Olympics

Challenge

The 2010 Winter Olympics, officially known as the 21st Winter Olympics, represent the 12th Olympics broadcast by NBC. This major international multi-sport event held February 2010, in Vancouver, Canada. NBC Universal presented 835 hours of Olympic Games coverage on six NBC Universal sites including NBC, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Universal HD and NBCOlympics.com. This broadcast represented the most total hours ever for a Winter Olympics, more than the last two Winter Olympics combined, and the most live hours ever for the Winter Games. The Vancouver Games were the first Winter Olympics broadcast 100 percent in high definition (full HD).

The Vancouver Games were the first-ever to be streamed in full HD online and in order to deliver HD quality, NBC needed to ensure they could deliver the right bitrate profiles and that their HD quality stream was buffer free.

Solution

The Vancouver Games were the first-ever to be streamed in full HD online and in order to deliver HD quality, NBC needed to ensure they could deliver the right bitrate profiles and that their HD quality stream was buffer free. NBC teamed with premier technology vendors, including Conviva and Microsoft, to cover 4,485 hours of events in HD via Internet Information Services (IIS) Smooth Streaming to a video player based on Microsoft Silverlight. Through close work with the Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Live Smooth Streaming, Conviva’s Insights allowed NBC to obtain real-time data on viewer experience, audience trends, video playback and network distribution performance to ensure good quality viewing during the Vancouver Winter Games. Conviva’s Precision automatically and preemptively adjusts the bitrate and/or the CDN stream to ensure there are no interruptions and that the highest quality is available for each individual viewer.

Result

Conviva’s technology is unique in its ability to scale cleanly to meet the needs and HD requirements of broadcast-sized audiences during peak times. Conviva’s Precision Platform managed the distribution of media over heterogeneous resources with customized policies and control that enabled NBC to stream the highest possible video quality to viewers at any given point in time. By addressing a critical gap in delivery and audience insight left by today’s streaming technology, Conviva’s reliable video platform helped to provide a stable, high-quality online coverage over the 17 days of the Vancouver Winter Games to more than 15.8 million unique visitors during 4.4 million hours of Olympics video.

"Partnering with Conviva for our Winter Games, ensured that we could deliver HD streaming to each one of our viewers and also have accurate intelligence into audience engagement and video performance. Conviva’s real-time intelligence and global policy management was key for our digital team."
-- Eric Black, Vice President - Technology, NBC Sports & Olympics