How HBO Max Approaches Streaming Ops as a Product Not a Service
In this clip from his Streaming Media Connect 2025 keynote, Warner Bros. Discovery distinguished video platform engineer Neal Roberts discusses what he calls “3 Up,” the process of upgrading HBO Max live content from SDR to HDR, uprezzing from 1080i to 1080p, and upmixing Stereo or 5.1 audio to Dolby Atmos, as an example of how his team “productizes” streaming ops and ensures that they can have confidence in all of the audio and video experiences they deliver on HBO Max, regardless of any deficiencies in the source content or any assumptions made by platforms viewers use to watch it.
The ‘3 Up’ Theory
Andy Beach, founder and principal at Alchemy Creations, begins the conversation by telling Roberts, “I’ve heard you talk about treating operations really as a product versus just a service. Can you unpack that a little bit for us and what you mean by that?”
Roberts describes how Warner Bros. Discovery leverages his “3 Up” theory for HBO Max and other live streams the company distributes. It entails “upmapping the content from SDR to HDR, uprezzing, in our case, 1080i to 1080p. We do get native 1080p content in as well. Sometimes it’s downrezzing from 4K for distribution and 1080p. We don’t really distribute native 4K content live either. And then upmixing the audio either from Stereo to 5.1 or 5.1 to Dolby Atmos when we don’t get it natively. But we’re not trying to trick customers there, or subscribers. We’re trying to leverage these technologies to give us the confidence that we’re delivering the most consistent audio and video experience.”
Roberts notes that he works closely with content and production teams to preserve their creative intent. He sees his job as delivering the creative the right way. “By doing this, we take away the consumer device’s ability to make assumptions. So if you deliver [SDR] to an HDR display, it stretches that. You’re at the mercy of that TV manufacturer, so we can’t be confident in what we’re sending to the end user,” he says. “And the same with audio. We’re removing the ability to upmix because we’re delivering it in the larger container. This all requires pristine source, which we have. We just had to reimagine how to get that source out of production and into our direct-to-consumer flows, low compression, and the feedback we’ve gotten from subscribers has been really, really good.” Roberts isn’t seeing a lot of complaints on X or Reddit, where he says people usually go to air their grievances. “We actually get a whole lot of praise, so it’s working very well,” he adds.
From On-Prem to Cloud Master Control
“It’s nice when you’re getting the customer feedback to show the positive side of it,” Beach agrees. “You were talking there a little bit about the low-quality assets, but I know at the same time, I’ve heard you talk about the issues of not sending a 25-megabit stereo feed into a premium streaming product. How does the conversation look with the broadcast side when you’re dealing with the quality bar end to end?” he asks.
Roberts calls this “an interesting path” for Warner Bros. Discovery. “The day we launched live on Max, we simultaneously moved from on- prem 2110-based master control to a cloud master control solution in broadcast.”
“Wow. So that was a big day,” Beach chimes in.
“It was a gigantic day, right? Because it didn’t just affect us. It affected all of our MVPD partners as well,” Roberts continues. “They were taking these newly created feeds at the same time. And initially when broadcast teams on our side were making these decisions to move to cloud master, there was an assumption that we would just take the same feed that we were delivering to an MVPD partner. I came back and said, ‘Hey, let’s not adopt the one-size-fits-all approach here. I think we can learn a lot, not just for our outputs, but all the outputs.’”
Improving Quality Across the Board
Roberts reiterates that based on his “3 Up” theory, “I knew we needed this better source because we knew we wanted to deliver this content using Dolby’s technology through Vision and Atmos. So I actually was able to leverage the shift from on-prem master control to cloud master as an opportunity to really say, ‘Look, this is supposed to be flexible.’” He sees this flexibility as an obvious benefit of going to the cloud and credits the demos he’s performed, “where we brought a rack in and we processed all this content and the way we wanted to deliver it through cloud master. We gained confidence in the broadcast and the content teams on what that process looked like. And it was just a downhill chase from there to make sure that we were getting all these pieces for HBO Max.
Roberts adds, “And ultimately, a lot of what we learned improving the video quality coming out for HBO Max, we’ve now also applied on the broadcast side for our linear distribution partners as well. So we’ve upped the quality in a number of places, not just to ourselves.”
“It’s almost like you had to act as a middle-ground customer advocate for the places downstream to make sure you were getting the right thing so you could build the correct packaging and payloads for all of those places and not just go with what’s always been done,” Beach says.
Roberts agrees, noting, “Most MVPDs, or especially all the vMVPDs now, are having to deliver progressive signal. So if we control that deinterlace, it’s one less opportunity for that content to be stepped on downstream after we distribute it.”
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