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.