The NFL kicked off its 2010 season Sunday night with the Hall of Fame game, bringing in impressive viewership numbers for NBC: the telecast drew an overnight rating of 7.6, up 31% from last year’s preseason opener. Thus continues the successful trend for sporting event broadcasts.

As The New York Times reported a few weeks ago, the experience of watching sports at home is now so good that teams are working to find new ways to keep fans coming to games (you mean to say Mullet Night isn’t doing the trick anymore?). One solution: enhancing the video experience for those inside the stadium.

Watching a game from the comforts of home certainly has its advantages:

Today is an exciting day for everyone here at Elemental, and really, for anyone with a stake in the future of online and mobile video delivery. This morning we announced that Elemental has raised $7.5 million in Series B financing led by Steamboat Ventures, joined by our existing investors General Catalyst Partners and Voyager Capital.

So coming up on our fourth birthday, there are many reasons to toast the future:

1. Our new VC partners: Steamboat Ventures is the ideal fit for Elemental. As the venture capital firm affiliated with The Walt Disney Company, Steamboat Ventures invests in early- to mid-stage, technology-focused companies pursuing opportunities in emerging digital media and consumer technology markets. 

Scott Hilleboe, Managing Director at Steamboat, joins Elemental's board, bringing significant media experience and a Harvard MBA to the table. Besides Elemental, he is currently an investor in EdgeCast Networks, Kyte, MediaBank, and MerchantCircle. Scott’s prior investments include Quigo (acquired by AOL), Fastclick (acquired by ValueClick), and PopularMedia (acquired by StrongMail).

TVs are everywhere. They are commonly spotted at bus stops, gas stations, in airports, in banks, in grocery stores—the list goes on. According to Nielsen Media Research, there are more televisions in the average household than there are people. TV has rapidly progressed since its introduction into people’s living rooms in the 1940s from black and white to color, from rabbit ears to cable/ satellite/IPTV, and now to HD and DVRs, and eventually to 3D.

As TV technology booms, broadcasters must stay in sync with current means of content delivery. Networks long ago deserted the antiquated method of delivering video on reels of tape, advanced to satellite delivery and recently developed new systems like Pitch Blue^TM to automate delivery of syndicated content via satellite. Automated delivery of video creates major efficiencies in the workflows of television broadcasters.  However, many broadcasters transitioning to Pitch Blue are unable to immediately experience benefits of the new video delivery system because they often face difficulties transcoding Pitch Blues files for play-out.

Sitting right in the middle of Silicon Forest, Portland is exploding with innovative technology companies, particularly in the video space. Companies such as Tektronix, ArtsBeats and Omneon, actually have a lot in common with Oregon's video technology users, mainly broadcasters, including KGW, KOIN, KATU and Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB). They're all Oregon-based, constantly innovating and video-centric. Portland is unique because, for a city of its size, it has such a close-knit community; however, Elemental finds that after attending the annual NAB show in Las Vegas and sharing the floor with many of our neighbors, back at home the common connections often get lost. 

In the technology world, four years is an eternity.  So, those of us woking on streaming technology not only understand its evolution in the last four years, but can truly appreciate how the presence of video everywhere has revolutionized coverage of the 2010 World Cup.