Beijing Olympic Games 2008

In Athens everything was fibre'd back via the EBU, with the BBC putting a satellite truck in the main satellite farm for backup. Don't know if it was uplinking all the time, or just available. I would imagine they will be doing something similar this time.

http://home.vis-is.co.uk/data/grabs/ibc_cont.jpg

This was the contribution section of the Host Broadcaster section of the IBC in Athens, containing all the feeds from the different sites and insert points used by the Host Broadcaster. This was then switched down to 85 feeds to be distributed to rights holding broadcasters(RHB) (like the BBC), so technically, if you wanted to be able to do a similar level of broadcast from London, you would need to get all of these, plus any which the BBC used alone, back to London.

http://home.vis-is.co.uk/data/grabs/ibcmpc.jpg

These were the main broadcast centre (broadcast media) and the press centre (other media) in Athens - both fairly non-descript (but huge) buildings. There wasn't anything like this studio building, with most RHBs putting their studios in Apartments around the site.

Think the satellite circuits are only there for backup. The EBU have ensured that their rights holders have access to a significant amount of fibre connectivity between Beijing and Europe - though not an endless supply. I'd be surprised if the BBC had multiple HD fibre paths for instance.

The increasing availability of cheap fibre made it possible for the Winter Olympics in Torino/Turin to be backhauled in SD via fibre to TVC for a TVC gallery to run (with a location based studio working as a relatively limited location operation) However HD has made things more complex - as HD fibre connectivity is still more expensive (particularly from half way around the world), and the Beeb don't have HD Sport galleries at TVC (and aren't likely to have any until Salford AIUI)

As a result, major HD events are likely to be produced more often from the locations than London.



Yep - though the circuit requirements for modern coverage have rocketed from the days of a multi or two and a uni... You'd probably need 10+ circuits at least from Beijing (and a lot of them HD) to do the same coverage (as you'd need to turn round stuff you couldn't show live, generate the interactive feeds, have uni feeds from reporters and guests on site etc.) and you'd need a couple of reverses as well.

Doing it on-site means that you only have to send one HD feed back to London (for BBC HD), and the BBC One, BBC Two, BBCi and BBC News feeds can all be SD!

Just looking at the schedules for the first week and their doesn't appear to be any occassions where the games are being shown on both BBC1 and BBC2 at the same time.

Apart from Sunday afternoon, BBC2 only seem to be screening it for 45 minutes at lunchtime when BBC1 goes to the news, and annoyingly for 45 minutes at 5.15pm when coverage switches channels to make way for The Weakest Link, which is rather annoying.

China? China?
Are you still in Tibet?
GET OUT!
Until then, we will not be participating. No, we will not be turning up in our PE kits.

I agree, in fact when I first stumbled across it I thought I'd switched over to a cartoon on CBBC.

As for the renaming to Olympic Breakfast, all that conjures up in my mind is a Little Chef menu

Just a little plug.

If you've got DigiGuide, and want the listings for all the BBC's Olympic Interactive channels, (click here).

And if you haven't got DigiGuide, it's a far easier way of finding what you want to watch than the Radio Times website is or the BBC's website probably will be... it's worth the 30 day trail just for the Olympics themselves (click here then click the above).

http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/6581/dgolyympicsexamplear1.png

The opening titles for News at Ten spring to mind when I view those flyby clips.

Just to add - AIUI the BBC are sharing their floor of the studio pagoda with French TV, and I think they have a roughly 50/50 share of the space.

Is their half a decent size?

Do you get a commission every time you do that, or do you own shares in DigiGuide

Not for that link. I just thought people here might find it useful.
For the link to the product there's a subscription extention, but I'm not really bothered about getting it.

/offtopic

It's useful to me actually.