Fireside Chat: IMAX's Vikram Arumilli and ESHAP's Evan Shapiro Talk Optimizing Streaming Content Delivery and User Experiences
In this fireside chat at Streaming Media Connect 2024, Media Universe Cartographer Evan Shapiro, spoke with IMAX SVP and GM Vikram Arumilli about IMAX's transition from a traditionally consumer-facing brand known for high-end cinematic experiences to a brand that also focuses on in-home and on-device entertainment. Arumilli explained how IMAX has been exploring ways to bring its brand closer to consumers, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"IMAX has traditionally been known to be the big theatrical business. We have over 1,700 screens in 90-plus countries, but over the past few years we've been trying to figure out--and this really accelerated during COVID--how do we take what we stand for at IMAX and move it beyond just the theatrical experience? Understanding where consumer trends and preferences are going, how do we get closer to consumers in the home?" Arumilli asked. "That's the focus of my business: defining IMAX's presence closer to consumers when it comes to in-home and on-device entertainment."
Introducing IMAX Enhanced
Beginning roughly five years ago, IMAX introduced IMAX Enhanced, a partnership with consumer electronics manufacturers like Sony, where IMAX licenses their brand on high-end devices. "So on Dolby, which is on an entire potential set of SKUs for a manufacturer, we only focus on very high-end devices that meet top-of-the-line specs," he explained. "Those are IMAX Enhanced devices. We have TVs, soundbars, a few projectors, a very high-end laptop from HP."
"And those are all predominantly licensing deals that you're doing based on a set of specs that you produce and that the partner needs to meet in order to reach the level of quality that you expect from the brand?" Shapiro asked.
"Correct. And there's also a content side of the business," Arumilli explained. "Disney+ is a big IMAX Enhanced content partner. If you're watching a piece of IMAX Enhanced content on Disney+, not only do you get better picture because it's gone through an IMAX post-production process for the home, but you also get IMAX sound. For each of our movies that we show theatrically, there's a unique audio mix that you don't get in a regular theater. And through our partnership with DTS, we're able to deliver that theatrical sound mix in the home. So that's part of the IMAX Enhanced setup."
Exploring the effectiveness of IMAX Enhanced from the consumer's perspective, Shapiro said, "You have an experience that you almost entirely control in the theater and one that you don't control as much in the home. Is the brand translating well to the living room for the consumer? How is it working? Does it show up in sales?"
"The reception initially has been very strong," Arumilli replied. "One of the things that we've seen is when you go to our streaming partners who do have IMAX Enhanced content like Disney+, Sony Pictures' Bravia Core, or other partners in Europe and Asia, you see that IMAX Enhanced content drives increased engagement, it drives retention, it drives signups. So those are all the key metrics that folks are looking for when you're running a streaming service. The goal, though, is to expand this and do so in a meaningful way. We don't want every single piece of content to be IMAX Enhanced, and we also don't want every single device to be IMAX Enhanced because then you don't stand for anything. What has really made our mark theatrically is that we stand for something. The titles that we show in our theaters are the biggest, best tentpole titles. We are always the best screen in any multiplex. And so we don't want the brand to be diluted in a way where we're everywhere. We want to do so in a way that stands out in consumers' minds. And I think we're doing that. It's just a longer process than spraying and praying."
Leveraging SSIMWAVE Technology at IMAX
Arumilli also discussed IMAX's 2022 acquisition of SSIMWAVE, a company that developed a technology called VisionScience that "has taken human vision from tens of thousands of subjects and translated that into an algorithm" to score the quality of any piece of content scene by scene. This opens up use cases for quality monitoring and optimization, allowing streaming services to deliver the right quality for the right environment, saving costs and improving the user experience.
"What do you mean by 'It has taken human vision?'" Shapiro asked.
Arumilli explained that SSIMWAVE brought in test subjects at Canada's University of Waterloo, where the company was co-founded by now-IMAX Chief Product Officer Abdul Rehman and asked "them to grade content quality manually. They go really close to a really good screen and say, 'That looks good, this doesn't look good. Here's why it doesn't look good. Here's what needs to be fixed.' We can do that all in real time and in an automated way."
The IMAX VisionScience technology (developed at SSIMWAVE), he went on to explain, "allows you to score any piece of content scene by scene on a 0 to 100 scale. So that opens up a few use cases. The first use case is you can sell it as a quality monitoring tool, which we do today with our StreamAware product. So we enable any streaming service or broadcaster, whether it's on-demand or live, to grade their content quality to ensure that what they're delivering to consumers meets the bar that they hope to meet."
"When you're talking about tens of thousands of hours in a library, as a publisher like A+E has, is this an AI version of what you would do from a QC standpoint with golden eyes and other types of human solutions?" Shapiro asked.
"When we were doing the diligence on SSIMWAVE before we made the acquisition, one of the things we heard is that the biggest streaming services had, as you said, tens of thousands of hours of new content being added every year to the service. A very small portion of that is fully QC'd. You might do some random checks throughout on a title. The bigger tentpole titles will get a full QC, but some things don't ever get looked at fully. And so there's a high risk that you're putting stuff on there that doesn't meet the standard that consumers are expecting, which again leads to issues."
Optimization and Reducing Content Delivery Costs
Beyond quality control and monitoring, IMAX also leverages VisionScience for optimization, which helps content owners reduce OpEx costs. "From quality monitoring, we've moved into quality optimization. We've found that you can bring content quality down in minuscule ways that are not actually perceptible to the human eye, but drive significant cost savings for any streaming service when you're delivering both live or on-demand content."
"So you're aually reducing the quality of the content--based on what you found--to reduce costs, because the person is watching on a phone or on a low-bandwidth [connection]," Shapiro interjected. "So the change in quality is imperceptible to the human eye, and then secondarily, it's just a lesser environment. So why deliver a high-end quality product to a place that's going to get buffered down to a worse product on the end?"
"Oftentimes, streamers and broadcasters are over-delivering quality. That's one use case of optimization. Another use case is there are certain instances where you're not delivering enough quality, streaming services want to deliver better quality, but they want to do so in a way that doesn't break the bank. So we can tell them, 'Here's where you can deliver higher quality. Here's where it doesn't make sense to do that.'"
For this, IMAX uses an AI-based technology called StreamSmart designed for use with both on on-demand and live content. "IMAX is known for consistency of quality," Arumilli said. "With our streaming tech and our consumer tech, we're trying to bring what IMAX is best known for closer to consumers in the home on their mobile devices, anywhere they're watching content."
IMAX envisions other possibilities for leveraging AI technology to optimize streaming content and elevate end user experiences. "One of the things we've been looking at in terms of future efforts is that when you think about optimization, can you train the technology so that it understands, 'OK, this is an actor's face. You probably don't want to reduce quality from that face, but that leaf in the background, you can probably reduce some quality there.' We're not that fine tuned yet, but it is a potential use case in the future when you think about our ability to hone in on specifics within a scene in a very accurate way."
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