Internet Protocol Media Experience (IPMX) is a proposed suite of open standards for AV over IP. Initially developed for the broadcast industry, IPMX addresses the professional AV industry’s need for a common set of standards and protocols for IP infrastructures. Built on SMPTE ST 2110, IPMX creates a standardised approach for sending high-quality audio and video signals over IP networks. SMPTE ST 2110 encompasses video, audio, system timing, metadata carriage, and device and stream control. Each standard provides guidelines for how products and systems handle AV-over-IP. In addition to the individual standards, there are guidelines for how devices should behave in these systems.
To understand the value of a standards-based AV-over-IP system, it’s important to look at the landscape of current AV-over-IP systems. The introduction of AV over IP has created a non-transparent jungle of closed, non-standardised technologies. Today, many industry professionals have found themselves trapped within walled gardens. Many manufacturers have their proprietary platform and the professional AV industry operates in silos. These proprietary technologies have been pushed into the market, and although they have become quite successful, they’ve created many challenges for industry professionals. As a result, the opaque jungle of closed, non-standardised technologies has led to cumbersome, antiquated and inflexible user experiences.
Notably, a component in developing a standards-based AV-over-IP system is the user experience. It starts far beyond the integration, too. The user experience begins with the specification and project scope. It can be daunting for industry professionals to select an AV-over-IP solution for their specific application. The best-suited technologies for higher education might not be ideal for hospitality or healthcare. Then, once a solution is deployed, end users often interact directly with the devices. So, the user experience has to continue through the entire lifespan of a system.
With IPMX, industry professionals are not locked into a customised ecosystem that limits innovation or requires more network bandwidth than necessary. IPMX delivers a single, unified platform that empowers manufacturers to build standardised and interoperable products. It creates a user-friendly package by gathering technology specifications and simplifying the infrastructure. It eliminates the requirements found within walled gardens to create a plug-and-play user experience.
IPMX empowers the professional AV industry to establish an ecosystem that everyone can build into. The standards are easily accessible. The platform that any IPMX device is designed upon is open and available for anyone to access. This allows manufacturers to develop technology that operates seamlessly with other devices harnessing IPMX. Most importantly, integrators can select best-in-class solutions based on the specific requirements of their application. They can select cameras, video walls, encoders and decoders, control systems and other ecosystem components that will seamlessly speak together within the IPMX ecosystem.
It’s time to eliminate the complexity of selecting the right AV-over-IP solution for a specific application. As a result, integrators never have to worry about picking the right or the wrong one; it just works.
