Spectrum & SpatialGen:
NBA in Apple Immersive Video
How SpatialGen delivered the world's first NBA Apple Immersive Video experiences. On pre-release hardware.
Buy it once. Save every year after.
SAVED Every Year. Every Zeus.
VS. LEGACY LICENSING + CLOUD TRANSCODING
“Holy fu*k! Why isn't Apple using this? I have never seen anything better.”
The world's most demanding live workflow.
Apple Vision Pro created demand for a new tier of video infrastructure. One capable of 16K ingest, sub-millisecond synchronization, and the precise metadata requirements of Apple Immersive Video. No existing broadcast platform could deliver it. Spectrum needed a partner who could.
SpatialGen deployed the “Spectrum Front Row” experience. Front Row has the world's most technically sophisticated Apple Immersive Video streams, delivering live Los Angeles Lakers games to Vision Pro users. SpatialGen engineers embedded on-site at Spectrum's headquarters, integrating directly with fiber-optic and SDI infrastructure and deploying purpose-built encoding hardware for real-time 16K MV-HEVC compression.
The result: 10.5 billion pixels per second processed in real-time, enterprise-grade DRM, and a flawless launch that set the standard for the entire industry.
INDUSTRY RECOGNITION“SpatialGen are Immersive Assassins”
Watch: SpatialGen & Blackmagic Design on Zeus
We worked side-by-side with broadcast engineers, CDN architects, and developers to solve problems no off-the-shelf platform — or AI chatbot — could answer.
Forward-Deployed
Engineers on-site at Spectrum HQ, embedded directly in the broadcast workflow from day one.
Pre-Release Hardware
Five Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive cameras, each with unique calibration profiles.
Ship Under Pressure
NBA games have no second takes. The pipeline was battle-tested under the highest stakes in sports media.
Performance Validation
Before the public launch, Spectrum's leadership required rigorous executive testing. SpatialGen didn't just meet the benchmarks, we exceeded every one.
| KPI METRIC | TARGET THRESHOLD | SPATIALGEN ACHIEVED |
|---|---|---|
| Ingest Resolution | 8,640 x 4,320 | 16,320 x 7200 |
| Bitrate | 90 Mbps | 180 Mbps |
| Glass-to-Glass Latency | 30s | <20s |
| Frame Stability | Constant 90 fps | 90 fps, 0% dropped frames |
Five Perspectives And One Shot
Not one pre-release camera. Five. Each with its own lens profile and metadata, all flawless on game day.
The Math of Presence
To maintain visual authenticity at 90 fps, the SpatialGen real-time pipeline processes unprecedented data throughput.
Processing this in real-time while applying MV-HEVC compression, generating HLS fragments, and embedding per-frame dynamic metadata for visionOS. Entirely in one box with zero intermediate files.
Enterprise-Grade Protection
NBA content is among the most valuable intellectual property in sports. Delivering a 180 Mbps immersive feed at scale demanded DRM and distribution infrastructure built for the highest-stakes content in the world.
- checkEnd-to-end professional DRM with built-in licensing server
- checkZero-storage processing — no intermediate unencrypted copies
- checkGlobal CDN edge servers optimized for high-bitrate AIV
- checkAdaptive delivery across 8K and 10K immersive video
Technical Architecture
Under the hood of the world's most advanced live immersive streaming pipeline.
MV-HEVC Encoding Expertise
The Multiview High Efficiency Video Coding standard is the bedrock of Apple Vision Pro's immersive capabilities. It allows efficient storage and transmission of each eye by exploiting spatial redundancies between them. Optimizing this requires deep understanding of inter-view prediction, where the encoder predicts the right-eye frame based on the left-eye frame plus a disparity vector, reducing bitrate without compromising the stereoscopic effect.
visionOS Integration
With visionOS 2.0 and later, Apple introduced features like Static Foveation and Apple Positional Audio Codec (APAC). SpatialGen integrated these standards before they were publicly documented — ensuring Spectrum's content was optimized for features that competitors hadn't even heard of yet.
This Is How Broadcast Should Be.
Zeus is the same hardware and pipeline that delivered Spectrum's Front Row. Own it, run it on-prem, and skip the recurring bills.