Introduction
Puget Systems recently wrapped up another exciting NAB Show in Las Vegas! The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show is an annual gathering that unites thousands of content professionals across the broadcast, media, and entertainment industries. It serves as a hub for innovation, collaboration, and exploration of cutting-edge technologies shaping the future of content creation and distribution.
Industry & Event Trends
More Practicality, Less Hype
A key takeaway from NAB 2025 was the noticeable shift towards practicality over hype. While emerging technologies like virtual production and AI continue to generate buzz, the focus has turned to real-world implementation and problem-solving. This aligns perfectly with Puget Systems’ commitment to providing practical, workflow-focused solutions that attract a more engaged and discerning audience.
Quality Over Quantity
Maybe due to the point above or a number of other factors, it was hard to ignore how much smaller this event felt in terms of attendance. I believe the final attendance numbers were around 65,000, which is quite low in comparison to pre-Covid years. While we absolutely hope to see these numbers improve over the next few years, it is worth noting that the attendees this year felt much more engaged and every conversation we had felt worthwhile.
The Creator Economy
The “Creator Economy” is a phrase that has been used repeatedly for many years now, but it feels as though it is something that is truly taking root at NAB Show. This is notable because the history of the show is born from large-scale broadcast, so to see the show shifting these last 5-10 years toward this concept of the “creator economy” signals that it is having a larger impact on the industry than many are willing to admit. We think it is great to see and we’ll continue to lean into supporting that community and advocating for NAB’s adoption of it.
Partner Engagements
My favorite part of attending events is easily the venue they provide for collaborating with partners and customers and building relationships with them. This year’s NAB Show provided no shortage of these opportunities.
Corridor Digital at the Booth
This year, we had the pleasure of hosting Niko Peuringer, Wren Weichman, Nick Laurant, and Christian Fergerstrom of Corridor Digital at our booth. Niko and Nick spent a few hours at our booth walking attendees through utilizing AI tools for VFX. They demonstrated how artists can use ComfyUI for text-to-image, image-to-video, and video-to-audio. Attendees even got to walk away with AI-generated versions of themselves!
Adobe’s Creator Lab
We were very excited to partner with Adobe this year to outfit the entire Creator Lab with our new Puget Mobile 16” laptops! Adobe organized sessions and workshops for attendees to test out new workflows, tips, and tricks. This also provided attendees a chance to try out the latest features being added to Premiere Pro and After Effects that leverage NVIDIA’s new Blackwell architecture in the NVIDIA GeForce 5090 Mobile, which powers our new Puget Mobile 16”.
Form Studios at Nikon’s & MRMC’s Booth
A customer and partner of ours, Form Studios / Form Volumes, was running cutting-edge ICVFX and virtual production workflows powered by our Puget Rackstations, which were operating as render nodes for their LED walls. Their setup included two dynamic LED walls: one featuring epic frame remapping demos and another live-streaming a cooking show, highlighting the incredible range of real-time virtual production.
Workstations Powered by ASUS
We teamed up with ASUS again this year to showcase one of our Puget Workstations configured with an ASUS motherboard and video card running an NVIDIA DLSS demo. They were also kind enough to invite us to present during their ProArt Masters’ Talk series. You can find more information about this below!
Announcements
Puget Mobile 16”
At NAB Show 2025, we announced our new laptops boosted by the Intel® Core™ Ultra processor and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 5090 Mobile GPU. The new Puget Mobile 16” laptops are the ideal hardware platform for the creator community who depend on high-performance, reliable, and stable hardware solutions for their Adobe Creative Cloud workflows. As mentioned above, Adobe CC applications will be optimized for NVIDIA’s new Blackwell architecture later this year, so the combination of these applications with the our latest laptop offering will ensure significantly enhanced performance and increased hardware decoding support for 4:2:2 codecs with H.264 and H.265.
Presentations
ASUS ProArt Master Talks
Matt Bach gave a presentation as part of ASUS’ ProArt Masters’ Talk series. Matt talked about the state of the computer hardware industry and how to decide when it is time to upgrade. While we unfortunately don’t have a recording of the presentation, subscribe to our hardware articles to stay up-to-date on our most recent testing with NVIDIA’s new GPUs. As those articles come out over the coming weeks, you’ll be able to use that performance testing to help make the decision for yourself as well!
Events & Parties
MoGraph Meetup
The MoGraph Meetup is run by School of Motion and is an event that we have sponsored for nine years now. It is one of the highlights of our trip to NAB Show each year as it is well attended by those in the motion graphics industry, always provides ample opportunities for great conversations, and, well… School of Motion just knows how to throw a great party!
Looking Ahead
NAB Show 2025 was an incredibly rewarding experience, offering valuable insights and meaningful connections within the industry.
Our interactions with customers, partners, and industry peers were a highlight of the event, reaffirming the importance of building strong relationships and sharing collective expertise. We are grateful for our partners at Adobe that gave us a chance to showcase our latest products, such as Puget Mobile, in the Creator Lab as well as Corridor Digital for taking the time to engage with attendees at our booth.
Participating in press interviews, presentations, and sponsorships allowed us to share our perspectives and contribute to thought leadership in the industry. We sincerely thank everyone who contributed to the success of NAB Show 2025, from our valued customers and partners to the organizers and attendees who made each interaction memorable.
We aim to build on this momentum as we plan for our 10th NAB anniversary next year!