Cobalt Digital adds Dante fibre and expands IPMX capabilities for IBC2026

The addition of JPEG XS support across the SAPPHIRE and INDIGO lines addresses the immediate need for low-latency, high-quality transport in hybrid environments. By integrating Dante fibre directly into openGear cards, Cobalt Digital reduces hardware complexity and power consumption for space-constrained OB vans and live production trucks. This move signals a broader industry shift toward software-defined infrastructure that prioritizes interoperability between legacy SDI and emerging IP standards like ST 2110. Watch for how the adoption of the ARIA audio monitor, currently the only fully IPMX-compliant unit available, influences monitoring standards in all-IP broadcast facilities.

Cobalt Digital's push into IPMX and Dante fibre reflects a broader industry convergence around interoperable IP transport standards. The Video Services Forum (VSF) has been actively promoting IPMX as a pathway for facilities transitioning from SDI to IP, and the VSF published updated IPMX interoperability testing guidelines in early 2026 to accelerate multi-vendor adoption. Cobalt Digital's ARIA audio monitor, which the company describes as the first fully IPMX-compliant monitoring device, positions the firm ahead of competitors still shipping ST 2110-only products. Meanwhile, Audinate, the company behind Dante networking, reported in its fiscal 2025 results that Dante-enabled device shipments grew 28% year over year, driven by demand from broadcast and live production integrators seeking deterministic audio-over-IP without proprietary hardware.

On the business and standards side, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) continues to refine ST 2110 specifications that underpin IPMX transport. SMPTE's 2026 standards roadmap includes updated guidance on JPEG XS profile integration within ST 2110 pipelines, which directly affects how vendors like Cobalt Digital implement visually lossless compression for contribution and distribution workflows. The IPMX specification itself, developed under the VSF umbrella, targets the gap between full ST 2110 deployments and simpler NDI or SRT-based workflows, making it attractive to mid-tier broadcasters and houses of worship that lack the engineering resources for full SMPTE stack implementations. Cobalt Digital's parent company, which completed a reorganization in late 2025 to consolidate its openGear and blueCORE product lines under a unified engineering team, has signaled that IPMX support will extend across its entire signal processing portfolio by 2027.

From a technical standpoint, JPEG XS (ISO/IEC 21122) offers compression ratios between 2:1 and 6:1 with sub-millisecond encode latency, making it suitable for live production where frame-accurate switching is critical. A 2025 study by the European Broadcasting Union measured JPEG XS performance at 4:1 compression for 4K UHD signals and found visually lossless quality with encode latency under 0.5 milliseconds, validating its use in IPMX transport chains. Cobalt Digital's implementation of JPEG XS Temporal Differential Coding, which reduces bandwidth by transmitting only frame differences, builds on this foundation and targets bandwidth-constrained environments such as OB trucks and remote production hubs. The company's UltraBlue MV-SW multiviewer and PACIFIC ULL-DEC decoder, both shown at , demonstrate JPEG XS decode capability at up to 8K resolution with latency below one frame, according to specifications shared with trade press ahead of the show.