Winter Paralympic Games on C4

The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow will provide a good example of whether this can work. The para-events take place during the same event.

Personally, I agree it just reduces them to a sideshow. The current timing is perfect for them. Remember how excited we all were for the Paralympics after the Olympics had ended in London?

This return to the studio for a discussion on the Curling status, missing this first two or three shots of the next end approach, is a tad annoying.

Won't the archive be generated on site in Sochi though? Unless the IOC/IMG have paid for uncompressed HD-SDI quality circuits to IMG in the UK then there would be a compression required to backhaul to the UK which you would wish to avoid on an archive quality copy. (It's the same reason that archive copies of OBs are usually recorded on-site rather than back at base, to avoid the artefacts of the backhaul link being baked-in to the archive copy.)

That said, the BBC had uncompressed circuits from Turin to TVC (albeit SDI not HD-SDI) , though I think these may have been provided as part of an EBU deal, so it is possible.

If they are using BBC Studios at Elstree Film then I suspect they may have had an upgrade since they first opened. When the BBC did Eurovision through there last May they had to have a satellite truck and generator on-site to provide resilient uplink and downlink circuits and power.

The irrepressible Rob Walker is jointly commentating on the Closing Ceremony.

.... and a nice mention from Sir Philip Craven President of the IPC for Olympic Broadcasting Services in his valedictory speech.

Closing Ceremony far more watchable thanks to being a sports broadcast rather than a news broadcast.