Red5 Leads the Charge into Real-Time Streaming at NAB 2025

We knew heading into the recently concluded NAB Show in Las Vegas that big things were in store, but we had no idea just what a major milestone in the transition to real-time streaming this event would turn out to be.

This was the case both for the industry as a whole and for Red5 specifically as we engaged with visitors in private meetings and in the many places our demos were running with industry partners. People lined up to see us in crowded AWS, Zixi, and Nomad Media booths on the show floor with a tie-in in the case of AWS to the West Hall entrance lobby where attendees flocked to participate in F1 simulator races staged by the hyperscaler and Nvidia.

Over the course of those four frenetic days it was clearer than ever that Red5 is recognized as the platform supplier best positioned to address the torrent of next-gen streaming use cases pouring in from every corner of the M&E market and beyond. One minute we were talking to major sports producers, the next state officials running traffic and emergency monitoring operations. We’d be wrapping up a conversation with an operator of a global virtual casino business only to find representatives of government agencies waiting to talk about adding real-time interactive video efficiency to military or space operations.

Demand Drives Surge in Real-Time Streaming Options

We weren’t getting all this attention because we were alone in touting real-time streaming support. Anything but.

There were more companies than we’ve ever seen in one place before offering solutions in our space, some relying on the same tried-and-true WebRTC transport that’s the bedrock to Red5’s Xperience Delivery Network (XDN) Architecture, others trying out new approaches that have yet to get off the ground. The strength of market demand for real-time streaming was reflected not only in the number of options on display but also in the degree to which some suppliers were adjusting their strategies and platforms to get better at catching the wave.

What drew people to Red5 was the combination of performance, versatility and, most of all, reliability we offer whether XDN infrastructure is implemented automatically through our Red5 Cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) or on a DIY basis through our Red5 Pro portfolio of SDKs and toolsets. Amid the struggles many suppliers are having with consistently living up to their claims, the word is out that Red5 is delivering on its promises.

As for supplier variations in protocols, what matters is what can be done with XDN Architecture whatever mode of real-time transport can be used now or in the future to best serve industry needs. At this point in time that happens to be WebRTC, but down the road it could be something else, like the Media over QUIC platform now progressing toward completion over the next couple of years under the guidance of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

At the show we learned the IETF has made significant headway toward demonstrating that, once the standard is completed, MoQ will match WebRTC’s multidirectional, sub-half-second latencies while running as a software overlay on Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) infrastructure, in contrast to WebRTC, which isn’t directly compatible with HTTP. This is music to our ears.

Red5 Soars across Multiple Industries

At some point when MoQ is fully baked and has passed muster with rigorous real-world implementations, it could well prove to be the superior option. But, meanwhile, the urgency behind the demand for a real-time streaming solution that can scale to any number of users in any direction calls for an immediate response that maximizes ease of use and versatility in the WebRTC domain.

As ever more users are coming to understand, XDN infrastructure with unlimited scalability and end-to-end latencies consistently registering at 250ms or lower over any distance outperforms all other options now available for commercial deployment. At the same time, the breadth of our user base reflects the fact that XDN Architecture supports SDKs and application-specific tools enabling a far greater range of use cases than can be accomplished with any other solution.

Moreover, our integrations with a broad ecosystem of partners and the availability of our open APIs to facilitate integrations with other best-of-breed solutions preferred by our customers ensures their freedom from take-it-or-leave-it combinations of applications and real-time streaming on offer in some quarters. In fact, some players in that category are integrating their applications with us to give customers access to a superior real-time streaming architecture.

This combination of XDN platform benefits along with the growing importance of real-time streaming wherever live video is in play accounts for the demand surge we’ve seen before, during and after NAB. For example, we’re pleased to report that a major state-side pro sports league has contracted to put the XDN platform to work to enable remote collaboration across its far-flung empire with an eye toward extending the real-time benefits to end users as well.

South of the border, our recently acquired Dale remote influencer and game streaming platform is moving beyond Brazil to sporting events across Latin America. And elsewhere in the global consumer distribution market, we’re supporting ever more applications in gambling, ecommerce, esports, multiplayer game playing, in-venue screen experiences with sports and other live events, and much else.

On other fronts the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is expanding use of our TrueTime MultiView SurveillanceTM tools beyond its own traffic and emergency monitoring operations to enable shared usage across law enforcement and other government agencies. An international corporation providing high-tech products and services to the U.S. government is taking the capabilities of XDN Architecture into its dealings with multiple agencies. And many other engagements outside the M&E industry are moving forward as well.

Red5 Demos Draw Attention to Use Cases with Wide Range of Partners

Much of this use-case versatility was on display at NAB. For example, by hosting our platform to enhance viewer engagement with sports and other live content, AWS was able to demonstrate how live streaming from its cloud resources can bring the many benefits of real-time streaming into play.

Red5 at the AWS booth with Chris Allen, Brett Fasullo from Red5 and Osmar Bento from AWS

Along with streaming the F1 simulator competition live from the West Hall lobby to our display in the AWS booth we employed our TrueTime Studio tools with MultiView Stream Switching to allow viewers instant access to a full-screen rendering of any of the four camera feeds covering competitors in the F1s. TrueTime MultiView makes seamless, instant switching among any number of viewing options possible by streaming all live camera feeds from the point of ingestion at an Origin Node to all Edge Nodes serving the viewing population, where any view chosen from a separate simultaneously streamed cluster of thumbnails is streamed for instant full-screen display on the participating viewer’s screen.

In another demo displaying the same TrueTime Studio capabilities we showed how our Dale platform can be used to bring in live, real-time game coverage from remote influencers. For the demo we featured someone commenting from a distant location on action viewed simultaneously by influencer and AWS booth viewers. A recorded NHL game was used to generate the same type of influencer-user experience that would occur with live action.

At Zixi’s booth we teamed with Zixi and our mutual partners Magnifi.ai and Videon Labs to demonstrate how broadcasters benefit from utilizing the integration of the XDN platform with Zixi’s technology. Zixi pioneered use of internet transport to replace costlier satellite transmissions as the conduits for distributing broadcasters’ live programming to affiliates. Today the company is leveraging its dominance in that space to help broadcasters make the transition to production in the cloud with innovations enabling scalable, reliable and secure live video delivery with 4K/HDR formatting at the lowest possible total cost of ownership.

Red5 at Zixi booth with Brett Fasullo and Raphael Gonçalves from Red5 and Tricia Iboshi from Videon

In our demonstration, we showed how our support for simultaneous sharing of video across all end points at any distance in live production workflows makes it possible to syndicate multiple live feeds into TrueTime MultiView layouts for rapid editorial decision-making, ad slating and performance monitoring. We employed our Mixer technology to combine all feeds into a single screen mosaic from which any full-screen frame could be selected for viewing on the demo PC without added workstation support. Any participant in such workflows who’s authorized to make a final production decision can release selected frames into the live distribution stream going out to end users.

Magnifi’s participation in our demo added to the range of possibilities with support for automated highlight clipping, metadata analysis, AI-driven tagging and enhanced discoverability, localization, and socially optimized content. Videon provided the high-speed, high-density encoding support essential to maintaining bandwidth efficiency within the required 250ms real-time connection parameters and also showed how its LiveEdge Platform supports edge computing for REMI and advertising.

In our demo with Nomad Media, another partner we’ve worked with in demos at previous trade shows, this time the capabilities of the firm’s cutting-edge cloud-based asset management system were employed to highlight our joint efforts in surveillance video management, such as the work we’re doing with Caltrans, as mentioned above, and with the San Diego Sheriff’s Department in its drone-based operations. At the Nomad booth we showed how we’re able to aggregate video output from any number of devices on the ground, in the air and at sea to facilitate command center responses to criminal activity, fires, traffic accidents, extreme weather conditions, illicit border crossings, battlefield maneuvers and much else.

Here again we were putting our Mixer technology to use with the TrueTime MultiView toolset, in this case to transmit those aggregated surveillance camera feeds into a real-time stream delivered through Nomad’s easy-to-use interface to control centers for analysis of developments across wide reaches of territory. We showed how the Mixer can perform overlays, resizing and synchronization combining dozens of live Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) feeds into a grid layout that’s converted for streaming over WebRTC to end devices, which allows browsers to process the video without the use of plugins.

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Based on what we saw at NAB 2025, it’s safe to say the real-time streaming market has crossed over into mainstream execution with a scale of strategic preparation that portends rapid growth into the future. Red5 has established itself as the go-to supplier of the architecture essential to supporting whatever requirements emerge across the M&E industry and beyond.

The full range of capabilities and use cases enabled by XDN Architecture is explored in blogs, white papers and other documents in the Resources section of the Red5 website. And there’s always more to be learned by contacting info@red5.net or scheduling a call.