NBC's Olympian HD Plan
By Anthony Crupi
In the Clear: NBC's Olympian HD Plan Comes into Focus Just 2 years after a US broadcaster offered a hi-definition feed of its Olympics coverage, NBC is bulking up its HD payload for the '04 Games. The Peacock successfully completed an inaugural run two years ago, collaborating with HDNet on its presentation of the Winter Olympics from Salt Lake City. This time NBC is doing all the heavy lifting itself, running a separate, delayed HD feed of the entire 17 days of competition, beginning Saturday.
With Sony aboard as sponsor and main provider of broadcast gear, the network's HD coverage will encompass the opening and closing ceremonies, and key swimming, diving, gymnastics, track and field events in between, as well as medal rounds of basketball and the men's soccer gold medal final. The HD events will be looped in consecutive 8-hr segments, thrice daily, on a 24-hr delay for cable and satellite providers. While some hi-def buffs have expressed disappointment that the Athens games won't be telecast in live HD, NBC Sports' Cameron Blanchard suggests fans are lucky that the Peacock is able to offer an HD feed at all. "This was a last- minute addition, basically," Blanchard says. While she declines to specify on why NBC seemed to waver in its commitment to HD, Blanchard says the network merely had been "operating under the constraints of the host broadcaster," Athens Olympic Broadcasting.
With just a handful of HD trucks, AOB only wired 5 Olympic venues for HD, although they are by all accounts the places where the most popular events are held. That said, NBC fully expects that all its coverage of the '06 Winter Games in Torino, Italy, will be available via a single 1080i HD feed, which means hi- def viewers will hear the same broadcasting team as their SD counterparts.
NBC cable nets providing additional coverage of the games, including MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Bravo and Telemundo, will not carry HD feeds, which will instead be beamed to NBC's 124 HD affiliates, covering 86% of the country.
By Anthony Crupi
In the Clear: NBC's Olympian HD Plan Comes into Focus Just 2 years after a US broadcaster offered a hi-definition feed of its Olympics coverage, NBC is bulking up its HD payload for the '04 Games. The Peacock successfully completed an inaugural run two years ago, collaborating with HDNet on its presentation of the Winter Olympics from Salt Lake City. This time NBC is doing all the heavy lifting itself, running a separate, delayed HD feed of the entire 17 days of competition, beginning Saturday.
With Sony aboard as sponsor and main provider of broadcast gear, the network's HD coverage will encompass the opening and closing ceremonies, and key swimming, diving, gymnastics, track and field events in between, as well as medal rounds of basketball and the men's soccer gold medal final. The HD events will be looped in consecutive 8-hr segments, thrice daily, on a 24-hr delay for cable and satellite providers. While some hi-def buffs have expressed disappointment that the Athens games won't be telecast in live HD, NBC Sports' Cameron Blanchard suggests fans are lucky that the Peacock is able to offer an HD feed at all. "This was a last- minute addition, basically," Blanchard says. While she declines to specify on why NBC seemed to waver in its commitment to HD, Blanchard says the network merely had been "operating under the constraints of the host broadcaster," Athens Olympic Broadcasting.
With just a handful of HD trucks, AOB only wired 5 Olympic venues for HD, although they are by all accounts the places where the most popular events are held. That said, NBC fully expects that all its coverage of the '06 Winter Games in Torino, Italy, will be available via a single 1080i HD feed, which means hi- def viewers will hear the same broadcasting team as their SD counterparts.
NBC cable nets providing additional coverage of the games, including MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Bravo and Telemundo, will not carry HD feeds, which will instead be beamed to NBC's 124 HD affiliates, covering 86% of the country.
