Case Study

IMAX Corporation · NAB 2025

Two thousand square feet of convention floor. The brief: make it feel like a living room.

IMAX’s Streaming & Consumer Technology division came to NAB 2025 to prove that theatre-grade visuals belong on home devices. Pure Exhibits built a 40 × 50 island at Booth #W1401 in the Las Vegas Convention Center that made the proof environmental: an enclosed theatre with controlled light and audio, 65” OLED stations running live StreamAware and StreamSmart comparisons, a VisionScience wall built around the Viewer Score, and a residential living room where the partnership conversations happened.

IMAX 40x50 custom island exhibit at NAB 2025 in the Las Vegas Convention Center with navy walls, electric blue accents, and two-tier overhead signage
40 × 50
Island Exhibit — Booth #W1401
LVCC
West Hall, Las Vegas
April 5–9, 2025
NAB Show Dates
55,000
Attendees From 160 Countries

Intimacy, at NAB scale

NAB is the epicenter of media technology — 55,000 professionals from 160 countries, nearly 1,100 exhibitors including Adobe, AWS, Canon, Cisco, and Sony. IMAX arrived to demonstrate StreamAware, StreamSmart, and VisionScience — technologies whose entire pitch is that cinema quality survives the trip into the home. A booth that felt industrial would contradict the product before a demo began.

The brief also split its audience in two: the broadcast engineer who evaluates streaming at the protocol level, and the content executive who needs to see what IMAX Enhanced looks like on a certified device through partnerships like Disney+. Both had to get uncompromised experiences — simultaneously, in the same 2,000 square feet, under convention-hall fluorescents.

“IMAX Enhanced brings the IMAX experience home — theatre-quality visuals, immersive DTS:X audio, and expanded aspect ratios on certified devices. It’s not a compromise. It’s the next chapter.”
IMAX Streaming & Consumer Technology — NAB 2025
Dark navy walls and backlit electric blue panels of the IMAX Enhanced exhibit at NAB 2025

From cinema to living room

Navy and Science Blue architectural palette of the IMAX exhibit at NAB 2025 with backlit display panels
01

The Cinematic Palette

Deep navy walls absorbing ambient light, electric Science Blue at architectural scale — portals, backlit panels, the angular two-tier sign. The contrast replays a moment every IMAX fan knows: the darkened theatre, then the logo filling the screen. And it was functional — the dark enclave let OLED and LED content be judged in conditions approaching what colorists calibrate for.

02

The Enclosed Theatre

A fully enclosed demo room with controlled lighting and premium audio — the one place on the NAB floor where StreamAware and StreamSmart could be evaluated without ambient noise, glare, or compromised angles. Serious technical evaluation requires a serious room; the booth simply brought one.

03

The Viewer Score

The VisionScience wall centered on one number: a 96, on the proprietary 0–100 Viewer Score spectrum from “Annoying” to “Good.” For engineers fluent in bitrate curves and compression artifacts, a single metric grounded in human visual perception was the shared language the pipeline has been missing — flanked by Disney+ IMAX Enhanced poster grids and a navy lounge for the deeper XVS™ conversations.

65-inch OLED HDR 4K demo stations running StreamAware and StreamSmart comparisons at the IMAX NAB 2025 exhibit
04

The OLED Stations

Two standing stations with 65” OLED HDR 4K displays running real-time streaming quality comparisons — the same content with and without IMAX’s optimization, side by side. No claims to take on faith; the difference was on screen, at eye level, for anyone who stopped.

05

The Living Room

A residential meeting space — branded furniture, ambient light, the register of a home rather than a hall — because the product’s entire thesis is that this experience belongs in one. The welcome counter alongside carried IMAX’s Emmy, credentials at the point of first contact.

Dramatic human eye installation with A Game Changer messaging at the IMAX VisionScience exhibit at NAB 2025
06

The Eye

An eight-to-ten-foot photographic installation of a human eye reflecting IMAX content, crowned “A Game Changer,” positioned at the intersection of two primary aisles. One image carried the whole VisionScience argument — the technology sees every frame the way the eye does — and drew traffic from across the West Hall before a word was exchanged.

Full view of the IMAX 40x50 island exhibit at NAB 2025 with enclosed theatre, demo stations, and glass-walled meeting rooms
The completed 40 × 50 at Booth #W1401 — a private screening room built into the middle of the West Hall.

Experience the booth

A walkthrough of the IMAX 40 × 50 at NAB 2025 — the theatre, the OLED comparisons, the Viewer Score wall, the living room, and the eye watching over all of it.

The build at a glance

40 × 50
Custom Island — 2,000 sq ft
55,000
NAB Attendees From 160 Countries
1,100
Exhibiting Companies on the Floor
Five
Zones — Theatre to Living Room
NAB Show 2025
Las Vegas Convention Center  ·  April 5–9, 2025

Cinematic quality, living room comfort

The build delivered on the paradox at the heart of IMAX’s consumer strategy: 2,000 square feet of West Hall that behaved like a private screening room. The theatre gave engineers evaluation conditions no open floor can offer; the Viewer Score gave the technical audience a number they could carry into their own pipelines; the OLED stations let the difference speak for itself; and the living room turned partnership pitches into residential-feeling consultations — the product’s proposition, practiced on the visitor.

The eye did the rest, telling 55,000 attendees where IMAX stood and what it stands on: how humans actually see. For another build on the NAB floor a year later, see MainConcept at NAB 2026.

Build the environment your product needs

Some products can be demoed on a folding table. Others need a controlled room, calibrated light, and a living-room register in the middle of a convention hall. Pure Exhibits designs and builds custom booths from 10 × 10 inlines to 40 × 50 islands for media and technology brands at NAB, CES, IBC and beyond, with fixed, transparent pricing.