Pro AV is an industry that’s constantly shifting: new formats, new workflows, new expectations from customers. What worked five years ago can feel outdated quickly. For Matrox Video to reach 50 years, it comes down to the ability to adapt.
That’s really the story of Matrox Video. From early work in graphics and video technology to its role today in AV and media infrastructure, the company has evolved alongside the industry, adjusting course as both the technology and market changed. And right now, Pro AV is in the middle of another shift.
Infrastructure Conversation
Matrox Video has always had a strong engineering foundation. Early on, that meant building video memory and graphics solutions as the PC market was still taking shape. By the early ’90s, we were already moving toward PC-based video systems, well before that became standard. This opened the door to new opportunities and further investment in development. Over time, that led into graphics processing, then broadcast, and eventually deeper into Pro AV.
What’s kept things steady isn’t just the technology. There’s a culture at Matrox Video shaped by a strong belief in engineering and how people work together. Teams stay, knowledge builds, and that continuity shows up in the products.
It also shows up in customer relationships. The focus isn’t on quick wins, but on building products that last and supporting them over time. Many Matrox Video customers have been around for years (some for decades), and that kind of loyalty doesn’t happen by accident.
Talk to system integrators today, and the conversation has changed. It’s no longer about individual devices, but about how everything works as a whole. AV has moved from point-to-point to networked environments, and is now part of a broader IT strategy.
At the same time, expectations have increased. Higher resolutions, more immersive experiences, and support for hybrid and distributed work. Pro AV today is very much a hybrid world, where most projects mix existing infrastructure with newer technologies.
The move to IP has been talked about for years. It’s happening, but it’s not a clean shift. Organizations are balancing signal paths with IP-based workflows where it makes sense. Bridging technologies (for example, encoders, decoders, and gateways) make that possible, allowing integrators to connect legacy systems to IP environments without starting over.
For many customers, that’s the only practical path forward. For integrators, it creates an opportunity and a balancing act: designing systems that work now but leaving room for customers to evolve.
Open Systems and Beyond
Another shift is how customers think about ownership and control of their systems. There’s less appetite for closed ecosystems—increasingly, organizations want the flexibility to choose different vendors and have those systems work together. That’s driving the push toward open standards.
In Pro AV, IPMX is a good example. It builds on proven concepts such as interoperability and scalability, while adapting them to real-world AV deployments. Many networks are still running at 1 Gbps and budgets are tight, so the systems and technologies gaining traction are ones that work within constraints rather than around them.
The transition to IP isn’t just technical, it’s organizational. AV and IT teams are now working closely together, often for the first time. What used to be simple point-to-point connections now involves network design, bandwidth, security, and redundancy. The shift requires a different mindset; for a lot of organizations, it’s still a work in progress.
If you look out over the next decade, the direction is clear: more software-based systems and more processing happening in data centers and the cloud.
It’s also why system design matters more than ever. Integrators are no longer just installing equipment; they’re helping define how environments are built and managed from the start.
For example, KVM isn’t new, but it’s increasingly more relevant in distributed environments. As systems move toward centralized compute and remote access, KVM allows users to interact with those systems without being tied to a specific location. That’s especially important in control rooms, where operators need to move between sources quickly and focus on the right information at the right time. It also supports better security by keeping systems centralized while controlling access at the user level.
Another interesting outcome of the move to IP is how it’s changing the role of the video wall itself. No longer just a fixed display surface, it’s becoming part of a broader, networked system. Content can come from anywhere and systems can scale or adapt without being tied to a single space.
We’re seeing similar patterns in healthcare where video is extending beyond the operating room into other parts of the facility. Or in enterprise environments where redundancy (like backup control rooms) is becoming standard. These aren’t just one-off cases anymore, they’re becoming expectations.
AI is part of the conversation everywhere, but in Pro AV, the impact is often more practical. We’re seeing it in camera automation, content tagging, and captioning—tools that reduce manual effort. It allows teams to focus on creating better content and optimizing systems. Behind the scenes, it’s also helping engineering teams move faster by shortening development cycles and speeding up testing.
Looking Ahead
If you look out over the next decade, the direction is clear: more software-based systems and more processing happening in data centers and the cloud. Edge devices are connecting more directly into those environments. At the same time, expectations around quality and experience will continue to rise. AI will continue to evolve, less as a standalone feature and more as something embedded across workflows.
For Matrox Video, the focus is on making all this easier to bring together. That means continuing the development of open standards, advancing software-defined platforms that run on COTS infrastructure, and working closely with the system integrators who ultimately make these systems work in practice. That’s what it comes down to—not just the technology, but how well it all comes together when it’s deployed.
Fifty years in, that’s still the challenge, and it’s a pretty good place to start the next chapter.
