NAB buyers favour integration

At the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas, buyers and vendors are talking less about standalone artificial-intelligence demos and more about tools that plug into editing, storage and delivery systems already in use. (sportsvideo.org) NAB Show 2026 runs April 18-22 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, with exhibits open April 19-22, and the show says more than 1,100 exhibitors are participating. Sessions this year include a focus on moving artificial intelligence from pilot projects into production workflows. (nabshow.com, sportsvideo.org) That shift shows up in product launches. Avid said it is using NAB to debut Avid Content Core on Amazon Web Services and to renew its focus on Avid NEXIS shared storage as a base for cloud and hybrid production, newsroom work and automation. (avid.com) LucidLink said its NAB booth is centered on object-storage access, edge performance, mobile workflows and partner delivery, while EditShare said it is highlighting shared storage, workflow orchestration and AI-driven media management. (lucidlink.com, editshare.com) In broadcast operations, storage is not just a place to park files. It is the system that determines how fast teams can ingest footage, open projects, share cuts and deliver finished video across newsrooms, control rooms and remote crews. (editshare.com, lucidlink.com) Remote production has pushed that issue higher. NewscastStudio wrote before the show that the industry has moved past asking whether remote production works and is now focused on making distributed production reliable and scalable as a permanent operating model. (newscaststudio.com) That helps explain why vendors are emphasizing edge access and remote control. In North Hall, Adder Technology is demonstrating IP keyboard-video-mouse systems for live production, postproduction and multi-site control rooms, with built-in application programming interfaces for integration with third-party broadcast tools. (sportsvideo.org) Artificial intelligence is also being pitched as something that runs only when needed, not as a separate layer bolted onto every workflow. Synamedia said its Quortex system uses “smart sampling” to trigger AI processing at meaningful moments in a stream, and the company said that can cut live video-understanding costs by as much as 10 times. (sportsvideo.org) Dalet is making a similar argument from the media-management side. The company said it will show Dalia agentic AI alongside Dalet Flex and Dalet Pyramid to automate end-to-end workflows across news, sports, broadcast and corporate media operations. (dalet.com) The pattern across the floor is practical: fewer pitches about artificial intelligence replacing production teams, more pitches about removing delays between ingest, collaboration and delivery inside systems broadcasters already own. (sportsvideo.org, avid.com, lucidlink.com)