HD Olympians

(From Millimeter.com -- By Michael Goldman)

The recently completed TORINO WINTER OLYMPICS featured several improvements to NBC's method of producing and broadcasting major sporting events in high definition.

These Games represented the first time the Olympics had been broadcast on a major network in HD during primetime.

As part of that effort, the network created an unprecedented storage infrastructure at its INTERNATIONAL BROADCAST CENTER (IBC) in Torino to ingest and edit reams of
1080i/50-resolution HD material flowing in from various venues throughout the event.

That network was built around six AVID UNITY ISIS systems, three AVID UNITY LANshare shared-storage systems, and one classic UNITY system that collectively handled 119 TB of storage, according to BILL LORENZ, Project Manager for NBC's editing facilities at the Olympics.

"This easily surpasses anything we have ever done, and in fact, it's the biggest storage element I have ever heard of," Lorenz says. "It may be the biggest HD facility ever put together (for broadcast)."

HD Olympians