Cisco Provides NBC Olympics with Videoscape Platform

Videoscape is Cisco's TV service delivery platform for a more dynamic, social, interactive, and personalized media experience. It draws on intelligent Cisco video and networking solutions across the cloud, the network, and client devices to reinvent the TV experience.

NBC Olympics will deliver a personalized, interactive, multiscreen Olympics experience to select users at event venues and accommodations.

NBC Olympics will live-stream all six of its U.S. TV channels airing Olympic events through the Videoscape experience, as well as hundreds of hours of on-demand content from its coverage of the Games.

Enabling the Multiscreen TV Experience

• Cisco Videoscape will enable NBC Olympics to let their select users and guests at event venues search across all live and on-demand content, and pause and record live TV in the cloud and/or local set-top box DVR for the duration of the games. They will also be able to switch from TV, to tablet, to smartphone, and back again, picking up right where they left off in the event they were watching.
• Cisco Videoscape will record all six NBCUniversal U.S. channels (WNBC, CNBC, MSNBC, NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, and Bravo) that are airing the Games and allow viewers to navigate back in time to play back anything on the schedule. Cisco will provide tablets for NBC's guests to view NBCU channels and/or content on a portable device. Guests will also be able to play back content on any of the TVs NBCU will be distributing at its hospitality center for the duration of the London Games.
• To support NBC Olympics' efforts, Cisco will provide video encoders and decoders, set-top boxes, DVRs, video file servers, a custom-built interactive programming guide, and much more.
• The solution will create a high-performance IP network optimized for video delivery – just for guest video services at the London Games. It will be built with Cisco Nexus and Catalyst family switches, and Cisco Aironet wireless solutions to create a state-of-the-art platform for distributing multichannel live, and on-demand video to event venues.
• As previously announced in April, NBC Olympics uses a Cisco IP contribution network, as it did in Beijing and Vancouver, to bring high-quality digital video coverage to studios in the United States from Olympic venues thousands of miles away.

"The ability to watch NBC's Olympic coverage however, wherever, and whenever you choose is no longer just a neat new experience for our viewers. It's an absolute expectation, and we rely on Cisco to help us meet that expectation. Our users in London are going to be amazed at the Cisco Videoscape experience. It will give them a glimpse of how people may watch sports coverage in the future," said Craig Lau, vice president, Information Technology, NBC Olympics.