Appear will use IBC 2025 (Stand 1.C61) to showcase how the combined power of its award-winning X Platform hardware and new VX software platform enables operators to plot their own unique journeys towards the future of hybrid and software-defined live production.

Visitors to the Appear IBC 2025 booth will see firsthand how it is enabling a software-defined future in live production for its customers, and how its future-proofed technologies have been engineered to handle the ‘always-on’ world of ever-increasing amounts of services, content and data. To demonstrate this in action, Appear will showcase the European debuts of its VX Media Gateway software solution and the X5, the latest addition to its hardware-based X Platform.

“Whether you’re backhauling UHD from a stadium or running a master-control in the cloud, Appear’s new VX platform, its SRT solutions and ever-evolving X Platform features ensure that you can move pristine, low-latency real-time media securely over any network and exchange it seamlessly between hardware and software services,” says Andy Rayner, CTO, Appear. “These solutions demonstrate how Appear is enabling truly flexible live production so that operators can create high-quality programmes entirely in software; and do it wherever compute and storage are most cost-effective for their own individual business model.”

Appear’s new product launches and European debuts at IBC 2025 include:

– The latest addition to the industry-leading X Platform, the X5 is a compact, cost-effective solution engineered for high-value, smaller-scale live productions, delivering ultra-low latency, high-quality compression, and superior IP media transport.

– The VX Media Gateway is a software solution for secure, scalable, and future-proofed media processing on prem or in the cloud. Its initial release includes robust support for Ground to Cloud workflows, featuring advanced stream protection, seamless failover, and compatibility with key standards including SMPTE ST-2022, UDP/RTP, Unicast/Multicast, and SMPTE ST-2022-7 input/cloned output. It also includes Appear’s highly optimised SRT software implementation which provides unparalleled scalability.

– IBC 2025 will also see new capabilities on the X Platform including the 100 Gbps network card, a high-capacity module engineered for the next wave of bandwidth-hungry live production, seamlessly moving lightly compressed to fully uncompressed UHD or multi-HD feeds. It quadruples the X Platform’s network interface speed, giving broadcasters a clear upgrade path without changing their footprint or power profile. Alongside this enhancement, Appear will introduce Appear Estate Manager (AEM), a new advanced tooling solution that gives customers greater visibility and control of their X Platform deployments—simplifying software updates and streamlining management at scale.

– In addition to unveiling new hardware and software capabilities, Appear will use IBC 2025 to underline its leadership in the industry-wide evolution of the Media eXchange Layer (MXL). VX has been designed from the ground up to support real-world media interchange between containerised software functions, enabling operators to deploy hybrid and cloud-native workflows that are low latency, vendor-agnostic and easy to orchestrate.

“MXL is simply the next logical step for live production,” says Rayner. “Broadcasters want to mix best-of-breed tools, and a lightweight exchange layer lets them do that without sacrificing latency or quality. Our VX platform is built for this world from day one, and all our software solutions will be MXL-compliant.”

“It’s relatively clear where the industry is heading, but far more complex to support broadcasters with diverse infrastructures, unique business models, and varying stages of technology adoption,” says Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen, CEO, Appear. “By embracing standards, microservices, MXL, and containerisation, we’re applying the same modular philosophy to software that made our hardware so successful. What sets us apart is how closely we listen to customer feedback, through initiatives like our Customer Councils, to guide the industry’s transition to an all-IP, elastic compute and storage future.”