Digital Rapids' Solutions To Aid NBC's Online Olympics Coverage

Digital Rapids has been selected to provide media encoding, transcoding and streaming systems to NBC for the network's internet coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Digital Rapids' DRC-Stream encoding and streaming solutions will enable NBC Olympics' unprecedented live and on-demand online coverage of the Olympics, which will be held in Beijing between August 8 - 24.
2,200 hours of video will be streamed live on the internet at NBCOlympics.com, primarily encoded from video feeds into web-friendly streams through the DRC-Stream systems. Streams will be encoded in the VC-1 compression format for a viewing experience powered by Microsoft Silverlight technology. The encoded live streams will also be archived for viewers to watch on-demand.
Digital Rapids' Transcode Manager, the enterprise-class solution for scalable, high-volume media file transcoding, will be used to convert affiliate-provided content between compression and file formats for US domestic distribution.
The announcement was made by Rab Mukraj, Director of Digital Media Delivery at NBC Universal and Brick Eksten, President of Digital Rapids Corporation.
Mr Eksten said: "We're thrilled to continue our relationship with NBC by supplying our solutions for coverage this year's paramount event, the Beijing Olympics. The nearly unlimited scope of internet-based video lends itself perfectly to coverage of an event of this scale, and our solutions are renowned for bringing video to the web with exceptional quality and reliability. We're pleased that NBC has again placed their trust in our technology and expertise for their ground-breaking online coverage.
Mr Mukraj said: "Delivering an unparalleled online experience is a vital component of our unprecedented multi-platform coverage of the Beijing Olympics. The Digital Rapids encoding systems will enable an outstanding viewing experience for our online audience through superior encoded video quality and robust reliability, while providing us the workflow efficiencies needed for coverage of this magnitude."
Digital Rapids' DRC-Stream encoding solutions combine powerful hardware for video and audio capture and pre-processing with the intuitive Stream software interface, delivering reliable, high-quality, multi-format media encoding and streaming for professional applications such as high-end internet TV and IPTV.
Digital Rapids' Transcode Manager provides automated, distributed transcoding with centralised management and exceptional load balancing intelligence for high-volume multi-format workflows, increasing production volume while reducing operational costs.
Digital Rapids is a leading developer of professional hardware and software solutions for video ingest, encoding, transcoding, protection, streaming and delivery. The company is headquartered in Ontario, Canada, and has sales office in the US, UK, Australia, Argentina and Hong Kong. Further information is available at: www.digital-rapids.com.
NBC owns the exclusive US media rights to the Olympics Games through 2012, which includes Beijing in 2008, Vancouver in 2010 and London in 2012. From August 8- 24, 2008, NBC Universal will present 3,600 hours of coverage, highlighted by NBC in primetime with live swimming, gymnastics and beach volleyball. Further information is available at: www.nbcolympics.com.
(KMcA/JM)