What’s Happening to the Broadcast Core: A Mature Market Still in Need of Integration Experts

The broadcast technology landscape has changed drastically over the past decade. With IP-based workflows becoming the norm and major studios moving towards cloud-enabled distribution, some might assume the core of the broadcast market has stagnated. But that’s a misconception. While this segment has indeed matured, the need for integration experts, embedded development, and custom engineering remains as strong as ever — if not more so.

Is the Broadcast Core Obsolete?

The short answer is no. The broadcast core — encompassing ingest systems, video encoders, multiplexers, and master control — still underpins nearly every linear TV and OTT streaming operation today. These elements ensure quality, compliance, and reliable playout — things cloud-native platforms still struggle to deliver at scale.

However, the focus has shifted. Instead of rapid feature expansion, the priority now is longevity, interoperability, and system-level optimization. Broadcasters want tools that integrate smoothly with evolving environments, from IP-based infrastructures like SMPTE ST 2110 to edge streaming and AI-assisted workflows.

Why Integration Experts Are More Relevant Than Ever

Legacy systems still dominate much of the infrastructure at major broadcasters and cable networks. These systems are often proprietary, rigid, and lack native compatibility with modern IP technologies. Integration experts play a vital role here:

Designing adapters between SDI and IP infrastructures
Retrofitting ingest and playout pipelines for ST 2110 compatibility
Supporting hybrid deployments with cloud and on-prem elements
Enabling FPGA-based acceleration for encoding and transcoding

In many cases, the engineering challenge isn’t about creating something new — it’s about making the old work with the new in a reliable, scalable way.

Embedded Engineering Keeps the Core Alive

Despite the rise of software-defined broadcasting, embedded systems are far from obsolete. Many core broadcast functions still depend on hardware appliances — and this hardware needs modern firmware, new connectivity options, and AI integration.

At Promwad, we’ve worked with FPGA platforms like Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ and Intel Arria to create custom video pipeline solutions. These systems perform real-time video compression, format conversion, and metadata handling — with lower latency and higher determinism than software-only approaches.

Case Example: A Global Sports Network Retrofit

One of our recent clients, a global sports media company, needed to upgrade their live encoding setup to support ST 2110 input while maintaining backward compatibility with their SDI-based cameras. Our team developed a hybrid FPGA-video interface and integrated an edge AI module to optimize encoding parameters in real-time, based on motion complexity and scene changes.

The result: a 28% bitrate savings with no perceptible quality loss — and full compliance with their legacy broadcast ecosystem.

Opportunities for Vendors in a Mature Market

Even in a market that’s no longer rapidly expanding, value still lies in customization, modular upgrades, and integration services. Vendors who offer:

Support for ST 2110, NMOS, and IPMX
Hardware optimization via FPGA or ASIC
Embedded firmware for QA automation and monitoring
Real-time analytics for ingest and encoding stages

…can still carve out a niche or become trusted partners in long-term broadcast infrastructure maintenance.

Final Thoughts

The broadcast core isn’t going away — it’s just evolving. Vendors and engineering teams that focus on integration, optimization, and compatibility will continue to thrive in this space. Whether it’s extending the life of SDI gear or building hybrid ST 2110 pipelines with embedded AI, the opportunities are real for those who know how to bridge old and new.

If your team is exploring upgrades to your core broadcast infrastructure — or facing integration challenges — we’d be happy to talk. Promwad brings 20+ years of embedded engineering and FPGA development experience to every project.

Let’s make your legacy systems future-ready.