Apr102026April 10, 2026April 10, 20260Commentby Nicolas Weil

Tracking MoQ in the Wild: a NAB 2026 Field Guide

Posted in Architecture, Broadcast, CDN, MoQ, Multicast, OTT, Players, Streaming, Workflow

Where to actually see Media over QUIC (MoQ) at NAB 2026, including demos, booths, and one session definitely worth attending?

MoQ has been getting a lot of attention lately. NAB 2026 should be the first time you can walk the floor and see it in end-to-end workflows. If you were intrigued by my previous blog post assessing MoQ maturity and want to move beyond diagrams and standardization, this is a good opportunity to connect that thinking to real implementations. There is no single place in the Convention Center that will explain everything. The demos will be spread across multiple booths, each showing a different angle. There will also be a not-to-be-missed Streaming Summit session where most of the MoQ ecosystem will be in the same room.

Think of this as a system decomposition rather than a booth walkthrough. The demos are distributed across the show floor, but they map to different layers of the MoQ stack. A baseline transport layer (OpenMOQ) establishes protocol behavior, followed by end-to-end pipelines (Bitmovin + Cloudflare) that show relay-based delivery in context. Multi-vendor workflow integration (Oracle ecosystem) then illustrates interoperability across ingest, packaging, and delivery. Real-time systems (Ant Media) explore latency-sensitive applications, while broadcast and B2B distribution models (Synamedia) extend the paradigm beyond direct-to-consumer playback. More experimental approaches (MoQCAST) probe efficiency at scale through hybrid multicast models. The Streaming Summit session acts as a control plane, connecting these perspectives into a coherent picture.

I will likely be around exploring the same demos and attending Streaming Summit events, so feel free to say hi if we cross paths!

Start here: OpenMOQ at Nomad Media

If you only have time for one stop, start here. This should give you the baseline for everything else.

  • Nomad Media (Booth W2357)
  • Look for: OpenMOQ pods
  • More info in the Red5 blog post

What you should see :

  • The same live feed delivered over WebRTC, HLS, LL-HLS, and MoQ side by side
  • A direct visual comparison of latency
  • Multiple demos from several OpenMOQ contributors, including player and relay components

This setup should be simple but useful. You should be able to stand there and get a direct feel for how each protocol behaves without needing much explanation. This is not just a single vendor demo. It is expected to bring together multiple members of the OpenMOQ consortium, including Red5, Cisco, and others companies contributing to the project. That makes it one of the few places where you can see how different pieces might fit together, rather than how a single product behaves. Once you have that reference point, the rest of the demos will make more sense.

Then check a full pipeline: Bitmovin + Cloudflare

After that baseline, it helps to look at something more end to end.

What you should see:

  • A live MoQ stream delivered through Cloudflare’s relay network
  • Playback in Bitmovin’s Player Web X
  • Latency metrics exposed in the player

This should be a clean end-to-end setup from encoder to network to player: Cloudflare acts as the distribution layer, and Bitmovin provides playback. The relay model should give you a concrete sense of how MoQ distributes streams without the traditional segment request pattern. If OpenMOQ gives you the basics, this shows what a more complete path could look like.

The deeper one: Oracle Video @ Edge

From there, if you want to understand how this fits into real workflows and how interoperability looks like today, this is the set of demos to spend time on.

  • Oracle ecosystem demos are spread across Ateme, Broadpeak, Cloudflare and Bitmovin booths
  • More info in the Oracle blog post

This is not a single booth experience. You are expected to piece together a multi-vendor pipeline:

  • Ingest with Ateme (Booth W1723)
  • Packaging with Broadpeak (Booth W3034)
  • Delivery through Cloudflare and Broadpeak CDNs (Booths W2300G & W3034, respectively)
  • Playback with Bitmovin (Booth W3323)

All connected through a shared MoQ transport layer – powered by the Oracle platform.

The goal here should be to show how different systems can plug into the same pipeline without custom integration each time – interop in action. It may take more effort to see the full picture, but this is likely the closest thing to a real-world setup on the floor.

Real-time angle: Ant Media

Once you have seen distribution and workflows, it is worth looking at the real-time side of the story.

What you should see:

  • MoQ compared directly with WebRTC and other protocols
  • A live streaming platform with auto-scaling behavior
  • AI features integrated into the workflow

This is expected to focus more on real-time systems than on replacing HTTP streaming. If you come from a WebRTC background, this should feel like a natural extension. It shows how MoQ could help push those systems beyond their usual scaling limits.

Broadcast side: Synamedia

After that, it is useful to look at how MoQ is being positioned outside of direct-to-consumer playback.

What you should see:

  • MoQ used for B2B distribution with Quortex PowerVu
  • A publish-subscribe model for distributing multiple tracks
  • The ability for affiliates to subscribe only to what they need

This is not a consumer playback demo. It focuses on professional distribution workflows, where content is delivered to partners and affiliates. Different context, but it helps complete the picture and understand the versatility of MoQ.

Experimental corner: MoQCAST (Multicast Live Streaming Over MoQ)

At that point, if you want to explore something less conventional, this is worth a stop. Get ready for acronyms like SSM, AMT, DRIAD and MMT!

What you should see:

  • An approach to multicast-style delivery combined with MoQ
  • Techniques aimed at reducing bandwidth usage compared to traditional unicast delivery

Instead of trying to emulate multicast within MoQ, this demo takes a different approach. It combines MPEG Media Transport (MMT) and MoQ in a hybrid model, with MMT handling multicast delivery over IP and MoQ taking over at the edge for last-mile unicast by bridging that stream into MoQ sessions for end users. If you are thinking about very large audiences, this is likely one of the more interesting experiments to check.

Cherry on the cake: Streaming Summit session on OpenMOQ and MoQ

Once you have seen a few demos, this is where things should start to connect.

If you attend one MoQ-related session, this should be the one. It is expected to bring together vendors and platform teams to discuss where things stand, what works, and what still needs to be solved – in both MoQ itself and in the OpenMOQ initiative. The demos show individual use cases. This session should help explain how those use cases relate to each other. And if you didn’t have time to scour the show floor for OpenMOQ demos, you should be able to see some of them then.

The session will be moderated by the legendary Will Law (Akamai), with multiple participants involved in OpenMOQ activities: Arvind Suryakumar (Oracle), Chris Allen (Red5), Cullen Jennings (Cisco), Gwendal Simon (Synamedia), Sean McCarthy (YouTube) and Tomas Kvasnicka (CDN77).

Good to know: this session is open to all NAB attendees, so you should be able to walk in without needing a separate Streaming Summit pass. Well-deserved kudos to Dan Rayburn for opening this session and making this information accessible to the whole industry!

Right after the session, there will be the NAB Show Streaming Summit Happy Hour, also open to all NAB attendees. If you want to continue the conversation in a more informal setting, this is likely the place to be, as many of the people working on MoQ should be there.

I wish you a great NAB with lots of exciting MoQ demos!

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