How Companies Can Find and Retain Diverse Talent   

Diversity, equity and inclusion are important aspects of people functions within the content and media industry. Even over the last 5 years, there have been significant changes in the sector. On Episode 38 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we spoke with Krystal Brendel, the Vice President of People at Quickplay, about how companies can recruit and retain more diverse teams. Read on for her insights. 

“A really big thing, especially in video tech, is that when you think about labour, you think of it as one big thing. But, within labour, there are lots of different things to consider. People don’t have the right experience. Let’s say I’m looking for someone with 10 years of OTT experience. Quickplay is a remote company where people still have to report to the office sometimes, so we’re not fully remote. That means that the people we can work with are an even smaller group. There isn’t always a lot of diversity within that group. 

My inclination is to look at how we can change the front end in the long term, because I might not be able to find all of these wonderful, diverse people who can contribute to the next iteration of our platform, with 10 to 15 years of OTT experience, who are open to our working model. I can’t create them from nothing. I’m not a magician. What I can do is think about how I can connect with people who are starting on the right path to be employed by us one day. 

How can I create paths into the front end in tech? I make sure that I’m partnering with organizations or communities that maybe aren’t aware of the video tech space. We partner with an organization in Toronto called the ONYX INITIATIVE, and their sole purpose is to partner with college graduates from the black community in Canada and connect them with companies that are looking for talent. They help these graduates create spaces outside of just looking for a job. All the ONYX scholars go through an introductory process that gives them soft-skill training and professional communication experience. 

They also have mentorship programs, internship partnerships and career fairs that we have participated in. That builds brand recognition with these graduates. Every summer, we hire a few ONYX interns, bring them in and get them to participate in technical and non-technical teams. It’s not as easy as saying we’re going to hire diverse candidates and check this box, because you also want to hear the person who is going to do the job the best. We’re planting seeds and investing in the future of the industry.”

To hear more from Krystal, tune into Episode 38 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Improving Adaptability in Content & Media  

Change is a fundamental part of the content and media industry. But how can people and companies adapt to those changes without losing touch with where they started? On Episode 37 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we spoke with Mitch Askenas, the Executive Director, Video Platform – Head of Commercial, Americas at Comcast Technology Solutions, about how he has been handling changes in his company recently, and his advice for anyone who is going through something similar. Read on for his insights. 

How has the industry changed over the years since you joined?

The industry has evolved tremendously overall, but fundamentally, viewers still want to watch content. Back in the day, content was provided to you on a traditional television channel, and you watched what was delivered to you. Over time, there have been inventions that have allowed us to watch content on demand, first on VHS tapes and DVDs, and then on streaming platforms. The industry has thoroughly evolved from a push media to a medium where viewers can watch what they want, when they want, where they want, and how they want to watch it. 

How have you adapted to those changes over your time in the industry as well?

Well, adapting is fun. You adapt by trying to invent new processes, and that’s both on the engineering side and on the selling side. In my career, I’ve evolved from being an engineer and inventing and running engineering teams to moving into the sales world and managing sales teams, but in both roles, I’ve still had to adapt to change. 

Adapting to change is the key to success across everyone’s career and everyone’s business, but many things don’t change at all. Things like selling your ideas will always stay the same. Whether you’re an engineer or a salesperson, your job is to get your ideas sold to your audience, which can be your management team or your customers. The fact that we have to sell our ideas hasn’t changed, even though the things that we sell have. Some things always stay the same, even while things change. It’s been fun learning that, but I had to learn it mostly on my own. 

From an industry perspective, it has been great to see where new technologies were going to take us, but I never knew if the industry was ready to embrace them. I think circumstances change, and everybody’s embracing the change of allowing viewers and subscribers to access content wherever, whenever. The key to all this is, how do you make money doing that with your content? The challenge of the industry today is ‘How do you monetise the huge amount of content in your library?’

How do you stay motivated throughout those challenges?

Times of change are actually times of opportunity. The question is, how do you embrace that opportunity? For me, change is exciting. It means things are moving forward. Typically, they’re opportunities to do new things and to be part of that change. To me, that’s a huge motivation. If you can muster that mindset and bring those change opportunities forward, especially to your customers, you can help them see that they can be part of the change and be successful as a result. 

Yes, it’s hard, there’s no question about it, but if you’re always thinking about your customers rather than what the thing you’re selling is, you’ll help them make their business better. Especially in times of change, keeping their business moving forward, and helping them figure out how to weather those storms, creates an opportunity to find synergy between your two companies. That’s how it’s an opportunity. 

What tips would you now pass on that have worked for you and your team?

Everybody, no matter what position they’re in, has great ideas. The real question is, how do you get those ideas promoted? Early in my career, when I came up with those great ideas, they were all about me. When I would go and talk about them, they never really resonated because it was all about me. Thankfully, a wise person in my past told me, ‘Don’t make it about yourself. Make it about them.’ That was the seminal moment of learning how to sell. It didn’t matter that it was my idea, it was all about them. When I changed my mindset to figure out how what I was selling could provide value and success to the people I was talking to, everything changed. 

Selling is about three things. Number one is showing the potential customer that the risk of change is much lower than the risk of staying the same. The second is to demonstrate to the buyer why they’re going to be personally successful if they invest in you. The last one is don’t tell them what it is and don’t tell them what it does. Instead, focus on what it means to their business. If you can accomplish those three things, you will be more successful.

To hear more about keeping up with the changes in the industry, tune into Episode 37 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Creating AI-Enabled Sports Media Experiences 

AI has enabled the sports media sector to give viewers unparalleled access to behind-the-scenes and additional content. On Episode 36 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, Elliot Renton, the SVP of Asia Pacific at Magnifi, joined us to share his own inside look at what’s happening behind the scenes of the sports media sector. He explained how AI is shaping the future of sports media, as well as sharing his predictions for how Magnifi will be helping to shape that future directly. Read on for more. 

How do you see AI shaping how fans experience sports, both live and digitally? 

I actually think we’re underestimating the role of AI in sports. I think it will penetrate every facet of the industry over time. It’s already impacting fan engagement and how we’re delivering content through the back-end workflows. Stadiums, ticketing, coaching, and players’ wearable technology are all workflows that can link together on top of what we’re doing in broadcast and social media. I think we will be looking back in a decade’s time at the role of AI, and as long as it’s been deployed responsibly and done in the right way, we’ll be looking at looking back at it as a transformative technology, just like the smartphone has been. Some areas are going to be slower than others, and you’re still going to need the human element, but I think as a technology for the sports industry, AI will continue to be very impactful in the future. 

What is Magnifi’s vision for revolutionising how we interact with sports content?

We as a business are about four years old and have grown from India to become a US-India business that’s doing some fantastic revenues. We work with some really great customers, like the IPL in India, some football federations in Europe and broadcasters. Earlier this year, we launched our US operations on a commercial level and are seeing explosive growth in that. The third pillar has been Asia in the last few months. We have to target the APAC market in a very different way because of its fragmented nature. But, technology-wise, we have a vision to provide AI solutions that can deliver content from the field of play to consumers working B2B with different businesses to understand their challenges. And we’re looking at how to venture into other content areas as well. 

In sports, we provide a set of solutions that are more flexible, affordable, and very easy to work with as a technology. What we’re fundamentally doing is asking business leaders, ‘How can you harness this AI-driven revolution and create more meaningful connections with your fans?’ There’s been a lot of talk about personalisation, but how you package that up from platform to platform will vary. So will the way that you harness the data that comes from that. We share data sets with all of our customers, and they can mix that up with their first-party data. 

Sports businesses in general are behind the curve when it comes to harnessing data. This is spoken about at events that we all go to all the time, but I think the opportunities around that are vast, both from a fan engagement point of view and an advertising or sponsorship point of view. We’re challenging business leaders to think about how they will bring technology into the fold, but we’re coming at it in a very flexible and easy manner. We’re asking, ‘How can you deploy that? How can you connect that to your existing thing? What technologies do you have to drive growth?’ That creates really exciting discussions. 

In this part of the world – certainly in APAC, where people are not quite sure what they want to do – we play a bit more of a consultative role. Then we have other customers who are very clear on what they want to do and how they want to deploy technology, and then it’s up to us to try and win that business. So there are some creative things going on in the sports industry, especially in this part of the world as well as in Europe, the UK and the US, where there are some really exciting developments happening too. 

To hear more from Elliot, tune into Episode 36 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here.

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

IBC 2024’s Key Take-Aways

IBC conferences and trade shows are the content and media industry’s biggest events of the year. On Episode 35 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we were joined by Till Sudworth, the CMO and Head of BU Video at NPAW, to discuss his experience of attending the event. He also shared his predictions for the future of the industry based on what he saw at the event. Read on for Till’s insights. 

IBC 2024 was obviously a really big show for you guys. What were some of the key takeaways from this year’s show?

It was a super good trade show. It was almost the most successful IBC we’ve ever had in terms of leads, people stopping by our booth, and in terms of willingness to do business. So it was a very positive IBC, which kind of surprised us a little bit, because we know in the industry there have been a lot of cost cuttings and layoffs among our customers and prospects. I was surprised by the positive atmosphere and mentality that we saw at the IBC. 

On the other side, it was an important trade show for us. IBC is always one of the most important trade shows for us in the world. But this year was specifically important as we launched a lot of new products, and we made an important step in the transformation from being a one-product company to a multi-product company. That was very interesting, and actually, a lot of fun, because we can now serve a lot of different requirements from our customers and prospects. 

Were there any new solutions or products that you wanted to highlight from the show?

It was our first step into the European market. Although the IBC is not a European show, it was held in Europe, which was important for us to launch a lot of new products on the other side. One of the products was an AI product, which was all over the place at the IBC. We were working with data, which is an obvious use case, but we had worked on our supportive AI pretty hard for the last few years, and we finally have a great product which enables and supports our customers to engage with data more easily than before. Our tool not only proactively shows you any anomalies in your system but also helps our users access the data more easily. Our customers that we showed it to really loved it.

Based on your experience this year, how would you say the industry’s moving forward, and what are some key opportunities?

Honestly, I didn’t have a single moment at the IBC to walk around and see anything. So, unfortunately, I cannot say how the industry is moving in terms of other vendors, but what I see from our customers that I spoke to at the event is that there’s light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the industry becoming more stable. There were a lot of layoffs and cost-cutting that were necessary for companies to become profitable in the past two years or three years. A lot of them did their homework already, while some are still in the middle of a transformation, but at least from our perspective, we see the atmosphere becoming better. Ultimately, platforms need to understand the end users and the quality of their experience to remain compatible or competitive in the industry. 

To hear more from Till, tune into Episode 35 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Evolving Challenges Within Sports Broadcasting 

Sports broadcasting is an evolving space, with viewers demanding an increasingly wide range of options and additional content. On Episode 34 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we spoke with Anna Lockwood, the Head of Media & Sport at Telstra International, about the challenges she faces when creating innovative solutions to these challenges. Read on for her insights. 

How do you manage such a diverse range of sports broadcasting requirements across different markets and regions?

We have a very international team at Telstra, and we’ve got people who are across all of our different projects in support roles. We also have people who are dedicated to a specific project, who will just work on that event or that project. We scale and grow depending on what we’re doing at any one time, with new staff members, freelancers, and consultants. There’s a lot of bounce in our talent pool, but we’ve got a core set of on-staff team members who do a lot of work across the globe and across projects. We augment that core team depending on what we need for a particular project or event. 

When I started at Telstra, there were 10 people in our little media business unit, and now we have over 200. I think that underlying growth will continue, but at any given time, especially a summer like this one in 2024, when there have been so many amazing sporting events happening, we’ll bounce and grow our talent pool to accommodate the projects that we’re delivering. 

What are some challenges associated with streaming and broadcasting such live events?

We try to prepare everything that we can control, but the real magic is in reacting to things that we can’t control and completely unexpected things. There are plenty of surprises in the live sports environment. It could be technology, infrastructure, or it could be a change in programming, but being very agile is always important. 

It’s always about putting the customer first. We know that whatever happens, we will be the best partner we can be at any time, no matter what region or time zone they’re in or what event they’re doing. Having that DNA in our business to support customers during these very high-profile events has helped our services wrap around their requirements. Having the experience and razor-sharp focus helps us respond as quickly and as effectively as possible when things do go wrong. That’s what gives our customers trust in our services and is the reason they keep on coming back and working with us again and again.

How do you see the world of sports broadcasting evolving over the next five years?

I think there’ll be a lot of continuation of the trends that we’re seeing today, like remote production. Being able to produce from anywhere, no matter where the event is, is moving workflows and capabilities onto cloud platforms and distributed working models. Those are all trends which accelerated during COVID-19, and we don’t see any slowdown at the moment. 

How people experience and view sports is also always evolving. So how, as a services provider, can we use our infrastructure and technology to create the immersive and collaborative viewer experiences that our customers are exploring at the moment? That’s where I see a lot of growth and development happening. 

To hear more from Anna, tune into the rest of her episode of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Changing Talent Topics in Content & Media 

The talent landscape continues to change in response to new technologies and shifting company priorities. On Episode 33 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we spoke with Mathias Guille, the VP of Cloud Platforms at Broadpeak, about his perspectives on these changes. After an impressive global career, he’s seen the changing workforce from a different angle, giving him some great insights on the topic. Read on to find out more. 

What do you think the key talent topics that we need to address are?

Right now, what’s happening in the industry is pretty interesting because most of our customers are facing the competition of Netflix, Disney, and Amazon Prime, but we are working with traditional broadcasters. We are working with operators. We are working with people who are trying to compete with new monopolies. There’s definitely a benchmark on quality, but there is also competition around the agility and the speed of deployment. If you look at people like Netflix and Amazon Prime, they always innovate. They always bring new features to the market. And if you want to compete with that, you need to have the same speed. Our customers need vendors who can bring that agility. 

What it means for our people and those working with us is that they need to deal with the capacity for our customers’ changing plans, pivot, and truly understand their businesses. One of the characteristics I’m looking for in my team is the capacity to deal with ambiguity. If you look at a job from Apple, one of the requirements is having the capacity to deal with ambiguity, and I think that’s a benchmark for the whole industry. Your customers will change direction and priority, and it’s not your fault, but you need to adapt to it. Talent needs to be able to not necessarily understand everything but still be able to move forward and execute tasks in changing environments. 

It’s okay to fail or be wrong at some point. You can try again, and I’m sure your customer can understand that as well. However, dealing with ambiguity in our industry is incredibly important. That’s what I’m looking for right now when I come to hire people for my team. 

Have you seen hiring trends change in the last five years?

One of the things that we need to build within the team is the capacity to do continuous integration and continuous development. CICD experience was a must when we created the team, and we had to change how we developed software. Everyone is talking about DevOps, and it’s a very important term, but it’s often quite misunderstood by the industry. DevOps doesn’t mean that your developers need to do full ops. It means thinking about the operation. In our team, we have people focusing on the development of the back end or front end, but every one of them does a little bit of operation. It’s also about making sure that the thing that you develop can be automated so you have to spend less time on operation activities in the future. It can be monitored so that you can detect problems in advance and act proactively. 

In terms of skills, having experience in continuous integration and continuous development (CICD) and DevOps is important. Being able to understand hyperscalers and how they are working is also integral. At the end of the day, if you can find people to do DevOps, you’ll have a strong foundation for video streaming itself. If your people have experience running a platform on AWS and know HLS, dash, DRM, etc, you’ll be able to become the best. 

To find out more about ongoing talent topics in the industry, tune into The Content & Media Matters Podcast here

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Transformation in Content & Media

With so many social and technological changes happening around the world, transformation is a key skill for any content and media company that wants to stay relevant. On Episode 32 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast we spoke with Chris Pulis, the Chief Technology Officer at Globecast, who has a huge amount of experience when it comes to leading transformation projects. Read on for his insights into the process. 

How do you know when to kick off a transformation project?

You have to be in tune with the business. I came into those early projects as someone who saw it as ‘this is something that management has made a decision about’, and I just became part of the overall plan. Later in life, as I ran businesses, I could see that there were changes happening in the business and identify which of those are different areas of the business needed to be addressed. 

I realised that if we want to stay relevant, we have to move off of antennas, because satellites are moving into terrestrial networks like the cloud. We need to start making investments and changes so that we’re not behind. To me, one of the worst things in the world is hearing about changes for the first time from a customer. Our goal is to make sure that we’re ready for that and that we’re bringing these solutions to the customers before they even know what they are. 

But, transformation efforts are difficult. Change drives anxiety, and everybody reacts a little differently to it. Some people have an easier time with it, but it bothers some people a lot. You need to be understanding of that and have a plan that keeps empathy in mind and that also includes education or training. Your plan has to enable everybody to be successful at doing this new thing. As a management team, you will be a support group for this change that’s coming. At the end of the day, it’s about people, and enabling an environment or culture that understands that it’s not going to be easy for everybody.

How do you make sure that teams and individuals are engaged in these transformation projects?

I think it’s important to be very transparent with people. In the entertainment industry, some people have a philosophy of ‘Knowledge is power, and I’m going to keep this knowledge, and I’m not going to share any of it’. I actually subscribe to the opposite philosophy, which says that the importance of power is to share it. By that I mean making sure that everybody understands what the plan is, what the goals are, and if for some reason something’s not clear, then creating an opportunity to come together and clearly define what that is. If everybody knows how things are going to evolve, there will be less anxiety. 

I use town hall meetings on a frequent basis to make sure everybody understands the plan. I take pictures of everything and I share them all the time. I want everybody to feel like they have an understanding of the process. There shouldn’t be any surprises about an ongoing transformation. 

How do you measure success within transformations?

It is a challenge. When you go into a transformation project, you need to put together a plan that says what we are supporting for the business, what we are enabling from an addressable market standpoint, and what new revenue streams we are enabling as a result of this transformation. Sometimes it’s strictly an efficiency play, because you’re moving from a technology that doesn’t scale to a technology that’s significantly scalable with a low incremental cost. You’ve got to sit down and look at the business plan. You can’t just say, ‘We have a new technology and we’re going to adopt it’, you have to think, ‘How is this AI going to enhance our customer experience?’ Figure out the business plan first before you implement the transformational exercise to make that change. 

To hear more about leading transformations, tune into Episode 32 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here.

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Generative AI’s Impact on the Content & Media Industry

As AI continues to develop, so does its impact on the content and media industry. To help us understand the impact this phenomenon will have on the future of work in our industry, we invited Micky Edwards, the VP of Business Development EMEA & APAC at TAG Video Systems, to speak to us on The Content & Media Matters Podcast. Read on for his insights on AI. 

What is generative AI, and how does it differ from other types of AI?

Generative AI is an artificial intelligence that can react to things in real time as they are going on. Artificial intelligence has been around for quite some time, but it’s all been pre-programmed, so it was looking at and understanding things that were already known. Generative AI is the next step up, and it’s looking at how it can bring that information together to start making different things. The fact that it can start to do contextual things like understand the context of what’s going on, and then produce some text is incredible. 

What is the impact of AI on jobs and the future of work? 

A lot of people are worried that generative AI will take jobs away, but I think it’ll allow people to go and do something different. I think it will positively impact the future of work, because it may allow people to have a better sort of work-home balance as well as do some of these more repetitive tasks that you have within the industry. These tasks that would take somebody many hours to do can now be handled by generative AI while they go and do something else, giving them more free time as well. 

The whole process that we’re going through at the moment is learning about AI’s limits and how it will help us to look at our work-life balance. It may be that you’ll end up doing more job sharing, where you’re doing part of a job, but the other part of the job is being done by a machine, which means that somebody else can come in and do something else, while that’s going on. I’m not totally convinced that it’s a bad thing. 

AI is also expanding the knowledge of what’s achievable with programming and operations, across not just our industry, but multiple industries. There’s always going to be a requirement for some things, like having a person stand behind a camera, and they have robotics and AI controlling it, but actually, a skilled operator can still get those shots that a computer system just can’t process. So yes, AI will come in and make things different, but I’m not sure it’ll be a bad difference. There will definitely be some upsides to not having humans do the repetitive jobs within the industry.

How do you see generative AI being used in the industry as a whole?

I think where we’ll see AI really coming to the forefront is in a new generation of FAST channels. So these are free to air, without subscription, ad-supported television. Broadcasters want to reach out to produce these as cheaply as possible because the only revenue they’re getting is through ad insertion. So, we can see a point where generative AI will have access to the content, and there’ll be some rules that it has to follow, but it’ll be able to take that content and be able to produce these FAST channels, and then self-manage them. It’s already doing ad selections and things like that, depending on the content type and by looking at the people that are watching it and being able to select the correct ads for them. That will help some of the broadcasters who are perhaps struggling a little bit to make any money out of FAST channels. I see that it as definitely a positive for them to be able to use generative AI to help do that. 

To hear more from Micky, tune into Episode 31 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Reflections from IBC Part 1: Reasons for Optimism

A Look at Market Sentiment and Future Trends

The general sentiment at this year’s IBC was markedly different from 2023—what a difference a year makes!

I think we can all agree that last year’s edition was probably one to forget. The buy side wasn’t buying, the sell side wasn’t selling, and everyone seemed to be on the hunt for a new job! Fast forward to this year, and the mood was noticeably more positive.

While it’s hard to say whether people have simply adjusted to a new normal where the industry isn’t quite as buoyant, or whether we’ve hit the bottom and are slowly beginning to climb back up, there was a noticeable sense of optimism across most areas of the market.

In conversations with those on the Operator and Platform owner side, it’s clear that while new projects and initiatives are in the works, there isn’t a distinct direction of travel just yet. Efficiency drives remain front and centre for many, and it feels like that chapter isn’t quite closed. This will inevitably impact their external investment in products, platforms, and services for the foreseeable future.

Broadly speaking, there’s also a feeling that there’s simply too much choice in the market, and many expect to see further vendor consolidation over the coming years.

For the vendors, the last 12 to 18 months have been challenging, but once again, optimism seemed to be the order of the day. Many are hard at work exploring new business cases, identifying new markets, and figuring out when they can truly say they have a bulletproof AI solution!

Speaking of AI, it wasn’t the hot topic some might have expected. In a market where cloud has been the buzzword for years but the majority still maintain on-prem solutions, I can’t help but wonder if the mass adoption of AI might be further off than many anticipate. But honestly, I don’t think anyone really knows for sure, which is both exciting and a little unnerving! For someone who’s been in this space for years, it feels like we’re all bracing for something big, but what exactly? Time will tell.

On the talent front, there’s some good news. Hiring is back on the agenda for more companies compared to 12 months ago. It’s been an incredibly tough period for a lot of people seeking new roles, and I genuinely hope the tide is beginning to turn.

All in all, IBC was a great show, and as always, it was fantastic to catch up with so many familiar faces. This industry really does have a love affair with IBC, even the cynics come around once they’re there!

Here’s to brighter times ahead—let’s keep the momentum going.

The Future of VR & XR

Significant advances in VR and XR have occurred in recent years. On Episode 30 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we were joined by Gianluca Meardi, the Co-founder and General Manager of V-Nova, to discuss how these advances will impact the industry. As this technology advances, the way we consume content will also change. Read on to find out more. 

What innovations are you most excited about seeing in VR and XR?

I’m really excited about the possibility of transforming the movie entertainment scene. I believe that what we are doing is a singularity in in movie industry, and is the most important innovation in that industry following the introduction of sound, because it’s the first time that you are able to step into a movie and move in any direction inside it. Obviously, you need XR and stereoscopic displays, but these will come a bit later as we are currently concentrating on XR headsets. But it’s really impressive because you can enter a movie and do things like circle around Kung Fu Panda or look behind Tom Cruise in a movie. You have never been able to step into a movie with that cinematic quality before. 

It’s not a video game. This is in real Hollywood quality in terms of definition, graphics, light, etc. If you consider that a single frame of Avatar, the James Cameron movie, is rendered for between one and seven hours per frame, and you have 24-48 frames per second, then this experience is impossible to do in real time with a video game engine. To have that kind of quality, we pre-render the scenes so that each frame is not a frame anymore but it’s a cube of space where you are able to move around and experience it. 

Normally, you would experience a movie on your sofa, so we are aiming to give you a shorter experience that you can be more immersed in physically. For instance, we are now producing a musical video XR where you can really experience the song together with a lot of special effects, etc. When we create a physical space for people to explore cinema in the same way, that is going to be really impressive. 

Do you think that these innovations in XR are gonna change the way that individuals consume content moving forward?

I think that we are placing together different facts. On one side, people are consuming more and more content because during the pandemic people got used to more streaming solutions etc. I think that XR and VR solutions will gain more and more importance over time because of the release of products like Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest 3, with PlayStation, Samsung and Google entering the arena of VR and XR headsets in the coming months. There are a lot of different types, and I really believe that we have gotten to a moment in time where they are okay in terms of definition, and they are getting lighter and more powerful. 

We are working with Qualcomm to leverage their chip sector to perfect the experience in our technology. Our consumers always love going to see movie experiences in movie theatres, but if you try to put together that viewing habit and this new revolution in terms of VR or XR headsets, your viewers will not have the same flat experience. You need to give the audience something more than a flat view, and this cannot be done with VR 360 videos because they make you feel sick due to the lack of parallax in those experiences. 

This is what we are proposing: the first experience with cinema-like quality, where you are able to move and see whatever you should in terms of parallax geometry variation. That is not possible with other technology—you need technology like ours to move around the scene with a full parallax full of geometry variations iterated. This is the most important invention, I think, in our technology.

To find out more about the advances in VR and XR technology, tune into Episode 30 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here

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