from pure GPU solutions.
Wowza demos AI quality control and Media over QUIC with Cloudflare at NAB
Wowza demos automated QC and AI-driven ad insertion with a live MoQ integration via Cloudflare, delivering CMAF over MoQT to Shaka Player.
Broadpeak launches packager-level Multiview for live sports streaming
Broadpeak's Multiview composes live sport feeds at the packager stage rather than the encoder, reducing load and sending one stream to all devices.
Streaming Summit dedicates full session to AI chatbots for content discovery
The 2026 Streaming Summit devotes a session to live-test data on AI chatbots as discovery interfaces — the first Summit slot for AI as a front-end tool.
FanDuel, Religion of Sports, and 49ers executives join Sports Summit stage
FanDuel marks the first sportsbook on the Sports Summit stage as Religion of Sports CEO Ameeth Sankaran, 49ers exec Laura Johnson, and DAZN's Sandeep Tiku join.
Synamedia Quortex PowerVu cuts affiliate distribution costs by up to 80%
Synamedia's Quortex PowerVu replaces satellite-to-IP affiliate distribution with an edge-playout model, avoiding full-feed decoding and cutting costs up to 80%.
LiveU launches LU900Q intelligent field unit with native 5G and 4:2:2
LiveU's LU900Q pairs native IQ connectivity, eSIM, optimized 5G modems, a MIMO antenna array, and 4:2:2 encoding with dual-camera support for field work.
Streaming Summit lines up Paramount, Prime Video, NBCU and JioStar on scale
Paramount CTO Phil Wiser, Prime Video's BA Winston and NBCU's Matt Strauss headline a Streaming Summit framed around monetization and scale.
Harmonic doubles playout density with Spectrum X Plus and AI orchestration
Harmonic's Spectrum X Plus doubles channels per server and halves cost per channel, paired with a new AI orchestration service.
De Marchis: vendors pitching an AI strategy instead of product should stay home
Carlo De Marchis's pre-show read warns that buyers will ignore AI deck-ware and judge vendors on shipping product and macro-aware pricing.
PGA TOUR generates 7,000 AI highlight clips weekly: Streaming Summit case study
A Streaming Summit session on April 20 reveals how the PGA TOUR's AI pipeline produces 7,000 short-form highlight clips per week from live tournament coverage.
V-Nova argues video formats built for human eyes are wrong for AI workflows
V-Nova's Guendalina Cobianchi argues SMPTE VC-6 hierarchical encoding and GPU-accelerated pipelines are prerequisites for AI-native media workflows.
NextGen TV goes global at NAB with Brazil minister and FCC commissioner
Brazil's Communications Minister and FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty share a NAB stage on April 20 as Pearl TV launches its NextGen TV Converter Box.
NAB Show 2026 draws 1,100+ exhibitors, AI pavilions debut as footprint doubles
NAB Show 2026 draws over 18,000 companies — up from 12,000 in 2025 — with AI exhibitors nearly doubled year-over-year and two new AI Pavilions debuting.