Elemental Streams the Olympic Games with Broadcasters Worldwide

Submitted by Lisa on July 16, 2012 - 00:00

Today Elemental proudly announced it is serving up Olympic streams for some of the most recognizable names in broadcast and media entertainment. The BBC in the UK, Terra in Latin America, Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium and Eurosport are among the broadcasters using Elemental gear to create and distribute video of the 2012 Summer Games. A record number of viewers around the globe will experience the first truly digital Olympics by accessing live and VOD content on PCs, laptops, tablets, mobile phones and other smart devices.

Elemental Olympics Coverage MapThe BBC plans to stream 2,500 hours of the Olympic Games using Elemental® Live and to provide its audience with up to 24 alternative live HD streams from which to choose. The BBC will also use Elemental Live to encode and archive events that can be easily transitioned into video on-demand (VOD) assets for streaming catch-up TV to viewers in the UK. Similarly, Eurosport and Terra plan full spectrum coverage of the 17-day event. CTV in Canada plans to distribute up to 15 streams of live coverage daily and to supply ample on-demand and highlight packages on a variety of connected platforms. Transnational streams, as well as video destined for audiences in the US and in Japan, will also run through Elemental gear.

Elemental partner NVIDIA points out that when all is said and done, Elemental expects up to a billion viewers of its streaming content during the Games. In addition to thousands of hours of live coverage, Elemental will encode and archive video for on-demand highlights and other assets for time-shifted viewing. "These numbers spell complexity. They involve a wide variety of use cases, video codecs, resolutions, screen sizes, and other specifications. As the engines powering Elemental’s streaming service, NVIDIA GPUs will help transform that complexity into a great viewing experience," writes Michael Steele, who manages strategic alliances at NVIDIA.

The responsibility for the multiscreen delivery of an event like the Olympics is not the work of a single company, a single broadcaster or a single technology. But it can be argued that Elemental is behind more of the streams, to more of the people, and more target devices than any other encoding supplier. To learn more about the different ways broadcasters are planning to stream Olympic content, as well as Elemental's role in bringing the Olympics to a screen near you, check out the project brief available on the Elemental website.