New report from RH consulting for February 24 : https://rhconsulting.uk/blog/networked-audio-products-2024/

Summary

The number of networked AV products on the market continues to grow and we are emerging well from the supply chain crisis.

For audio, Dante is by far the market leader as it has been for the past eight years. It has added more new products than all other protocols combined, and then some.

RAVENNA is a long way back but in a solid second place. The number of products for all other protocols is frankly inconsequential.

For video, we now have three years of data but there is still a long way to go. The product numbers are still small in comparison to audio and there are still all the signs of a relatively immature market. Some very major players in video have not yet adopted one of the video over IP standards that we survey. Is it time for them to jump off the fence?

NDI still leads the product numbers. NDI and ST2110 added a very similar number of actual products but the highest percentage growth was from the relative newcomer DanteAV.

Roland Hemming – February 2024

I thought I'd forum-ise this straw to create an area to discuss Dante AV's progress and its competition - in particular NDI.

BirdDog (ASX:BDT), an AV manufacturer that mostly makes NDI supported cameras, had it's results call today. Seems like a real struggle being an hardware manufacturer and they're feverishly trying to develop higher margin vertically-integrated solutions.

Here's a few AD8 related tidbits from the call and a Dante Video question I posed to the CEO (Dan Miall):

• He sees the live broadcast and "AV" as slightly different markets. Traditionally BirdDog has been in live broadcast. But "AV" is at least as big, if not bigger than live broadcast - and they're seeing stronger growth in this area. Their Zoom certified devices are helping them move into this space. I think Dan's definition of "AV" for video is everything outside of content creation space - so offices, stadiums, churches, concerts, etc and not broadcast studios.
• Although the company has struggled, they've not seen NDI demand soften and is extremely confident in the future of NDI. Believes that their cameras over time will lose all the connectivity currently present and it'll reduce down to just one network port.
• Dante AV is somewhat similar to NDI, but is currently marketed and positioned for the AV space where Audinate has a foothold in audio.
• In the next 12 months, expect BirdDog to announce a Dante AV product. They've held back to wait for Dante AV to solidify its different formats, and that's happening now.
• Right now NDI adoption is "dramatically larger" than Dante AV's. They're trying to time "turning point" of when Dante AV adoption takes off, as to not waste their precious R&D resources.

Dan spoke about it more Dante more than I expected. BirdDog has a very strong relationship with NDI - licensing the tech, and even using the same distributor in some parts of the world - and I was expecting they'd remain exclusively NDI in the video space.

It reaffirmed a few things. NDI is strong in live broadcasting, and Dante AV is attacking via its stronghold in audio in the physical spaces side.

Audinate mentioned that they'll be bringing video to the Dante Connect cloud workflow product in FY24. This is a play into the live broadcast / content creation space, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes.

BirdDog may be a good source of Dante AV adoption information in the future.