NBC Aims For Stability Through Redundancy In Athens

Darren writes "With the Athens Olympics just 27 days away NBC is gearing up for a massive 1210 hours of coverage (that's enough to watch TV over 50 days of Olympics 24/7). The infrastructure needed to provide such coverage is huge, and the potential for problems is significant. As a result NBC are taking all precautions possible and over the 17 days of competition they will utilize three satellite network linkups and three land-based connections to ensure they always have a connection. The mind boggles at what it is all going to cost - but I'm sure their advertising revenue will make it worth their while."

Re:NBC has the backbone

[Colymbosathon ecplec]

Same way we power stuff when off the grid or the power goes down, and what hospitals and datacenters and lots of other places use: diesel powered gensets. Plus, if they did lose feed, they have a ton of advertising and rehashed 'content' to fill the space.

^CE^

No idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a major UK broadcaster's engineering department (shortly to be sold to Siemens :( ) and, believe me, 6 connections is not in the big league of broadcast redundancy. For The Scottish open last week we had 12 feeds (six main feeds, and reserve circuits for each) - distributed over a variety of paths and technologies (for risk-reduction.) (Good) Broadcasters take multiple redundancy very seriously.

All that redundancy means absolutely nothing...

[Wakko Warner]

...if the power keeps going out every other day [iht.com] in Athens.

- A.P.

Re:Redundancy in filming American competitors

[lakin]

On the topic of BBC, NBC may have a nice redundant setup but its not like the BBC dont either: http://www.bbctechnology.com/news40.htm [bbctechnology.com] Paul

Re:Hang on...

[red floyd]

I'd like to remind you that the terrorist attack at Munich 1972 made Jim McKay's career.