Imagine if fans could watch their favorite sports team, experience unforgettable concerts, or witness once-in-a-lifetime opening ceremonies live on the biggest, most immersive screens. With LTN as a partner, IMAX makes it a reality.
IMAX is an innovator in entertainment technology, crafting immersive experiences that transport audiences beyond the edge of their seats to a world they’ve never imagined. Top filmmakers and studios trust IMAX to connect with audiences through powerful films, events, and experiences worldwide.
With high-resolution imagery on massive screens across nearly 1,800 locations in 90 countries and territories worldwide, IMAX continues to push boundaries. Their partnership with LTN allows them to stream even more live and alternative content experiences, including the Paris 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony, to global audiences with unmatched clarity and scale.
Challenge: Stream high-quality global events that open up new revenue channels
IMAX sought new ways to bring exclusive live events to locations worldwide, many of them for the first time in history. The goals: Attract new audiences, drive repeat visits, and generate revenue. However, acquiring, customizing, and delivering premier live events in unparalleled quality came with unique technical challenges.
Global content acquisition:
Acquiring and distributing live event feeds from diverse venues, partner broadcasters, and rights holders requires highly flexible services. Live video ingest, normalization, master control, and transport must work together to ensure a flawless experience. From Paris to Hong Kong, IMAX needed a partner that could effortlessly bring global feeds from any source to any destination.
Reliable live video distribution:
In a theater, every viewer relies on the same stream, and with live events, there are no second chances. Opting for a managed, purpose-built global IP network ensured superior reliability and lower latency. LTN provided a more dependable foundation for live video transport than protocol-only solutions and delivered the most reliable, seamless content distribution.
Real-time versioning and customization:
IMAX needed to manage content in real-time with highly specific audio optimization, bitrate, and format conversion requirements. In several IMAX locations, internet connectivity was limited to just 50 Mbps, making intelligent compression and optimization essential. Powered by IMAX VisionScienceTM technologies, namely IMAX StreamSmartTM, available on AWS Marketplace, an efficient video workflow ensured best-in-class viewing quality despite bandwidth constraints.
Custom slating:
No two locations are the same, and neither are their advertising models or commercial requirements. IMAX wanted to seamlessly enable slate switching to insert custom sponsorship spots within commercial breaks, driving new revenue while adhering to complex rights and advertising agreements.
Solution: LTN’s purpose-built IP video network
Working in tandem with rights holders, partner technology providers, and IMAX’s Streaming and Consumer Technology division, LTN helped deliver a vast range of live sports events, entertainment, and concert experiences to IMAX-connected locations. With a flexible suite of content origination, master control, versioning, and live video distribution workflows, LTN enables IMAX to reliably acquire, enrich, playout, and distribute high-quality live event feeds. LTN’s IP network, designed exclusively for video, offers IMAX live, mission-critical reliability, reach, and customization capabilities.
LTN solutions in action
“Bringing the biggest live events to highly engaged audiences enables us to expand reach for content owners while creating new and unforgettable viewer experiences,” said Dr Abdul Rehman, Chief Product Officer at IMAX. “We work with LTN because of its unique ability to reliably and efficiently distribute high-quality live video to any destination, seamlessly tailoring distribution for specific global locations with intelligent IP technology.”
— Dr Abdul Rehman, Chief Product Officer, IMAX