At IBC 2025, I sat down with Giles Baker of Dolby to explore how the company is shaping the next chapter of live sports and immersive streaming. Dolby is a brand we encounter daily — from iPhones with Dolby Vision to cinemas with Atmos — but with Dolby OptiView, they’re pushing further into live experiences.

Giles has spent 15 years at Dolby, driven by a passion for sound and vision:

“What excites me today is seeing all the things we’ve been working on come together with Dolby OptiView.”

Dolby Vision has been around for a decade, but the second generation goes further:

• More control for creators over how content looks on different devices.
  

• TVs that finally meet the dream Dolby had years ago — and can now stretch content to full performance.
  

• A sharper focus on live sports, making broadcasts smoother and closer to real life without the dreaded “soap opera effect.”
  

As Giles put it:

“It’s about being immersive without putting anything on your face.”

OptiView combines three critical layers:

1. The Player – Consistent, high-quality across devices, flexible enough for mobile or big screens.
   

2. Latency Control – Not a race to the lowest number, but tuned to each use case. “If you need half a second latency, we’ll deliver it at scale. But if you don’t, you shouldn’t have to pay for it.”
   

3. Monetization – With server-guided ad insertion (SGAI), ads become seamless, personalized, and less intrusive. They can appear side-by-side, in a corner, or as part of the flow.
   

This isn’t just about ads:

“Over time, people will innovate and deliver different types of content to different users. Personalized highlights, live games, analysis — all mixed into the experience.”

The sports industry has long struggled with fragmented tech: inconsistent players, latency headaches, and clunky ad breaks. Dolby’s approach is to unify these into one system. At scale, that means leagues, broadcasters, and platforms can focus on storytelling and fan connection rather than integration challenges.

For fans, the impact is clear: more immersive images, real-time experiences that sync you with the crowd, and personalized highlights without losing the live moment.

Giles summed it up:

“Immersion is about making you feel as close as possible to the action, together with everyone else, without adding friction.”

➡️ Dolby Vision 2 puts creators in control and makes sports look real. ➡️ OptiView offers flexible latency as a business choice, not a tech constraint. ➡️ Ads are reframed as content — personalized, non-intrusive, and even enriching. ➡️ Dolby is building a complete system to support the scale of modern sports streaming. ➡️ The future lies in personalization powered by AI, surfacing what fans care about in real time.

Dolby Vision 2: Designed for NowDolby OptiView: A Complete SystemWhy It MattersKey Takeaways

🎙️ Sébastien is a French sports media expert with 20+ years of experience in the industry.Q: With Ligue 1 going D2C and the new app being deployed in France, what is the reception of the app and of Ligue 1?Sébastien shared that fans in France have welcomed the new Ligue 1 app — lower price (€14.99/month for 8 out of 9 games) and strong editorial coverage have made the experience feel premium. Pre-game shows, behind-the-scenes content, and immersive storytelling quickly pushed the platform past 1M users.But here’s the catch: revenue for clubs is nowhere near the past cycles. Where the 2018–19 champion earned ~€60M from media rights, this year’s winner might only see ~€5M.The challenge for Ligue 1 is clear: how to turn engagement into sustainable value for clubs. New revenue streams like interactive rights, betting, and sponsorship may be needed to bridge the gap.A fascinating reminder that fan reception and financial sustainability don’t always move in sync.🎥 Full reply in under 3 minutes — that’s the spirit of this new series.

This year at IBC, instead of writing another list of highlights, I sat down with analyst Paolo Pescatore to reflect on what the show really told us.Paolo put IBC in context with other global events. CES sets the tone, MWC defines connectivity, GITEX is now the largest consumer electronics show, while NAB and IBC feel smaller but remain key networking hubs. Attendance and exhibitor numbers were down. “If companies spend hundreds of thousands, they want ROI. Declining numbers are worrying,” Paolo noted.My own view was that conversations were more realistic. Less hype, more honesty. AWS again dominated with its vast booth and live production demos, while camera and production halls were packed. Microsoft and Google felt less present.One clear theme: live sport. Almost everyone I met asked about it. Paolo confirmed: “Live sport is still the anchor. It drives innovation—from multi-view streaming to personalized advertising—and it’s where people are still willing to pay.” Streamers like Netflix and Amazon are investing heavily, while broadcasters struggle with costs and late pivots to cloud/IP.The conference sessions felt detached from the show floor. The Tech Zone was little more than last year’s AI Zone. Paolo suggested more innovation and ecosystem diversity are needed.AI itself was everywhere. But value today is pragmatic—metadata tagging, subtitles, file transfers, personalization. “Beyond that, it gets wishy-washy,” Paolo warned. Netflix remains best-in-class in user insights. Hardware and connectivity—Nvidia chips, 5G workflows—are driving real opportunities.For me, IBC was focused and productive: hosting Retention Zone Live with Cleeng, collaborating with Dolby OptiView, and exploring partnerships. I left with a sense of grounded optimism.Paolo closed with a challenge: “We’ve plateaued. Walk-ups are rare. Everyone knows each other. Now we need a shift in gear.”IBC remains valuable, but it faces a moment of truth. Less spectacle, more realism. Maybe that’s no bad thing.

For this special IBC 2025 edition of A Guy with a Scarf, I spoke with Dan Coffey, Director of Product at Dolby OptiView, about the future of immersive streaming, new ad formats, and the role of consistency in low-latency delivery.Coffey joined Dolby six years ago through the acquisition of Hybrik. Since then, he has been shaping Dolby OptiView’s product roadmap. For him, technology is always in service of a bigger mission: storytelling. “Telling a good story is immersive when you can use the best technology. It’s like putting the right tool for the right task.”At IBC, Coffey presented Dolby’s latest server-guided ad insertion (SGAI) technology. Instead of the traditional one-size-fits-all ad break, Dolby enables multiple non-linear formats: double box, squeeze-back, or full takeover. The result? More ad opportunities and better monetization without breaking the live experience. “It’s really about giving the opportunity for more ad breaks, and that increases the opportunity for more revenue.”The system also powers regionalized and personalized targeting. Ads can be delivered by geography or down to the individual user, with the same mechanism extended to editorial content such as replays. Imagine watching your favorite match and automatically receiving highlights featuring the players you care most about. As Coffey put it, “It’s about personalizing the ad to the user and the experience to the device.”Latency was another central topic. Dolby OptiView has built a streaming stack that doesn’t just chase the lowest possible delay—it delivers predictable, consistent latency. Sub-second delivery works for interactive features, two seconds is tuned for sports betting, and five seconds aligns with broadcast. “What’s really special about our streaming product is that the latency is very consistent—far more consistent than HLS.”Dolby also showcased an SDR-to-Dolby Vision upconversion demo, upgrading standard feeds to premium HDR quality. For platforms managing mixed-source content, this can ensure audiences always get the best possible viewing experience.Key takeaways: – Storytelling drives technology at Dolby OptiView. – Advertising is being reinvented with non-linear formats and regional targeting. – Personalization goes beyond ads, into editorial content. – Consistency is king in latency, tuned to use cases from fan polls to betting. – Quality upgrades like SDR-to-Dolby Vision ensure premium delivery at scale.What emerges is not just a set of features, but a vision for streaming as a unified, orchestrated experience. Ads, latency, personalization, and quality don’t live in silos—they come together to create a seamless and immersive narrative for fans everywhere.

💡 How Server-Guided Ad Insertion (SGAI) Could Redefine the Streaming Ad Experience

Paul Boustead's journey started "as a researcher doing research for telcos in Australia" back in 2000. Hel worked on real-time CDNs during what he calls "a super interesting time" when it was "very hard to actually get good scalable streams out there and working."His path led through gaming technology—"voice communication, massively multiplayer computer games"—before founding a company that Dolby acquired in 2007. This gaming background proved invaluable, as many low-latency challenges in sports streaming mirror early multiplayer gaming requirements.Defining Purpose-Driven LatencyPaul offers a clear framework for 2025: "Ultra low latency to us is sub-second," followed by "very low latency which is around about the sub 3 seconds" and "low latency to us is sub 7 seconds." Each category serves distinct purposes—sub-second for sports betting and auctions where "they sell very expensive objects, even houses," while 3-7 seconds addresses the broader sports streaming market.The business case crystallized during our conversation when I shared watching Wimbledon with my 10-year-old son, who received Sinner's victory notification 30 seconds before we saw it. "I didn't want to ruin it for the family," he later admitted, "but I knew it before."This illustrates Paul's key insight: streaming's primary challenge is "enabling people to watch together without getting spoilers from social media." As Paul notes, "A lot of people have a dilemma. Do I put my phone on silent, put it over there or to watch the game and trying to get younger generations to put their phone away."The Adaptive RevolutionThe breakthrough innovation that Paul describes addresses varying viewer needs within single events. "We have one streaming service that switches between the required technologies to meet the customer use case," he explains. "If you've got someone watching a sports event, the majority of people may want to be below 3 seconds because they're watching it socially. But if someone's betting on it, they might want below a second."This adaptive approach eliminates complexity: "Our streaming solution enables our customers to do one integration and then pick the latency."Technical RealityFor sub-second delivery, Paul relies on "WebRTC... Plus there's Media over QUIC," both using UDP networking for controlled retransmission. However, scale differs dramatically—ultra-low latency supports "250,000 plus" users but "you rarely see something above 100,000 because they're particular events." Broader sports streaming scales to "millions" over existing CDNs.Platform fragmentation remains challenging. As I noted from "doing 14 different platforms for clients," device diversity impacts optimization. Dolby’s response: acquiring THEOplayer to ensure "a reliable player that large sports organizations would be comfortable deploying across all platforms."Quality BalancePaul acknowledges the eternal trade-off: "There's a big limitation with low delay streaming at the moment when you're really trying to get the delay going down. Sub 3 seconds we’re really doing at a high quality." His Dolby heritage shows in prioritizing perceptual improvements: "You want to get things like the colors right and you want it to be in high dynamic range. You want to get all of that right first before you start increasing the pixel count."Future EngagementLooking ahead, Paul sees AI's biggest impact in fan engagement rather than pure streaming optimization. "Your younger generations aren't that used to or not that inclined to watch long form content," he observes, pointing to Thursday Night Football's predictive analytics as early examples of AI-enhanced viewing.ConclusionThe challenge isn't just moving data faster—it's intelligently matching technology to purpose. Adaptive latency solutions represent the next evolution, promising the right experience at the right time for every viewer, preserving sports' communal joy regardless of underlying technology.

Ep. 55: Paul McGrath - From Cannibalization Fears to YouTube Success: How CBC Cracked the Creator Economy CodePaul McGrath, a 20-year CBC veteran now leading strategy in the entertainment department, shared how Canada's national broadcaster evolved from fearing digital cannibalization to embracing the creator economy through scientific methodology.Three Phases of Digital EvolutionPhase One: Cannibalization Concerns"The first phase was concerns about cannibalization," McGrath explained. "There was concerns about publishing on digital services, cannibalizing a linear audience." This decade-old fear dominated industry discussions about digital distribution.Phase Two: DTC LearningCBC invested in their streaming platform, CBC Gem, building new competencies. "We had to learn things like how do you run a DTC model? How do you do all of the customer support and customer service?"Phase Three: Platform StrategyCurrent focus centers on creator partnerships after realizing platform consumption scale, particularly among younger audiences.The Retention RevolutionCBC Gem achieved its best year ever by focusing on audience retention from major events like Olympics and breaking news. "We really looked at what are the retention rates that we're getting off big events," McGrath said. "What percentage of that audience do we keep after one month, after three months, after six months?"This leverages CBC's "superpower" as a premier news brand: "We don't have to do a lot of marketing for audience acquisition because the news events will drive a lot of audience in."Debunking the Cannibalization MythMost compelling was CBC's scientific test of cannibalization fears using 50 titles across control and test groups. Results shocked the industry: "Overall engagement on the streaming service went up, not down. In some cases, some of those titles almost doubled in their engagement on the streaming service after we published on YouTube."The new hypothesis: YouTube's algorithm creates word-of-mouth marketing driving search behavior back to CBC Gem. "We think that word of mouth converted into search, which led more audience into the streaming service."Creator Economy StrategyCBC's three-pronged approach includes:Production partnerships with creators for development and fundingLicensing catalog content from creators for FAST channelsOpening content libraries to let creators access CBC's archiveIndustry ConvergenceMcGrath observed the merger of traditional media and creator economies: "I used to say YouTube was like Hollywood on a different planet... But those two planets are getting closer together."He attributes this to economics: "When traditional television producers realize some creators can garner a million people for an hour at a fraction of the budget of a TV show, that becomes inevitable."Call for CollaborationMcGrath concluded with an industry invitation: "If you're experimenting around this stuff, please reach out. Let's share our results together."His vision: collaborative research moving beyond anecdotal evidence to establish data-driven best practices.CBC's journey proves that embracing scientific methodology and testing assumptions can transform digital fears into growth opportunities.

In episode 54 of "A Guy with a Scarf," host Carlo De Marchis interviews Paolo Pescatore, an industry analyst with over 25 years of experience covering telecommunications, media, and technology convergence.The Analyst's Unique ApproachPescatore has evolved from analyzing mobile devices to examining "the connected user in the converged world." His hands-on methodology is striking: he's converted his living room into an "experience center" with multiple 65-inch TVs, set-top boxes, and devices. "It drives my family insane. They never know which remote control to pick up," he admits, but this allows him to "practice what I preach."Innovation and Adoption ChallengesWhen discussing technological disruption, De Marchis remains skeptical about the next transformative device. "I still believe that the smartphone is the thing that changed our lives," expressing doubt about AR glasses achieving similar adoption. "I've seen a lot of fantastic technology but until they get adopted, like seriously or at a certain level, I don't see it really impacting."Media Fundamentals vs. Distribution RevolutionDespite technological advances, content remains king: "It's still all about unique storytelling, it's all about content and having programs people are willing to watch. That hasn't changed, that will always remain the same."However, distribution has transformed dramatically. Traditional broadcasters slow to embrace cloud workflows have been "left behind," while Netflix has "changed consumer behavior" fundamentally.Streaming Wars: Different Players, Different ChallengesNetflix stands alone: "Netflix has paved the way for everyone... everyone just felt okay, well Netflix has got the playbook, let's copy." Traditional media companies couldn't replicate this success due to legacy challenges.Amazon's strategy varies by region - "opportunistic" in Europe versus "all in on NFL" in the US.Apple faces awareness challenges despite quality investment: "For their part is just driving the awareness and letting people know of the content they have."The Return of the BundlePescatore predicted "the return of the big bundle but being delivered via IP now" - recognizing that while cord-cutting dismantled traditional packages, consumers still want comprehensive content delivered through modern infrastructure.Retention Over AcquisitionIn today's saturated market: "I'm of the opinion there aren't that many subscribers to go out there and acquire. Before you can even think about acquiring customers, all of the focus should be on customer retention."Creator Economy and Generational ShiftsUsing his three daughters (ages 11-17) as a focus group, Pescatore observes: "When you look at the young generation today, they're growing up in this culture where it's very much driven by those social platforms." This represents a fundamental shift in media consumption patterns.Future TechnologyDespite current skepticism, Pescatore is excited about smart glasses potential. The Ray-Ban Meta collaboration represents "version 1.0 which is gravitating extremely well with customers." He envisions devices "tethered to your watch, we may get to a point where we're not having to rely on the smartphone."Pescatore's analysis reveals an industry where technological capabilities exceed adoption rates, and success depends on understanding both legacy constraints and emerging opportunities in an increasingly converged ecosystem.