Winter Olympics 2018

At the moment you can watch the snowboarding delay with not much going off with THREE different commentary tracks if you wish. BBC on BBC1, Eurosport on Eurosport 1, and the world feed on Eurosport 3. Don't say you aren't spoiled.

Fine, provided you have access to Eurosport 3. Or Eurosport / pay tv sport at all.



Keep an eye out at the sides of the courses for the show machines. They're everywhere, it's mostly man made.

I was being sarcastic anyway

So I know Panasonic is the official “AUDIO/TV/VIDEO EQUIPMENT” provider for the Olympics. But in reality how many of the cameras, switchers and other broadcast critical equipment comes from them? I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of an OB truck that carries Panasonic cameras for sport and their most powerful switcher is a 2M/E.

So what does the OBS mainly use for their production needs? Sony seems to power all of NBC Sports equipment (however the news division does use Panasonic cameras) and get a tag in their credits. Also what sort of CG makes the wonderful score graphics?

I’m kind of curious how they cut the different language OBS feeds. Is there a master switcher with slaves switchers for each language? (I got that idea as that’s what NBC uses for some of their Norte Dame football games in 4K) Or is it more akin to the whole BBC News setup where each channel can have a different style.

OBS don't own any technical facilities of their own (or insignificant amounts at least), they hire in the normal kit and trucks used by everyone else. I've not heard of any UK trucks out there this time, but I suspect there's a load of US ones, and quite a few UK based flypack set ups. For Rio they chartered two ferries, one from Europe and one from the US and brought all the trucks in in one go (there's a photo floating around of 40-odd large OB trucks all sat on a dock waiting for customs).

Likewise, most of the production is contacted out to other broadcasters with experience in those sports, rather than it being OBS crews everywhere.

Commentary for events is handled separately from the programme audio/video, you don't necessarily even have a commentary feed available in the gallery. Graphics, I don't know how many versions they're providing, but there's not many of them, and they're mostly done downstream of the mixer and triggered if the same cues. The clue they're doing it this way is that stuff like AR or full screen maps aren't translated.

Panasonic's sponsor status means they supply lots of "supplemental" AV kit. Need an extra monitor? Here's a panny one. Want a TV in the bedrooms at the Olympic village? Panasonic! Want a usable bit of kit for the world feed, er, Sony? GVG?

Okay. I figured they hired stuff out but was wondering about what they prefer to use. South Korea is a 60Hz country when it comes to producing HD video?

NEP is supplying three units for NBC specifically.

South Korea is a 60Hz country when it comes to producing HD video?

I'm currently reading through Sports Video Group for all the tech and whats being used.

The entire OBS operation in Rio was based around 1080i60. In London it was 1080i50.

Panasonic used to provide an OB truck with Panasonic facilities for the US ABC football coverage when it launched I believe (as they had 720p59.94 native stuff - whereas Sony had only got 1080i59.94 cameras with a poor-quality cross convert). Panasonic also sponsored the coverage.

You are right though - Panasonic have never really been in the live system camera game (different story for PSC/location shooting) - though they had a number of tape formats.

D3 was kind of premiered art the Barcelona 1992 games - and became the standard for Digital Composite SD used by NBC, the BBC and NHK.

(Digibeta launched at Lillehammer in '94 - when Sony were the broadcast sponsors of the games)



OBS hires in production teams and equipment from lots of different areas - the broadcast sponsor tag no longer really applies to the TV production.



What language feeds do you mean?

OBS provide a single picture feed from each event - and usually there is an English world feed commentary (sometimes in the past this has been a broadcaster's commentary that OBS take, but these days it is usually their own provision). Other language commentary is provided by broadcasters for themselves (as is often the case with English commentary). The difference is audio only.

I don't think there are multiple language graphics feeds - or are you saying there are?

Yes - South Korea was NTSC analogue, and famously one of the only countries in the world outside North America to use 8VSB ATSC. They also have ASTC 3.0 sets on sale now (they looked at, and trialled, DVB-T2 but have stuck with the US standard)

So 59.94Hz for production video, with 60Hz mains.

Rio 2016 was the first 59.94Hz Summer Olympics since Atlanta in 1996 I think. (Athens, Sydney, Beijing, London were all 50Hz). The Winter Games have flipped between 50 and 59.94Hz more often (Nagano, Salt Lake City, Vancouver were 59.94, Turin and Sochi were 50)

When I was able to get signal on these feeds it was always single picture multiple audio tracks, of course for this Olympics and onwards they’ve switched to professional NS4 modulation so people like me have no chance to get a signal.

First major technical issue, radar like impulse noise smattering on this morning's NOR-USA MX Curling feed on ES player, no other rinks affected.