Industry Reacts to Release of NewTek’s NDI 5

Several major technology providers in the professional AV and broadcast industries have reacted with excitement to the NDI 5 announcement. NDI 5 allows anyone to easily share live, high quality, low latency video with anyone else in real time, using billions of devices.

“NDI has always been about the community, from individual visual storytellers to global software houses and manufacturers,” says Michael Namatinia, president, NDI. “I simply cannot wait to see the amazing ways they employ NDI in this AV-over-IP revolution.”

Further indication of excitement behind NDI 5 is highlighted by NDI’s limited time offer of 10,000 free downloads of the NDI ∣ HX Camera app for smartphone users. The 10,000 free downloads were consumed in less than 2 hours on Wednesday following the announcement. NDI later announced that both the iOS and Android NDI ∣ HX Camera app will be 50% off ($9.99) through June 16th, 2021.

Some of the reactions from around the industry:

Intel
“NDI is already enabling connectivity and collaboration by making real time video sharing a standard function on local computer networks,” says Dr. Ben Cope, Technical Lead from Internet of Things Group (IOTG) of Intel Corp. “With NDI 5, this extends out to include wide area networks and connects users for video collaboration across much larger distances. NDI has applications including such as lecture capture in education, digital signage in houses of worship and live video stream input to collaboration tools leveraging optimisations to leverage silicon features of Intel processors. NDI 5 extends the solution footprint for these applications beyond a single premise.”

NETGEAR
“We are super excited to be working with the NDI team to offer the industry’s first NDI instant configuration in our new M4250 line of switches,” says Laurent Masia, Director of Pro AV Engineering Services at NETGEAR. “The NDI team is just fantastic to work with and we recognize just how fast the adoption rate is around the world. Wow! It is really taking off. NETGEAR is very proud that NDI has validated our switches to provide such a powerful solution making it easier for people to deploy IP-based workflows. Congratulations on the release of NDI 5!”

NVIDIA
“By integrating native support for the NVIDIA Video Codec SDK, NDI enables its customers to stream and share content at 4K resolution, 120 FPS, providing higher quality and performance,” says Jeremy Krinitt, Senior Developer Relations Manager at NVIDIA. “Now we’ve built on this effort with NDI to provide full GPU acceleration in the NDI 5 release across all compatible feeds for full hardware decoding of remote streams.”

Sony
“The industry is clearly moving towards IP and we have extended its benefits to customers by adding NDI|HX to our remote cameras since 2019,” says Akira Saito, Deputy Senior General Manager of Camera System Business Division, Imaging Products & Solutions Business Group, Sony Corporation. “Due to the drastic change in the way we work, demand for efficient and high-quality remote content production has increased more than ever. We look forward to working closely with NDI 5’s advanced usability, in supporting the expansion of the IP footprint in cost-efficient productions and to add value to our offerings for customers.”

BirdDog
“NDI 5 is a steep change in what it can achieve. It allows for more efficient processing and global reach,” says Dan Miall, Co-Founder and CEO of BirdDog. “It also brings to market new types of products. Thanks to the power of NDI 5, we’re able to announce the BirdDog Play device. This is the world’s smallest and lowest cost NDI decoder supporting high bandwidth NDI, NDI|HX, and the new NDI Bridge and NDI Remote protocols. Thanks to the NDI team, we’re really excited about today and into the future.”

Kiloview
“Kiloview has enjoyed a long, successful collaboration with NDI,” says Jacob Zuo, President and CTO of Kiloview. “Now, NDI 5 brings revolutionary progress. On just an ARM CPU, we can efficiently realize NDI encoding and decoding. This is amazing! Good job! We will bring you powerful NDI and NDI|HX all-in-one encoding and decoding products at low cost within a short time. This is an exciting moment. Congratulations to the whole NDI team!”

PTZ Optics
“We congratulate NDI on another major release,” says Paul Richards, Marketing Director for PTZ Optics. “We’ve been following NDI since its release in 2015. It’s incredible that we are already on version 5 after almost six years of improvement. NDI 5 is coming at a time when there has been more use of video around the world than ever before. The new NDI Bridge and NDI Remote applications are welcomed additions to the NDI toolkit. We can’t wait to see how users and our customers are going to be using these tools not just from their local area networks but from around the world!”