This was a hard commentary to write. Originally I started out waxing poetic about the athletes, the coaches, the television crews, even those 250 pimply faced crew kids from nations far and near hired especially for the Games at McDonald’s restaurants throughout the Olympic venues to ask, “Do you want fries with that?” in Greek. But I changed my focus: There are others involved at the Olympics who deserved to be mentioned.
With the exception of soccer, where preliminaries began two days prior to the opening ceremony, there are 28 sports at 37 venues being showcased over a period of 16 days of competition. NBC’s Telemundo coverage on August 11 made history as the first non-English-language Olympic broadcast in the U.S., when it aired a soccer tripleheader, beginning with Mexico’s men’s team taking on Mali.
But honestly, the folks I want to talk about are the manufacturers and service agencies involved with the Games. There are so many stories from this sector that I could cover the Athens Olympics until the end of the year and still have pieces left over.
These people have busted their asses to meet their customers’ deadlines (and a good many are prohibited by contract from talking about it). There are big multinational corporations and there are smaller companies, but all of them are giving their all, whether it’s for NBC, AOB, ERT (Greece’s public broadcaster), or the other broadcast rights-holders you may never have heard of, serving an estimated viewership of more than 4.0 billion people.
So here’s my thank you.
AlphaCam (Belgium) has sent 10 standard definition (115 cameras) and four high definition (50 cameras) OB vans to AOB.
AMS Neve has three Libra Live consoles at the IBC for ERT. After the Games, the consoles will be relocated to ERT’s studios. NBC is also using Libra Lives in Cinevideogroep’s (the Netherlands) OBV10 and OBV12 trucks.
Athens Broadcast Services, a joint venture of Gearhouse Broadcast (equipment), Globecast (uplink and satellite) and Greek production company Stefi Productions are providing an alternate broadcast base for rights-holders and non-rights-holders near the IBC. Clients include ITN, Sky, CNN, CBS, Media-Sat, PANAMSAT, Reuters, Channel 9, Shanghai Television, Beijing TV, TVGlobo, Seven Network, and Televisa.
BBC Technology’s broadcast design & build, media communications, and Internet solutions divisions designed and built BBC Sport’s studio and production facilities in Athens, provisioned broadcast communication networks, and expanded the Internet delivery infrastructure for online coverage of the Games.
Eutelsat doubled the EBU’s satellite capacity with four wideband transponders, the equivalent of 306MHz of Ku-band capacity on three Eutelsat satellites.
Gearhouse Broadcast supplied rights-holders with a variety of equipment, including TV Asahi (seven DVCPRO ENG kits), Fuji TV (SX and DVCAM ENG kits plus Sony J3 and SX VTRs), NHK (Sony BVP-950 cameras as part of an SD fly-away rig with project engineers), ARD/ZDF (125 Sony MSW-M2000 IMX VTRs—second biggest playout facility after NBC), the BBC (Thomson LDK-23 Supermotion camera systems and Canon J70 lenses complete with EVS hard-disk recorders to capture the tennis event during the Olympics), Nippon Television (communications fly-away rig), Seven Network (custom record, graphics integration, and edit solution with tech support), and SABC (full MCR area incorporating routers, distribution, and glue products).
Ikegami has supplied ERT with a variety of cameras, including the HL-53 triax, HL-55 triax, and HK-355P. Private production houses in Greece have supplied broadcasters with several HC-400/W and HL-45AW cameras.
Leitch Technology is supplying Pixcom International, a Montreal-based company providing technical services to France Television, with a wide range of products on a rental basis, including more than 6,800 modular interface products, Panacea compact multiformat routing switchers, and Integrator Gold wideband digital multi-rate routers.
Panasonic is providing the largest number of audio and video products in its history of supporting the Olympic Games. DVCPRO50 is the official video recording format of the Games. All together, AOB, EBU, Televisa/Mexico, OTI (Organization of Television Ibero), and JC (Japan Consortium) will use 400 VTRs (mainly AJ-SD955B/AJ-SD930B), 200 camera/camcorders (100 AW-E800/AW-E600 and 100 AJ-SDX900), and 2,100 monitors (mainly BT-LS1400). P2 is planned for use during the Games at AOB and Beijing TV/China. Panasonic will install 12 Astrovision screens in the Olympic venues, with seven venues equipped permanently with eight screens. The two screens at the Olympic Stadium are 111 square meters, weighing 12 tons each. Other screens range from 16 square meters to 37 square meters. Eleven DLP projectors will be installed in indoor venues. Four 300-inch screens will be set up with the dual-stacking mount of Panasonic DLP projectors. Five 200-inch screens will use one projector.
PrimeVision (Denmark) will have OB vans covering handball and taekwondo for Danmarks Radio, host broadcaster for these events.
Riedel provided a myriad of communications systems for the Games. They provided intercom and walkie-talkie systems for all of the pre-trials and qualification races and have been providing all of the venue communications (judges, scorers, timing people, leading athletes in and out, medal stands) for the Athens Olympic Committee (AOC) since the trials began and now into the games. Riedel also provided walkie-talkies to the AOB.
Ross Video was selected by ERT to supply three Synergy 3s and one Synergy 4 switcher for the Games. Each switcher is equipped with squeeze-and-tease WARP, VTR control, custom-control macros with mnemonics, and more. This brings ERT’s total of large Ross Synergy mixers to five.
Sound & Video Creations supplied 13 of its proprietary Click Effects Pro A/V Systems with six of the systems remaining in place when the Olympics are completed, and will be used by the organizers of the Paralympics Games in late September. The Click Effects Pro-A/V System is a computer-based electronic component that enables an operator to instantly call up and play audio and video source material and send that material to the video boards and PA systems in a venue.
Studer’s Vista 8 digital live production console is in PrimeVision’s HD OB truck HD30.com.
Telescript delivered five 12-inch LCD Teleprompters to the AOC for use during the Games.
Telex Communications is controlling the broadcast and intercom systems for the Games. The AOB will be equipped with an ADAM 256 x 256 for the IBC. ERT is being upgraded with Telex equipment such as ADAM matrices, KP series keypanels, and BTR700 intercoms.
TerraSonde delivered 25 Digital Audio Toolboxes to AOC to test their digital audio signals. The Digital Audio Toolbox is a portable measurement device for testing and analyzing all aspects of digital audio. It is 24-bit/96-k compatible, can analyze two signals simultaneously, interfaces with most digital audio systems and includes a complete suite of digital audio measurement and analysis tools.
Visions UK is providing NBC with its HD1, HD2, D6, and D10 OB trucks. HD1 will serve as NBC’s HD hub as most of the HD coverage will be provided by the AOB.
Thanks again for all the hard work. I hope most of you will make a profit from the Games.
