IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 9

more online at spectrum.ieee.org

The On-Demand Olympics
engineers gear up for history's largest
broadcasting operation

T

he last time London
hosted the Olympics was
in 1948, the first year
the games were broadcast to
home televisions. Lauded at the
time as a huge technological
achievement, the operation
would be considered quaint by
today's standards.
As the sole broadcaster, the
British Broadcasting Corp. shot
the competitions with three
then-state-of-the-art Emitron
cameras wired to two control
vans parked outside the famous
Empire Stadium and its nearby
pool (now Wembley Stadium and
Arena). From the vans, engineers
relayed pictures through coaxial
cables strung along telephone
poles to a central studio, where
spectrum.ieee.org

a producer chose the best
program to pass on to the BBC's
only transmission station, at
Alexandra Palace. The broadcasts,
totaling 68 hours 29 minutes,
reached just 500 000 viewers-
most within a 65-kilometer radius.
Sixty-four years later,
broadcasting the Olympics from
London couldn't be more different.
By the start of the games this
month, thousands of engineers,
technicians, and producers from
148 broadcasting organizations
will have descended on London in
anticipation of the world's largest
broadcast operation to date. Every
event, for the first time, will
be shot in high definition and
streamed live over the Internet.
Nearly 5 billion people will watch

the games on home televisions,
PCs, tablets, and smartphones.
Delivering such diverse and
voluminous coverage is no small
feat. The host broadcaster, Olympic
Broadcasting Services (OBS),
which is responsible for providing
neutral coverage of all events, will
do the bulk of the camera work.
In total, OBS will shoot roughly
5600 hours of footage using more
than 1000 HD cameras. The feeds
will flow from venues across
the United Kingdom over a vast
network of fiber optic cables and
converge at the International
Broadcast Centre inside Olympic
Park. "You're talking hundreds of
gigabits per second coming into the
IBC," says Tim Boden, a technical
director at BT Global Services, the
company that designed and operated the communications infrastructure for the London games.
OBS production crews will then
relay the data feeds to broadcasters,
at the IBC and around the world,
that have purchased the rights

eyes of the
world: If usain
Bolt breaks
another record,
you can watch
it and most
other Olympic
events live on a
smartphone.
photo: Julian Finney/
Getty imaGes

july 2012 * IEEE SpEctrum * NA

9



http://spectrum.ieee.org http://spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum July, 2012

IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 1
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 2
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 3
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 4
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 5
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 6
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 7
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 8
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 9
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 10
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 11
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 12
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 13
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 14
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 15
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 16
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 17
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 18
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 19
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 20
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 21
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 22
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 23
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 24
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 25
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 26
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 27
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 28
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 29
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 30
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 31
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 32
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 33
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 34
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 35
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 36
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 37
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 38
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 39
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 40
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 41
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 42
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 43
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 44
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 45
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 46
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 47
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 48
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 49
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 50
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 51
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 52
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 53
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 54
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 55
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 56
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 57
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 58
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 59
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 60
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - Cover4
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