YouTube is the latest to announce plans for coverage of the Olympic Games in Asia, saying it will also stream footage to Africa, embracing altogether 64 countries.
This coverage will include the International Olympic Committee’s own YouTube channel, with 10 HD live-feeds from the Games, running from 09:00 to 23:00 UK time, plus a 24-hour broadcast of the Olympic News Channel. There will also be highlight reels and full videos of events after they have finished, amounting to a total of 2,200 hours of coverage, including all of the medal finals.
Among others bringing coverage of the London Olympics to Asia is France Telecom content management and broadcast transmission subsidiary GlobeCast, which has set up a video head-end for the European Football championships currently taking place in Poland and the Ukraine, then to be moved to London for the Olympics in July.
The video will be transmitted to GlobeCast’s distribution hub in Hong-Kong over optical fiber, to serve Asian subscribers. After the Olympics, the platform will be retained at GlobeCast’s Singapore premises for future deployment, either in the field or at its facilities. The head-end is based on encoders, IRDs (Integrated Receiver Decoders), multiplexers, and routers from French transcoding vendor ATEME.