Watch: Behind the Scenes of NBC’s Coverage of the Winter Games
Beyond athletic achievements, the XXIII Winter Games will hopefully be remembered for having North and South Korea delegations marching into the Olympic Stadium under a unified flag, and the fielding of a mixed North and South Korean Women’s ice hockey team.
TV Technology has complete behind-the-scenes coverage of the video challenges that come with broadcasting the Olympics. A few things of note for this year:
This is the first time VR is available from a Winter Olympics and the first time Olympic VR programming will be live in the U.S. on a wide range of devices and platforms. NBC will offer more than 50 hours of VR coverage, available via Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Samsung Gear VR, and both Google Cardboard and Google Daydream, with compatible iOS or Android devices via the NBC Sports VR app.
See: Samsung Takes Gold In Winter Olympics Promo Race
Comcast is sponsoring a technology demonstration of 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos sound from Korea that is a substantial increase from the small trial done from the Summer Olympics in Rio. The next-day delay channel will offer six to 12 hours daily. This increase is due to an expanded effort from the host and particularly Japan’s NHK, which is producing a good amount of 8K with HDR content from Korea.
NHK is providing NBC with a down-converted feed of its 8K HDR coverage, and OBS’s 4K SDR coverage from hockey will be “stretched” up to HDR. There are two 4K feeds from PyeongChang to SPOC (Sports Production Operations Center in Stamford) and one return.
