Audio and video are not completely disparate ecosystems, and...

Audio and video are not completely disparate ecosystems, and many uses cases place importance on both. If Audinate doesn’t make a play in the video segment, it’s only a matter of time that a video company builds out an audio offering to attack Audinate’s core. I see it as a necessity to play in video.

As with all things in life and business, the future is never crystal clear. Networked video is perhaps 5 years behind networked audio, and Audinate has only began shipping video products to market.

In Audinate’s advantage, they have a dominant position in networked audio and a foothold in physical spaces that already have Dante enabled products. In NDI’s favour is its first mover advantage in video and its slew of software and cloud integration products.

It’ll be interesting to see how the different battle grounds play out. I suspect Audinate will be very strong in traditional physical space playback use cases - concert halls, live music, stadiums, house of worship, universities, corporates. Video heavy use cases such as broadcast studios, film/tv production will be a much tougher ask - especially with Dante AV’s current gaps in software integration and WAN/cloud streaming. Perhaps it won’t be winner takes all, with Dante and NDI filling different segments and use cases.

There’s not a whole lot of difference in tech between Dante and NDI. The gaps that are there will be filled over time. Just like how technically the domain.com.au website is not dissimilar to REA’s. It’s more about dominance, scale, breadth, trust, and ecosystem.