IBC2026 and the New MediaTech Landscape: What the Market Is Telling Us About the Future of Media Operations
There are years when IBC feels like a showcase of new technology. And then there are years when it feels more like a window into where the entire industry is heading.
For us, IBC2026 was very much the latter.
Across the exhibition floor, conference sessions and conversations with broadcasters, technology companies, media organisations, partners and technology buyers, one thing became increasingly clear: the media industry is moving beyond the traditional idea of broadcast technology as a collection of individual systems.
The direction is towards something broader — a more connected, software-defined, intelligent and increasingly automated approach to media operations.
That shift was reinforced by the latest State of MediaTech research from IAMT, presented at IBC2026 by IAMT Senior Principal Analyst Chris Evans. The research highlighted three themes shaping the market: agility, evaluation and trust. The findings point to an industry operating under cost pressure and increasing volatility, where buyers are scrutinising technology investments more carefully, demanding measurable outcomes and placing greater importance on trust as AI and other emerging technologies reshape the market.
For PlayBox Technology, these themes felt particularly relevant.
They closely reflected the conversations we were having throughout IBC — and the direction in which we have been developing our technology.
The industry is changing.
And increasingly, the question is not whether broadcasters will adopt AI, cloud, IP, automation or software-defined workflows.
The question is how these technologies will come together to make media operations work better.
From Broadcast Technology to MediaTech
One of the most significant developments around IBC2026 was the continued broadening of the media technology landscape.
IAMT itself has evolved from its previous identity as IABM to reflect this change. Its IBC2026 programme described the shift as a response to the way traditional broadcast is increasingly merging with the wider digital ecosystem.
That is more than a change in terminology.
The technologies used to create, manage and distribute media are increasingly shared across television, streaming, FAST, sports, enterprise communications, digital platforms, advertising and other forms of content delivery.
The boundaries between these markets are becoming less important.
What matters increasingly is the ability to manage media as a connected operation.
This is one of the reasons we believe the concept of MediaTech is so important.
The industry is no longer simply building television channels.
It is building increasingly complex media businesses that need to operate across multiple platforms, business models, distribution environments and audiences.
And the technology supporting those businesses needs to evolve accordingly.
The Problem Is No Longer Simply Infrastructure
Broadcast technology has traditionally been organised around specialised systems.
There is a system for ingest.
A system for media management.
A scheduling system.
A playout system.
Graphics.
Monitoring.
Compliance.
Advertising.
Distribution.
Each of these systems can be highly capable.
The difficulty increasingly lies between them.
Modern media operations can involve numerous interconnected technologies, often from different vendors and deployed across on-premise, IP, cloud and hybrid environments.
The result can be a paradox.
A broadcaster may have excellent individual systems, yet still have an unnecessarily complicated operation.
Operators move between applications.
Engineers monitor multiple interfaces.
Data has to be transferred between systems.
Schedules have to be reconciled.
Failures have to be diagnosed manually.
Operational decisions depend on information spread across different platforms.
And when something goes wrong, it is often the connections between systems — rather than the individual systems themselves — that create the problem.
This is the environment in which media orchestration becomes increasingly important.
Why Orchestration Matters
Orchestration is sometimes treated as another technology category.
We see it differently.
It is increasingly becoming an operating principle.
The objective is not necessarily to replace every system within a facility.
It is to provide a way of coordinating those systems so that the overall operation becomes easier to manage.
This is particularly important because broadcasters cannot simply start again.
They have significant investments in infrastructure, workflows, people and expertise.
The practical route to modernisation is therefore often progressive rather than disruptive.
Existing systems need to continue delivering value.
New capabilities need to work alongside them.
Cloud and IP need to coexist with established infrastructure.
And automation needs to operate across the whole environment rather than creating another isolated technology silo.
That thinking sits at the centre of PlayBox Technology’s current direction.
The PlayBox Technology Perspective
PlayBox Technology has spent more than two decades working in the practical realities of broadcast operations.
This year marks 22 years since the company was established, with the original TV Channel in a Box concept becoming a foundation for the business and helping make professional playout more accessible to broadcasters around the world. PlayBox says its technology now powers more than 20,000 channels in more than 120 countries.
There is an important connection between that history and where we are going now.
The original Channel in a Box challenged the assumption that running a television channel required a large collection of separate hardware systems.
Today, the challenge is different.
The industry is no longer primarily constrained by the physical size of the technology.
It is increasingly constrained by operational complexity.
Channel counts are increasing.
Distribution platforms are multiplying.
Workflows are becoming more fragmented.
Audiences expect content across more screens and services.
Advertising models are becoming more dynamic.
And operational teams are expected to manage all of this while maintaining reliability, compliance and commercial performance.
That is why our focus is increasingly moving from individual systems towards the operation as a whole.
A New Operational Layer
Earlier this year, PlayBox Technology introduced Celebro Play, a browser-based media orchestration platform designed to connect the increasingly fragmented systems behind modern broadcast, streaming and FAST operations.
The concept is straightforward.
Instead of forcing broadcasters to replace their infrastructure, Celebro Play provides an operational layer across the environment and connects the different technologies involved in running channels.
Ingest.
Media management.
Scheduling.
Playout.
Monitoring.
Compliance.
Distribution.
Automation.
The platform can operate as an orchestration layer over existing infrastructure, in a hybrid configuration or as a standalone platform with integrated capabilities. Its open approach is designed to work across multi-vendor environments and protect investments broadcasters have already made.
This reflects an important principle for us:
Modernisation should not have to mean rip and replace.
The technology already deployed by broadcasters represents years of investment and operational knowledge.
The opportunity is to make that environment more connected and intelligent.
IBC2026 Was an Important Test of That Proposition
For PlayBox Technology, IBC2026 was therefore about much more than presenting a new product.
It was an opportunity to put our thinking in front of the industry and listen carefully to the response.
And the response was encouraging.
IBC2026 itself brought together 41,225 attendees from 170 countries and more than 1,300 exhibitors, providing a substantial cross-section of the global MediaTech ecosystem.
For PlayBox, the value was in the quality of the conversations.
We spoke with broadcasters, media companies, technology partners and prospective customers about the practical challenges of operating increasingly complex media environments.
What was particularly encouraging was how often those conversations came back to the same underlying issues.
How do we connect what we already have?
How can we reduce manual operational work?
How can we manage more channels without simply increasing complexity?
How can AI help without taking control away from operators?
How can we modernise without replacing an entire facility?
How do we make different systems behave more like one operation?
These are exactly the problems that led us to develop Celebro Play.
In that sense, IBC provided valuable validation for a direction we had already been pursuing.
And there was, of course, one slightly more unusual indication that our IAMT membership was attracting attention: at some point during the show, our IAMT plaque disappeared from the stand while the laptop and everything else stayed exactly where they were. We were grateful to the IAMT team for supplying a replacement — and perhaps it was simply an unusually enthusiastic endorsement of the importance of membership.
We shall leave that mystery there.
AI: From Demonstration to Operational Value
AI was inevitably one of the biggest themes at IBC2026.
But there was a noticeable change in the nature of the conversation.
The industry is becoming more interested in what AI can actually do inside a production environment and less interested in AI simply as a headline.
That distinction matters.
The real opportunity is not necessarily to put an AI chatbot beside every broadcast application.
It is to use intelligence where it can remove repetitive work, identify problems earlier, support decisions and coordinate complex workflows.
At PlayBox Technology, this is the direction we are taking.
Celebro Play incorporates AI-assisted capabilities into the operational environment, including schedule creation, monitoring and workflow automation, while maintaining human control over critical actions. For example, AI can assist in creating schedules based on content libraries and editorial rules, while the operator reviews and approves the result. Critical operational actions can remain subject to human confirmation and logging.
The message is deliberately different from “replace the operator with AI.”
The objective is to give operators more intelligence, more visibility and fewer repetitive tasks — without taking control away from them.
Trust Becomes Essential
This brings us directly to one of IAMT’s central themes: trust.
The more capable AI becomes, the more important trust becomes.
A broadcaster needs to know what an automated system is doing.
It needs to understand the rules under which it is operating.
It needs to be able to approve critical actions.
It needs visibility when something changes.
And it needs an audit trail when decisions affect the operation.
This is particularly important in broadcasting because operational decisions can have immediate consequences.
A scheduling decision can affect an entire day’s output.
A failover decision can affect an on-air service.
An advertising decision can affect revenue.
A compliance decision can affect the organisation.
AI therefore cannot be treated simply as another feature.
It needs to be part of a controlled operational architecture.
IAMT’s research reflects this wider shift, identifying trust as increasingly important in a market shaped by generative and agentic AI, authenticity and risk.
The New Economics of Media Operations
IAMT’s second major theme, evaluation, is equally important.
Media technology buyers are under increasing pressure to demonstrate the value of technology investments.
That means conversations about innovation are increasingly conversations about economics.
How much does the technology cost?
How much does it reduce operational effort?
How quickly can it be deployed?
How much infrastructure does it require?
How does it scale?
What does it replace?
What does it integrate with?
And ultimately:
What changes for the business?
IAMT’s research notes that investment decisions are increasingly being scrutinised through measurable outcomes, return on investment and total cost of ownership.
This is particularly relevant for smaller broadcasters, emerging media companies, FAST operators and organisations launching new channels.
They need professional technology, but they do not necessarily have the budgets or engineering resources associated with traditional large-scale broadcast operations.
This creates an opportunity for software-defined platforms that can provide sophisticated capabilities without imposing the cost and complexity of a traditional infrastructure model.
It is also one of the areas in which PlayBox Technology sees considerable opportunity.
Agility Is No Longer Optional
The third theme highlighted by IAMT is agility.
The media industry is operating in a market where audience behaviour, distribution platforms, advertising models and technology are changing rapidly.
A technology environment that takes years to adapt can become a constraint in itself.
Agility therefore means more than deploying technology quickly.
It means being able to change the operation when the business changes.
Launching another channel.
Adding a new distribution platform.
Introducing a new advertising model.
Moving a workflow into the cloud.
Adding AI capabilities.
Connecting another system.
Testing a new service.
Doing this without redesigning the entire infrastructure is becoming increasingly valuable.
This is another reason we believe orchestration has such an important role to play.
An operational layer can provide a degree of continuity while the underlying technology evolves.
The Future Is Not Cloud Versus On-Premise
IBC2026 also reinforced something that we believe is important to recognise: the future of media infrastructure is unlikely to be a simple choice between cloud and on-premise.
The reality is more complicated.
Broadcasters will continue to operate physical infrastructure.
They will continue to use IP.
They will increasingly use cloud services.
Many will operate hybrid environments for years to come.
Different workloads will require different deployment models.
The winning architecture therefore needs to be flexible.
For PlayBox Technology, that means designing software that can adapt to the environment rather than demanding that the environment adapt to the software.
Celebro Play has been developed with precisely this in mind, supporting existing infrastructure and different deployment approaches rather than requiring a disruptive replacement programme.
From Automation to Orchestration
There is another distinction we believe the industry will increasingly make.
Automation is about making an individual process happen with less human intervention.
Orchestration is about coordinating multiple processes and systems as part of a larger operation.
The difference becomes significant as media environments become more complex.
Automating a single workflow can save time.
Orchestrating the entire workflow can change how the operation functions.
That is why our vision goes beyond isolated automation.
We see the next generation of media operations as environments in which systems, workflows, data and AI capabilities can work together under a common operational framework.
The objective is not simply to automate more.
It is to operate better.
From Channels to Audiences
The transformation is not happening only on the operational side.
The audience is changing too.
Viewers increasingly move between linear television, streaming, FAST, connected TV, mobile and other digital platforms.
That creates new opportunities — but also new expectations.
Media companies need to understand not only what content is being played, but how audiences are engaging with it.
That intelligence can increasingly influence content, scheduling, advertising, distribution and personalisation.
PlayBox Technology is already exploring this next stage through the development of AI-driven personalisation capabilities for Celebro, bringing audience intelligence closer to the media operation.
The important point is that personalisation should not exist separately from the rest of the media operation.
Audience intelligence, content, scheduling, advertising and distribution are increasingly connected.
The more intelligent the operational layer becomes, the more possibilities emerge for creating a media experience that responds dynamically to audiences.
Why the Human Operator Still Matters
There is an understandable concern that increasing automation and AI could make human expertise less important.
Our experience suggests the opposite.
As systems become more automated, human oversight becomes more important in the places where judgement matters most.
Operators understand context.
They understand editorial priorities.
They understand the consequences of operational decisions.
They know when something unusual requires investigation.
The objective should therefore not be to remove the operator from the operation.
It should be to remove unnecessary manual work from the operator.
That is a very different proposition.
The operator becomes less of a person moving between systems and more of a person supervising an intelligent operation.
What We Learned from IBC2026
Perhaps the most valuable outcome of IBC2026 was not any individual product announcement.
It was the consistency of the market conversation.
The industry is clearly interested in AI.
It is clearly investing in cloud and software-defined technologies.
It is clearly dealing with increasingly complex multi-vendor environments.
But buyers are also becoming more disciplined.
They want evidence.
They want integration.
They want measurable outcomes.
They want flexibility.
And they want to know that new technology can be trusted in production.
That combination creates a more mature technology market.
It also creates a significant opportunity for companies that understand both sides of the equation: the innovation and the operational reality.
For PlayBox Technology, that is where our experience matters.
We understand the broadcast environment because we have been part of it for more than two decades.
At the same time, we are developing for the media environment that is emerging now — one that is more software-defined, connected, automated and intelligent.
From the Channel in a Box to the Intelligent Media Operation
There is a useful historical thread running through this evolution.
The original Channel in a Box challenged the assumption that running a television channel required a large collection of separate hardware systems.
The challenge today is different, but the principle is similar.
A modern channel may no longer be dominated by racks of equipment, but its operation can still be fragmented across a large number of software systems.
The problem has moved from physical complexity to operational complexity.
Celebro Play represents our response to that new challenge.
If the Channel in a Box brought critical channel functions together, the next step is to connect the broader media operation — across infrastructure, workflows, data, automation and AI.
It is a natural evolution of an idea that has been part of PlayBox Technology from the beginning:
How do we make this simpler for the customer?
What Comes Next
IBC2026 has reinforced our belief that the industry is entering a new phase.
The technologies are increasingly available.
The challenge now is putting them together in ways that create real operational and commercial value.
IAMT’s State of MediaTech research provides a useful framework for understanding that transition: organisations need to remain agile, evaluate technology against measurable outcomes and build trust around increasingly powerful technologies. The next step is turning those insights into action.
For PlayBox Technology, the opportunity is to help make that transition practical.
We are continuing to develop our technology around a simple idea:
Media operations should become more intelligent without becoming more complicated.
That means connecting systems rather than isolating them.
Automating repetitive work rather than removing human judgement.
Using AI where it creates measurable value.
Supporting hybrid environments rather than forcing one infrastructure model.
And giving media organisations the flexibility to evolve without starting again.
The future of MediaTech will not be defined by one technology, one architecture or one vendor.
It will be defined by how effectively technology works together.
And that is ultimately what we saw at IBC2026: an industry moving beyond the question of “What technology should we buy?” towards a much more important question:
“How do we build a media operation that can keep evolving?”
At PlayBox Technology, that is the question we intend to keep answering.
