High Definition Treat for 2010 Winter Olympics' Online and Mobile Audience
By Hans Lewis
February 25, 2010
(OLYMPICS TECHNOLOGY)
Level 3 Communications (News - Alert) and France Télévisions have been working together to deliver the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics in high definition to online and mobile audiences.
Steve Sklepowich, director for Silverlight at Microsoft (News - Alert) Corp., said, “France Télévisions’ broadcast of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics is a great opportunity for viewers to experience the type of HD-quality live, online video that Microsoft and its partners can deliver with technologies like Silverlight and IIS Live Smooth Streaming. Level 3’s CDN integration is essential to providing viewers with a high-quality online viewing experience of the Winter Olympic Games.”
James Heard, president of European Markets for Level 3 said, “By working closely with Microsoft, and leveraging the expertise of the Level 3 broadcast team and the highly-scalable, adaptive capabilities of our CDN, we’re able to provide quality end-to-end solutions for live events. Whether viewing the games from a desktop or an iPhone (News - Alert), we’re committed to ensuring the highest possible quality viewing experience.”
France Télévisions is delivering the Games live to the Web and Apple (News - Alert) iPhone during the two-week event from 7 p.m. PST until 6 a.m. PST and providing on-demand content at all other hours. The delivery is made possible using Level 3’s content delivery network (CDN) and Live Event services, alongside Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Live Smooth Streaming and Microsoft Silverlight.
IIS Smooth Streaming is designed to help improve the quality of an online video stream by minimizing broadcast disruptions through varying the quality of the delivery in real time, based on the available bandwidth of a given computer.
In addition to delivering the Games to online users, Level 3’s CDN platform allows the company to easily direct the same video content to mobile users. This year, viewers have access to high-quality content from the games right on their iPhone.
This event is the latest in a series of live event broadcasts between Level 3 and Microsoft. Since 2009, Level 3 and Microsoft have worked together to deliver more than 20 premier live events around the globe. Delivery of the games will be managed and monitored from the Level 3 Broadcast Operations Centre in Dublin.
Hans Lewis is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Marisa Torrieri
