SAN JOSE, Calif., August 6, 2012 – During 2012 Olympic Games, NBC Olympics, a division of the NBC Sports Group, will offer select guests in London a glimpse into the TV experience of the future with Cisco Videoscape™. Videoscape™ is Cisco's TV service delivery platform for a more dynamic, social, interactive, and personalized media experience. It draws on intelligent Cisco video and networking solutions across the cloud, the network, and client devices to reinvent the TV experience.
NBC Olympics will deliver a personalized, interactive, multiscreen Olympics experience to select users at event venues and accommodations. NBC Olympics will live-stream all six of its U.S. TV channels airing Olympic events through the Videoscape experience, as well as hundreds of hours of on-demand content from its coverage of the Games.
Highlights
- Cisco Videoscape will enable NBC Olympics to let their select users and guests at event venues search across all live and on-demand content, and pause and record live TV in the cloud and/or local set-top box DVR for the duration of the games. They will also be able to switch from TV, to tablet, to smartphone, and back again, picking up right where they left off in the event they were watching.
- Cisco Videoscape will record all six NBCUniversal U.S. channels (WNBC, CNBC, MSNBC, NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, and Bravo) that are airing the Games and allow viewers to navigate back in time to play back anything on the schedule. Cisco will provide tablets for NBC's guests to view NBCU channels and/or content on a portable device. Guests will also be able to play back content on any of the TVs NBCU will be distributing at its hospitality center for the duration of the London Games.
- To support NBC Olympics' efforts, Cisco will provide video encoders and decoders, set-top boxes, DVRs, video file servers, a custom-built interactive programming guide, and much more.
- The solution will create a high-performance IP network optimized for video delivery – just for guest video services at the London Games. It will be built with Cisco Nexus® and Catalyst® family switches, and Cisco Aironet® wireless solutions to create a state-of-the-art platform for distributing multichannel live, and on-demand video to event venues.
- As previously announced in April, NBC Olympics uses a Cisco IP contribution network, as it did in Beijing and Vancouver, to bring high-quality digital video coverage to studios in the United States from Olympic venues thousands of miles away.
Supporting Quotes
- Craig Lau, vice president, Information Technology, NBC Olympics
"The ability to watch NBC's Olympic coverage however, wherever, and whenever you choose is no longer just a neat new experience for our viewers. It's an absolute expectation, and we rely on Cisco to help us meet that expectation. Our users in London are going to be amazed at the Cisco Videoscape experience. It will give them a glimpse of how people may watch sports coverage in the future."
- Jesper Andersen, senior vice president, general manager, Cisco Service Provider Video Technology Group
"With the help of Cisco Videoscape and media solutions, NBC Olympics will be able to present viewers with every second of the games, and hundreds of hours of additional video content. For the first time, select users can combine synchronized applications on their smartphones or tablets with live TV coverage. With the ability to access real-time interactive Web content such as event scores and medal tallies, athlete bios, and more, users will enjoy an amazing multiscreen experience unlike anything they've seen before."
Embedded Videos
Cisco and NBC Cover the London Games
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbzY06h2fHE
Reinvent the TV Experience with Cisco Videoscape
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TACbfsCQuHc
Tags/Keywords
Cisco, Craig Lau, IP, IP video, multiscreen TV, NBC Olympics, NBCOlympics.com, Jesper Andersen, 2012 Olympic Games, London Olympic Games, London Games, Videoscape
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About NBC Olympics:
A division of the NBC Sports Group, NBC Olympics is responsible for producing, programming and promoting Olympic coverage across the networks of NBCUniversal. It is renowned for its unsurpassed Olympic heritage, award-winning production, and ability to aggregate the largest audiences in U.S. television history.
Having produced every Summer Olympics since Seoul in 1988 and every Winter Olympics since Salt Lake City in 2002, the networks of NBCUniversal are synonymous with the Games in the United States. In 2011, NBCUniversal acquired the U.S. media rights on all platforms to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and the 2020 Summer Olympics. At the conclusion of the 2020 Games, NBCUniversal will have presented 17 total Olympic Games and 11 consecutive, the most for a U.S. media company in both categories.
NBC has won an unprecedented 91 Emmy Awards for its Olympics coverage, as well as a prestigious Peabody Award for its presentation of the Beijing Opening Ceremony in 2008, which USA Today said was "the best overall Olympic experience ever provided by a U.S. network."
In addition to its unsurpassed heritage and award-winning production, NBCUniversal is known for aggregating large Olympic audiences, as nine of the top 11 most-watched U.S. television events of all time are Olympic Games presented across the networks of NBCUniversal. The Beijing Summer Olympics rank No. 1 with 215 million viewers.
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