The 2016 Olympics are gone (along with Ryan Lochte's dignity). As always, there were memorable moments of victory and defeat, new world records, and awe-inspiring displays of athleticism. Those of us who couldn't make it to the events had unprecedented access to coverage. In other words, from a technology perspective, you could say there were, simply put, some awe-inspiring displays.
In Brazil, Globosat and NET had the goal of producing and transmitting 100% of the events live over regular pay TV distribution along with IP distribution. For NET (a pay TV provider with more than 50% of the Brazilian market), 90% of the games were delivered over 16 broadcast channels, with an additional 40 IP channels delivered to multiscreen devices and hybrid set-top boxes.
"We were able to deliver everything live, on demand, on any different screen," said Marcio Carvalho, director of marketing for NET.
This is the first time NET used both DVB and IP for live broadcasting services, including a dedicated experimental transmission in 4K. As for Globosat, it became one of the first to deploy SMPTE 2022-6 (SDI over IP). Globosat did the post-production for NET, which used Elemental Technologies' solutions to process in the cloud.
"Everything is cloud-based and virtualized. We have the capability to scale up or down depending on demand," Carvalho said. "This is a starting point. From now on we will rely more and more on this kind of application and are learning as we go."
One of the major Olympic takeaways from a tech perspective is that software defined video is not just a promise - it exists today, said Elemental CEO Sam Blackman. "Using the same centralized, unified software stack to do all processing simplifies operations and reduces the economics."
Unification is across the content delivery chain, including multiscreen, but also using the SDN platform to provide end-to-end streaming for companies. The cloud-based solution and the unified workflow allowed Globosat to increase channels from 40 to 44 two weeks before the start of the Olympics.
"This gives you the sense of the power of a software defined architecture," Blackman said.
Among other Olympic news:
- Imagine Communications provided Dega Broadcast Systems with its Platinum IP3 router for use in facilities built by Dega for BBC in Rio.
- The games in Rio set a live streaming record. Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) and NBCUniversal reported that Olympic live streaming had topped 1.05 billion minutes by Aug. 10. This was 232% higher than the equivalent day in 2012.
- NBC Olympics provided virtual reality coverage of the games to authenticated users of compatible Samsung Galaxy smartphones via the NBC Sports app. Coverage included approximately 85 hours of video programming.