NBC Preps First All-HD Winter Olympics

835 Hours of Coverage on Tap from Vancouver

by George Winslow -- Multichannel News, 2/1/2010 2:53:45 PM

The 2008 Vancouver Winter Olympics (Feb. 12-28) will mark the first time a Winter Games is produced entirely in HD, with 835 hours of high-definition conten set for NBC Universal's broadcast and cable channels.


Most of NBC's core feeds will come from host broadcaster Olympic Broadcasting Service Vancouver (OBSV), said Mazza, which will have more than 400 cameras and more than 22 mobile units at the event.

"We will have another 100-plus cameras ourselves and five or six mobile units," he said. "I think the host has about 60 EVS operators and we will have another 45."

The games will be shot in 1080i with Dolby 5.1 surround sound.

Many of the cameras used by OBSV will be from Panasonic, but most of NBC's "broadcast gear is from Sony," Mazza said. The network will use Sony HD studio cameras in its International Broadcast Center facility, as well as the new PDW-F800 Sony Professional XDCAM camcorder, which handles off-speed recording and over under-cranking. Other gear from Sony will include MVS-8000 switchers and the new Sony PDW-F1600 XDCAM optical decks.

"Canon is the exclusive lens provider," Mazza added. "We keep getting slightly newer lenses from Canon and we will be trying a new Canon lens with focus assist."

Other major vendors include such companies as Calrec Audio, Omneon, Cisco Systems, AT&T, Avid and Microsoft.

"AT&T provides all of our circuits back and forth to New York and also Las Vegas," where the streaming factory for the online content that is being powered by Microsoft's Silverlight technology is located, Mazza said.

Cisco will provide an Internet-protocol switching infrastructure to move large HD files between a variety of locations and allow for real-time editing of content being delivered to TV, PCs and mobile devices.

In terms of mobile units, NBC has rented four units from NEP and one from Game Creek. "We will also have two of our own fly packs to compliment the coverage," Mazza said.

NBC's studio in the International Broadcast Center will "occupy about 50,000 square feet, which is down about 30%," Mazza noted. "But we will have a similar number of edit rooms."

One highlight of the studio will be a Panasonic 152 inch 4K-by-4K high-definition display, situated behind NBC Sports Olympic host Bob Costas.

"We have updated the look of the studio with a lot more video," said NBC Olympics head of production Bucky Gunts.

At either side of Costas, NBC project two on-set images: one from the Vancouver skyline and the other from "the Lions Gate Bridge [looking up] to Cypress [Mountain], which is the home of snowboarding," Gunts added.

"Vancouver is really beautiful and we wanted to take advantage of the scenery. Whereas in Beijing we had one projector of Tiananmen Square behind him, we've expanded that to two to make it look like he is in a corner office and we have live cameras to provide that," he added. "It should provide some very nice views both day and night."

In terms of newer technologies, Gunts stressed that NBC has shied away from gimmicks and "tried to only use stuff that would obviously enhance the product."

Nonetheless, NBC will use a number of interesting technologies that, in Gunts' view, should make the first all-HD Winter Olympics an even more compelling experience.

For example, the Peacock Network will use SimulCam and StroMotion technologies from Dartfish to compare contestants in freestyle skiing, snowboarding and cross-country skiing on certain sections of the course, Gunts said.

NBC's hockey coverage will use Liberovision, a 3D sports-analysis tool that "allows you to take a player and move it around on the screen so that the analysts can break down a scoring play in real time" to show where the defense failed, Gunts said.

Sportsvision, which is known for providing the virtual first-down markers for football telecasts, will provide graphics and flags to show the relative positions of skaters and whether they are ahead of or behind the leader's time.

"That is something that has worked well for us in the past," Gunts said.