SPORT /// See the Sports Now Channel on www.tvtechnology.com for more coverage of the Sochi Games and beyond.


NBC Expands Multiplatform Coverage


/// NBC's new US-based sports facility to play major role for 'split' Sochi broadcast, says James Careless


ith its planned coverage of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in


Sochi, NBC Sports Group is once again pushing the envelope of IP-based, multiplatform video production.


This time, Web content is the big winner. Besides the traditional mix of live Web streams, VOD and clips, NBC is creating a series of fully- produced/anchored Web-only Olympic TV shows for viewers on smartphones, tablets, and PCs. IP has become the dominant


transmission standard for NBC’s Olympics production. “In fact, almost everything we do will be moving by IP,” said David Mazza, senior vice president and CTO of NBC Sports Group and NBC Olympics. “With the exception of a few hard lines for backup, our coverage will be moving via two 10G fibre optic pipes from Sochi to our 300,000 square-foot production centre in Stamford, Conn., and 30 Rock in New York City.”


The content will be a mix of


JPEG2000 and Ericsson-encoded MPEG-4 video streams. The J2K and some of the MPEG-4 streams will be fed into Medialinks MD8000 HD over IP transmission devices, while the rest of the MPEG-4 streams will travel over Cisco IP routers—all


of which will travel over the two 10G circuits provided by Rostelecom and AT&T. There will be 55 HD feeds from Sochi to Stamford, and 14 U.S. feeds from Stamford to Sochi. As for NBC’s Avid media


asset management (MAM) system? What was a cutting- edge production solution at the 2008 Beijing Olympics has now become “business as usual.” "We’ve not only worked the bugs out of our MAM, but set it up as our main production system in Stamford,” Mazza explained. “As a result, for this Games, we are just ‘remoting’ the system out of Stamford, with the major functionality being handled back there.”


WEB MORE & MORE IMPORTANT


With plans to produce 539


hours of broadcast programming during the Games’ two week run Feb.7–23 (103 hours more than it produced at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver) television remains the star player for NBC in Sochi. Content will be shown on NBC (185 hours), NBC Sports Network (NBCSN; 230) CNBC (36), MSNBC (45), and USA Network (43). However, the network plans


to provide more than a thousand hours of live streaming, VOD content and clips on


NBCOlympics.com. And that’s not all: In an effort to attract “people who are at their desks,” NBCOlympics.com will produce live anchored coverage from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET. The “Gold Zone” show, modelled after the NFL’s “Red Zone,” will be produced with its own control room and studio in Stamford. “Gold Zone will move from event to event, spending some time at each to give viewers a sense of what’s happening,” Mazza said. NBCOlympics.com will also


produce “Olympic Ice,” a half- hour 5:30 p.m. ET streaming video show focused on figure skating, and “Olympics News Desk,” a series of short Olympics news updates streamed throughout the day and anchored by Comcast SportsNet host Julie Donaldson. Gold Zone and Olympics Ice will only be available to authenticated cable/satellite TV subscribers while Olympics News Desk will be open to the public. The network has also created a free “NBC Sports Live Extra App,” for Android and iOS and aimed at authenticated cable and satellite TV subscribers. NBC has tapped Akamai to


help it stream all 98 Olympic events, including every medal competition, event highlights, and athlete interviews and


profiles. “We will be providing authenticated viewers with direct access to NBC’s live coverage, and storing/serving its VOD content as needed,” said Kurt Michel, Akamai’s product marketing director. “With over 140,000 servers in 90 countries over 1,200 networks, we have the capacity to keep up with peak demand; even during the Olympics.”


LONDON ROOTS NBC only had a gap of 17 months between the 2012 London Games and the 2014 Sochi Games. “As a result, there really wasn’t time to develop and properly test a range of new systems,” said Mazza. “This is why the core of what we’re bringing to Sochi is very much what we had in London.” Nevertheless, NBC’s Sochi


operation is impressive in its own right. The network is bringing about 2,000 people to man its two large studios in the International Broadcast Centre, the various Games venues, and the Mountain Broadcast Centre (MBC) in the hills where skiing and other Alpine events are being held. As for equipment, NBC will


be using Sony MVS-7000X production switchers, Sony OLED


//////////////// 8 TV Technology Asia-Pacific I February-March 2014 >


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28