Gold at the Winter Games

26 May 2010

For the fourth Olympics in a decade, digital specialist Broadcast Australia has contributed its engineering and technical operations expertise to help deliver an unparalleled television experience.

Broadcast Australia assigned Peter Kepreotes, Vice President of Technology - International, to provide consulting services to the Host Broadcaster of the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, Olympic Broadcasting Services Vancouver (OBSV). In his role as Technical Operations Coordinator, Kepreotes worked with the OBSV Engineering and Technical Operations team to support key technical broadcast infrastructure across the 12 Games competition venues located in Vancouver, Cypress Mountain and Whistler.

Importantly, the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games was the scene of a number of broadcast 'firsts'. For the first time, the Winter Games television production was solely in full 1080i high-definition (HD) with 5.1 surround sound. It also marked the first time that the Host Broadcaster was solely an OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services) operation.

This year's Winter Games saw an escalation in the quality of virtual enhancement overlays and graphics. "Graphic aids, such as moving world record lines, have previously only been available to rights-holding broadcasters (RHBs) with the resources to develop them," said Kepreotes. "This year, OBSV made a range of sophisticated virtual enhancements available to all RHBs. Enhancements which involved superimposing the footage of the lead skier's performance over that of the current competitor's allowed sports fans to compare ski runs as they happened."

A 'world feed' package for RHBs was also provided for the first time. Here, RHBs had the option of receiving OBSV feeds remotely via a global satellite distribution network, rather than needing to be present to take a direct feed on-site at the IBC.

According to Kepreotes, the Vancouver Winter Olympics presented a raft of unique challenges when compared with Summer Games. "The weather conditions had a significant impact on the management of the broadcast infrastructure—logistically and operationally," he said. "Time management was a significant consideration, given that it could take up to three hours to travel to some venues due to inclement weather conditions such as snow and ice. Additionally, broadcast equipment had to be safeguarded against the sub-zero temperatures."

It was imperative that the Host Broadcaster's infrastructure was of the highest quality and 'robustness', as it had to provide interruption-free multilateral feeds to all of the RHBs from across the world. "From a television broadcasting perspective, Olympics of any kind are complex and demanding," said Kepreotes. "It was OBSV's job to ensure billions of viewers from around the world didn't miss a pixel of the live action."

Peter Kepreotes has extensive Olympics experience managing Games technology infrastructure. He was Technical Operations Coordinator for Host Broadcaster, BOB, at the Beijing 2008 Games, and IBC Venue Technology Manager at the Athens 2004 and Sydney 2000 Games.

Picture caption:  One of the many Olympic venues at the Vancouver Winter Games

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