Creative Technology and Disguise launch IP-native ST 2110 playback at Eurovision 2026

This implementation marks a significant operational shift for heavy-duty live broadcasting. By moving to an IP-native ST 2110 workflow, production teams eliminated the physical constraints of SDI hardware routing, enabling 42-second stage reconfigurations for 35 different visual environments. While SDI remains the industry backbone—powering 82% of operations as of March 2026 per Haivision—Eurovision's successful deployment proves that IP-native workflows can now handle the latency and redundancy demands of high-stakes, large-scale televised events. Watch for whether this software-defined model becomes the default spec for other major 2026-2027 live international broadcasts.

The transition to SMPTE ST 2110 comes as the broadcast industry experiences a measured but steady migration toward IP-based infrastructure. According to the 2026 Haivision Broadcast Transformation Report, ST 2110 adoption rose to 30% this year, up from 26% in 2025. Despite this growth, integration remains a primary hurdle; industry executives from Mobile TV Group and Game Creek Video highlighted at recent summits that managing Precision Time Protocol (PTP) for stream synchronization remains a significant operational challenge in actual field use, per TV Technology in April 2026.

The Eurovision production specifically utilized Disguise's latest IP-VFC firmware, which was released ahead of the contest to improve stability for the GX 3 hardware, according to reports from Live Design Online in May 2026. This firmware update was a critical prerequisite for handling the contest's uncompressed video streams without the traditional bottlenecks associated with multi-gigabit file transfers. The broader Disguise roadmap reinforces this IP-first shift; the company announced the GX 3+ in late 2025, which features native ST 2110 capture and output capabilities built on NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture, as noted by CGW in September 2025.

Supporting this technical backbone, host broadcaster ORF and the European Broadcasting Union selected Vienna’s Wiener Stadthalle—the largest indoor arena in Austria with a 16,000-seat capacity—to host the 70th edition of the contest. Per The Guardian in August 2025, the venue choice was driven by Vienna’s extensive transportation and accommodation infrastructure. The collaboration between Creative Technology and host broadcaster ORF also included NEP’s TFC broadcast control system for overall signal routing, further underscores the industry's move toward integrated, software-defined control layers for global media events, as reported by TVBEurope in May 2026.