16
LIVE BROADCASTING
A LANDMARK WINTER OLYMPICS The delayed Summer Olympics in Tokyo meant Olympic Broadcasting Services had to scramble to get Beijing up and running. But the successful Winter Games met expectations, with tech milestones including an entirely UHD HDR broadcast WORDS BY NEAL ROMANEK
T he last time the Olympics were in Beijing was summer 2008 – and in technological terms, that’s an age ago. Apple had only recently launched a fancy mobile phone with a somewhat promising future. The remarkable advancement for those Summer Games was that they were the first entirely in HD. Those 2008 Games were a chance for China to be seen by the world as a high-tech, highly modernised country. For the 2022 Beijing Winter
the Olympics since 2001. “China is far more technically advanced now. There have been leaps forward – and you can see it everywhere. The introduction of mobile is extremely high, sometimes higher than other developed nations.” As a result, the expectations were on another level for this Olympic presentation, and they didn’t disappoint. The Beijing Games were the first Winter Olympics to be shot and presented entirely in UHD HDR – and widely deploy 5G networks for broadcast contribution. It also enabled remote access for affiliates in new, more flexible ways. These landmarks would have been impressive for any Olympics broadcast, but Salamouris’ team faced unprecedented difficulties.
Olympics 14 years later, China needed no such introduction.
RETURN TO BEIJING “It was almost like being in a different country,” says Sotiris Salamouris, Olympic Broadcasting Services CTO, who has helped capture and transmit
6000+ TOTAL HOURS OF OLYMPIC COVERAGE
FEED:XTREME MAY/JUNE 2022
feedmagazine.tv
Powered by FlippingBook