From ‘events’ and ‘enterprise AV’ to the emergence of ‘broadcast AV’, IPMX has started to make its presence felt as the likely future of AVoIP. Like anything new, it had its initial detractors, but even they have started to acknowledge that IPMX is not, as they first thought, ‘just another interoperability dream’.

Again and again, I’m hearing from analysts, consultants, integrators, resellers, and users alike, who all keep their finger of the pulse of the industry, that they are impressed at the progress they see being made in IPMX, between one show and the next.

Some of the early IPMX commentators said something like ‘initial products will just be encoders, simply getting the content on and off the network. Later, as the technology matures, we’ll see products that do something more but have the IPMX connectivity built-in. That will take some years’.

Initially of course, we did (and still do) need simple encoders – to connect together the baseband equipment that we already have, and will continue to have. But those foreseen ‘IPMX native’ products are indeed emerging – in some cases faster than expected – LED wall controllers to name but one product class that will be very obvious at Infocomm this year. Indeed, you’ll struggle to find one that doesn’t support IPMX/ST2110! But IPMX development is ongoing, not instant, it's not finished yet and future years will continue to extend its benefits.

So, if a trip to Orlando is looming, make a note in your planner to visit the AIMS Alliance booth (#3089). This will let you see multiple manufacturers each present their IPMX wares in one place, where you can contrast how they have each envisioned different products based on IPMX. Different visions inevitably results in different feature sets (they are thinking about different users and use cases) – but with IPMX in common. And that's exactly where IPMX scores - when different use cases turn up in the same project or in different projects at the same location. You can mix brands.

Additionally, I challenge you to leave the AIMS booth without the firm idea that even the encoders themselves can have other features included that might traditionally have been a single function stand-alone appliance: KVMs, multi-viewers, scalers, colour-space converters, TBCs, ….).

One of my mantras is ‘IPMX means options’; I encourage you to make it an Infocomm objective for yourself to create a detailed answer to the question ‘what options could IPMX give me?’