NAB Rewind: Lawo's Andreas Hilmer on the Power of the Edge One AV Stagebox

Lawo has been at the center of the industry's transition to IP and other next-generation technologies. At NAB 2026, its story was the Edge One AV stagebox, a compact multi-function device that Lawo Chief Marketing Officer Andreas Hilmer describes as filling a critical gap in the company's scalability story, specifically on the I/O-conversion side. Edge One integrates video interfacing, audio interfacing, internal processing, and compression into a single unit - making it, in Hilmer's words, a really versatile unit capable of serving a surprisingly wide range of production environments.

On the processing side, he explains, we can scale from very small, where you have a complete system on a small computer, all the way up to server stacks like at the Olympics or the World Cup or in the cloud. However, on the conversion side, we had this super-high density on edge for video, but, to scale down to stagebox approaches, we didn't have a solution for that.

Edge One ships with up to eight SDI or XLR connections with preamps and four HDMI ports (two in or out and two more out), two MADI ports, a USB-C port supporting four input and output audio channels, and two Ethernet (with power) and two SFP connectors as well as a GPI I/O port (two in/four out) giving it immediate utility in both traditional broadcast and hybrid production workflows. It is also network-based, which means that deployments aren't limited to a single unit and as many units as needed can be connected to a network switch, allowing the infrastructure to scale upwards or downwards.

Lawo's Andreas Hilmer with the Edge One AV stagebox, which debuted at NAB Edge One gives you a variety of applications from stagebox to postproduction sites for commentary places where you also need to connect the monitor, Hilmer explains. It all comes over one box.

The audio architecture inside Edge One is particularly noteworthy for anyone working in live production or immersive-audio environments. He describes a full-blown DSP engine inside the box - essentially an mc mixer embedded in a compact, field-deployable form factor. That opens a significant range of pro-audio applications that Lawo had been unable to address with its existing hardware lineup.

For existing Lawo customers, one of the more significant implications of Edge One is the company's anticipated return to the commentary- and field-production market in a more comprehensive way. The combination of audio DSP horsepower, multiformat video I/O, and a compact form factor maps directly to the requirements of broadcast field boxes and commentary positions - applications where Hilmer acknowledges Lawo previously had gaps.

I expect us to be back in the commentary field with it, he adds, citing installation and theatrical applications on the audio side. For systems integrators and broadcast engineers designing remote-production infrastructure or permanent commentary facilities, Edge One can replace multiple single-function devices with one unit that handles video, audio I/O, processing, and compression simultaneously. The postproduction and studio markets also stand to benefit, particularly in scenarios where monitoring, compression, and connectivity have historically required separate hardware solutions.

Lawo is also deeply involved in such developments as DMF (Dynamic Media Facility) and MXL (Media Exchange Layer) and the move to software-defined and software-based infrastructure. Software-defined has its roots in FPGA-based systems, including Lawo's own V__matrix platform, where firmware determines what a piece of hardware does. A card can be redefined to function as a multiviewer, for instance, instead of its default role. That's flexible, but it's not truly dynamic.

On an FPGA-based system, Hilmer explains, you can define that this unit becomes a multiviewer. However, then it is a multiviewer with all the capabilities it has, at its maximum capacity, doing nothing else. It's not dynamic.

Edge One offers plenty of connectivity options making it a fit for a wide range of needs. Software-based infrastructure, by contrast, runs on standard compute CPUs and allocates processing resources precisely to the task at hand. If you need a quad-screen multiviewer only at a given moment, the system consumes the required processing headroom only for that use, freeing the rest for audio mixing, up/down/crossconversion, or whatever else the production demands in real time.

For building a dynamic media facility, Hilmer adds, you need software which takes only the processing capacity it needs for the application at hand.

For Lawo customers assessing where the company is headed, Edge One closes a scalability gap at the low end of the I/O stack and the software-based processing architecture scales without limit at the high end. The two ends of that range now connect more cleanly than they ever have. And, as the industry continues to pivot toward COTS-based dynamic facilities, Lawo's quiet confidence seems well-earned. The company isn't just following the trend; it's refining the definitions that will guide the next decade of broadcast engineering.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/05/01/nab-rewind-lawos-andreas-hilmer...
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