In the same way that if you want to see what’s on the horizon in broadcast it’s long been said that you should look closely at sports production, it has often been suggested that reviewing the control rooms market will give you a pretty good idea of upcoming technologies in pro AV. With growing convergence between broadcast and AV, such specific parallels may ultimately become less applicable, but for now at least they hold true.
Indeed, a review of the control rooms market in 2025 – and Installation spoke to ten companies drawn from the full spectrum of pro AV for this article – confirms that it continues to be an enthusiastic audience for new innovations in, for example, AV over IP, display technologies, and control & monitoring solutions. However, there are also many references to terms such as ‘proven track record’, ‘security’, ‘reliability’, ‘consistency’ and ‘performance’. This comes as little surprise given both the mission-critical nature of many of these environments – especially those related to defence, policing and utilities – and the multiplying risk factors in a world that feels more unstable every day.
In this article, we’ll look at the demand for new control room projects (and upgrades) in 2025; the technologies that are spreading most rapidly in this market, and why; some of the most innovative solutions to be introduced recently; and what are likely to be some of the ‘next big things’ in control room AV.
First things first: the overwhelming consensus is that the control rooms market is in good shape globally. In many territories, modernisation of existing facilities is a critical market driver, with control room customers looking to extend their use of IP and enhance their video distribution and playback infrastructures, among other key priorities.
STRONG DEMAND
David Isola, director of global product marketing at network and system integration services and solutions provider Black Box, says: “Our primary focus for the year is control rooms, most significantly in government, transportation, and media & entertainment. However, we are seeing strong demand in other verticals such as industrial and healthcare.”
Joel Mulpeter – senior director, product marketing at Crestron – remarks of control rooms: “They’re definitely a high-impact space for us: there’s a lot of mixed technology in there, and Crestron manufactures solutions for many of those needs. AV-over-IP is a big part of it, as are our control and even conferencing products. We see a lot of demand for our products in what one might call ‘command and control’ centres in use with organisations whose people need to make real-time decisions on data that must be delivered to them with zero or near-zero latency. Those would include security firms, government deployments, and so on.”
Describing control rooms as a “highly significant market” for Guntermann & Drunck GmbH (G&D), EVP sales and product management Jochen Bauer comments: “We experience particularly strong demand in three key areas: energy, transportation (rail, traffic, air traffic control) and public safety. In these sectors, we are observing a continuing trend towards the modernisation and digitalisation of mission-critical environments, which makes our KVM solutions particularly relevant. The increasing complexity of operations and the need for real-time situational awareness are further driving demand in these areas. In addition, we are observing growing interest from sectors such as utilities and emergency services. Control rooms play a central role here in ensuring operational continuity and public safety.”
NEW PROJECTS
Public safety in all its manifestations is a major source of new projects. In particular, given what certainly appears to be the end of the post-WWII global order and the arrival of something far less predictable, it’s to be expected that defence remains a bedrock of the control rooms market.
Stephen Wair, business segment lead – control rooms, Sharp NEC Display Solutions Europe GmbH, comments: “With the evolving global security landscape, there is growing investment from European governments in defence-related control rooms.”
Defence and security – along with utilities, transportation, public safety & emergency services, and telecommunications – are among the high-demand industries cited by Vytas Kasniunas, vice-president strategic partnerships at Utelogy Corporation, who notes: “The market is experiencing steady growth as digital transformation, cyber risk management, and infrastructure modernisation efforts expand the scope and capabilities of control rooms.”
Meanwhile, Gordon Anderson, CTS – national manager at AV management products company Lightware Visual Engineering, notes the expansion of control room technology into new areas such as retail. “The application of control room solutions is expanding beyond these traditional sectors [like emergency services, transportation and defence],” he says, adding: “We are seeing increased adoption in retail environments, where control rooms are being used to combat rising instances of retail crime and improve loss prevention through centralised surveillance and AI-driven analytics.”
Chris Scheck, head of marketing content at Lawo, adds: “Even corporate installs, concert arenas and sports venues have discovered the importance of control rooms for a maximum entertainment value of the events they host. Plus, a lot of events are covered live, and the ability to share controlled video and audio feeds with broadcasters is increasingly seen as a necessity.”
RELIABLE & ROBUST
So if the overall level of demand is not in any doubt, what are the areas in which customers are concentrating their investments? Rather than adopting emerging technologies, Wair says of control room customers: “Instead, they are quick to adopt technologies that are proven to be reliable and robust. Risk of failure is not acceptable in these environments, so any solution must demonstrate reliability and long-term performance before being widely implemented.”
Lightware’s Anderson suggests that where early adoption takes place, it is often driven by the opportunity to “enhance operational efficiency”, adding: “The pace of adoption can very depending on several factors, including the specific needs of the industry, the scale of the control room, and budget constraints. Control room operators need solutions that are tested, stable, and meet compliance and security standards.”
Not surprisingly, future-proofing is a frequently cited objective. Catherine Koutsaris, product marketing manager at Matrox Video, comments: “Control room designers make sure that whatever technology they choose will future-proof them. If the control room site changes, they want to adjust their installation as the needs evolve. They don’t want to re-train their operators, re-wire, re-install, re-deploy every time they upgrade their technology. Down time in a control room can be costly from both a financial and staffing point of view.”
PIXEL COUNTS
In terms of display solution specification, Wair outlines several key drivers, including colour reproduction and uniformity. “For example, at a quick glance, the same shade of blue must consistently represent the same feature on every screen for avoidance of doubt when under pressure; is it a river or a motorway? Using the same display vendor across the entire system ensures precise colour calibration. Space availability also influences the choice of display technology; for example, modular lED solutions can be designed to fill the available space, even around corners or curves, giving the flexibility to fit unconventional spaces and maximise the visual estate.”
In terms of video formats and resolutions, there are signs that control rooms are taking a lead from broadcast. Peter Fitton, solutions architect at Ross Video, observes: “Control rooms are often among the first to embrace new video technology. They need the clearest, fastest and most reliable visuals, so it makes sense. Right now, the push is towards higher resolutions (think 8K), HDR for better detail, and even uncompressed video formats. It’s all about ensuring every pixel counts when lives or big decisions are on the line.”
“The demand for higher resolutions, uncompressed video formats, and large-scale AV systems is growing,” says Anderson, particularly as more control rooms move towards higher fidelity solutions to support real-time, mission-critical decision-making. “4K and 8K displays, for example, are becoming more prevalent as they offer enhanced clarity and detail, which is crucial for tasks that require precision and situational awareness. Equally important is the infrastructure that supports these systems, with high-bandwidth solutions, such as fibre optics, being key to ensuring smooth and uninterrupted video transmission.”
Koutsaris says that the desktop content Matrox is seeing is primarily FHD (also known as Full HD or 1080p) or 4K60. “Occasionally, extra-wide monitors are used but are less common,” she says. “Video walls can vary from a small 4K video wall to an extra-large one above 16K resolution, but the main driver determining resolution is the content source (typically 1080p or 4K).”
Compression is application-dependant, and in fact it’s not uncommon to find multiple formats in a single deployment. Koutsaris adds: “For example, you might see a ‘high-value’ seat where an operator needs all the content details delivered in full uncompressed quality. Behind him might be a supervisor who monitors all the feeds at a higher level, where visually lossless compression at lower bandwidths is acceptable. Both users can view the same content simultaneously, but at different qualities according to their needs.”
It should as no surprise to discover that the upgrading of network infrastructures is a top priority for many control rooms. Now that so many aspects of IP are established and standardised, AV over IP is common in many such environments, not least as it makes scaling and remote monitoring and management so much easier. It also supports the operation of back-up facilities, which – as one would expect – are prevalent in this market.
For Sharp NEC, Wair notes: “The shift towards network-based control systems supports the implementation of Disaster Recovery Sites (DRS). Unlike traditional hardware-based systems, which are often limited to a single physical location, and therefore subject to the same disastrous eventuality, networked solutions allow control operations to be mirrored at a remote site, ensuring continuity in the event of a disruption.”
Increasing streaming and display capacity appears to be a pretty universal requirement. For Atlona, director of marketing Garth Lobban notes that the new iteration of its OmniStream AV over IP platform, version 2.0, adds multiviewer capabilities that allow a single display to show up to four video streams at once, “making it ideal for operator desks or monitoring stations where multiple data or camera feeds need to be viewed simultaneously”. Most importantly, he goes on, this is a firmware-based update available at no cost, which means customers with existing OmniStream systems can access the added functionality without replacing their current hardware.
Atlona’s Velocity Control over IP system delivers centralised, scalable management of AV endpoints and display arrays, “ensuring reliable operation and streamlined workflows across large, mission-critical control environments, ” according to Lobban.
Meanwhile, the seamless interoperability of all solutions across complex control room environments is continuing to become more crucial. Koutsaris says: “At Matrox we take it to the next level by championing the adoption of open standards such as IPMX, which is based on ST 2110 and NMOS. This opens the possibility of interoperability with other third-party manufacturers to make a more complete workflow that is easier to deploy, use and maintain.”
With modernisation of the underlying network and connectivity infrastructure increasingly well-advanced, it’s likely that the next phase of control room development will embrace increased virtualisation, including via the use of cloud-based platforms. There are also indications that the remarkable recent trajectory of real-time graphics in broadcast will be mirrored in this market, while – rather cautiously, one suspects – there will be more use of AI for specific tasks like predictive analysis.
EXCITING CHANGES
This market is “on the edge of some pretty exciting changes,” says Fitton, who highlights Ross Video’s own virtual studio technology – “tailored to enhance control room environments with dynamic on-screen visuals and seamless real-time graphics” – as well as increased voice command capabilities. “AR and VR are popping up, especially for training and situational simulations. And sustainability is finally stepping into the spotlight, with greener, more energy-efficient tech leading the charge.”
For Crestron, Mulpeter also alludes to innovations in graphics, highlighting its DGE-1000 digital graphics engine that allows an HD touch screen display to be transformed into an advanced Crestron controller, with CH5 and Crestron Construct software enabling the creation of a “custom graphical environment for controlling audio, video, lighting, shades, HVAC, security and other amenities.”
More generally – and in line with other contributors to this article – he expects further innovations around security. “We’ll likely see more cloud monitoring solutions pop up, but for now I expect to see ‘more of the same, but better’. I expect to see more security features, more zero-latency solutions, AV over IP devices with more features, and so on.”
Increased activity around specific security regulations is also anticipated. For G&D, Bauer points to the introduction of the SecureCert security feature for its KVM-over-IP systems: “SecureCert is designed to help customers meet the highest security standards, ensuring compliance with important regulations such as FIPS 140-3, Common Criteria, and DoDIN APL. This feature significantly simplifies the implementation of comprehensive security standards for our customers while simultaneously enhancing system security. It enables institutions to meet the growing demands for the highest levels of security and provides maximum protection against cyberattacks.”
Elsewhere, Mair anticipates a greater integral of external networks, including via the use of 5G to support the real-time transmission of high-bandwidth data and video streams from remote locations: “This will allow control rooms to monitor and respond to events far beyond their immediate infrastructure, using live data from mobile and remote sources, enabling, for instance, monitoring of volcano activity. The result is greater flexibility, faster decision-making, and enhanced situational awareness across a wider range of environments.”
For Black Box – which recently launched the Emerald DESKVUE PE Multi-Source, Multi-View IP KVM receiver that enables all connected systems to be displayed as individual windows on up to four 4K monitors – Isola predicts: “The next big thing will be the technologies that are out there, but not yet adopted into a control room environment: cloud-based infrastructure; cloud-based connected control rooms; AI enhanced monitoring and automation; VR; more virtualised environments; and advanced human-machine interfaces.”
In terms of AI and ML, it makes sense that an air of caution is prevalent. Notes Scheck, on media-related control rooms: “While most broadcasters are hoping for AI-based solutions that run most of the show in their various control rooms, this may still take some time and is not what operators in the process of migrating to IP have at the top of their list.”
Deployment in sectors such as smart cities and corporate security could provide an indication of what’s to come. But Anderson notes: “While AI and automation are crucial in optimising routine monitoring and data analysis, human expertise remains central to making nuanced, strategic decisions. This evolution allows for a more efficient division of tasks between technology and human operators, improving overall operational effectiveness and ensuring control rooms remain responsive to the demands of increasingly complex environments.”
For Utelogy, Kasniunas predicts: “We will start seeing AI-enhanced alerting and management as a powerful tool, using predictive analytics and machine learning to surface insights, automate responses, and accelerate operator reaction times.” He also anticipates developments around digital twins – whereby real-time virtual replicas of physical allows “will allow operators to simulate scenarios, test interventions, and visualise interdependencies” – and the seamless integration of physical security systems with cybersecurity monitoring tools.
“These technologies will enhance both the effectiveness and resilience of control room operations in a world increasingly defined by complexity and real-time risk,” adds Kasniunas.
Regarding AI, it is evident that – in the elaborate and security-heightened context of control rooms – the division between human and artificial operators will have to be drawn with exacting precision. However, the broader history of the sector reveals that it has often proven its ability to adopt new technologies in a way that further facilitates its mission-critical responsibilities. Whilst the arrival of a more unstable world in which critical infrastructure is increasingly seen as fair game for cybercriminals and state actors alike could hardly be described as welcome, the upside is that pro AV’s ability to stay one step ahead with robust and secure systems will be more highly prized – and crucial – than ever before.
