Beamr And NVIDIA Bring AI-powered 4K Upscaling Workflow To Live Broadcasting

Beamr Imaging will showcase a new AI-powered workflow for live sports, broadcast and streaming at IBC 2026, combining NVIDIA Video Super Resolution with Beamr's content-adaptive bitrate (CABR) encoding technology to deliver 4K viewing experiences from existing HD feeds.

The solution, which will be demonstrated at Stand 1.D22 in Hall 1 during the Amsterdam exhibition, is designed to allow broadcasters and streaming providers to enhance HD content within existing production and delivery chains while reducing the bandwidth typically associated with higher-resolution video.

Beamr said much of the 4K sports content currently viewed by audiences originates as HD before being upscaled by consumer television sets. Its new workflow shifts the upscaling process into the production chain, enabling broadcasters to control and verify image quality before distribution.

The workflow uses NVIDIA Video Super Resolution to upscale HD video during production, while Beamr's Emmy Award-winning CABR encoding technology compresses the resulting 4K streams. According to the company, the process can reduce stream sizes by up to 50% compared with conventional encoding while maintaining image quality. The end-to-end pipeline runs on NVIDIA RTX PRO GPUs and can be deployed either on-premises or in the cloud.

Beamr also highlighted its VISTA quality verification platform, which uses subjective viewer testing to assess whether audiences perceive an improvement in picture quality. The company said testing is carried out using customers' own content to validate results across different types of source material.

"There is a widening gap between the quality viewers expect and the quality live production economics can afford," said Sharon Carmel, CEO of Beamr. "Together with NVIDIA, we are closing that gap - a 4K experience from the feeds broadcasters already have, at delivery costs they already pay."

"Upscaling only makes sense if viewers can see the difference and the delivery costs can't," Carmel added. "We built the tools that verify the first and take care of the second."

www.beamr.com