Microsoft, NBC Sports Name Olympics Vendors

Written by Ryan Lawler

Friday, November 6. 2009 at 11:35 AM EST Post a comment

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When the 2010 Winter Games begin in Vancouver next February, NBC Sports will be using Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) Silverlight for all the live and on-demand video that will be available online.

And the companies have now named everyone else that will be bringing the games to users' PC screens.

The decision to use Silverlight should come as little surprise, as NBC Sports has committed to Microsoft's rich Internet application framework for all its live events online, including its NFL Sunday Night Football contests and Wimbledon Live.

But while Microsoft is providing the front-end technology, with a video player developed by Vertigo and an interactive data feed provided by Deltatre, Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), iStreamPlanet Co. , and Inlet Technologies Inc. will be providing help on the back end.

iStreamPlanet will acquire NBC video feeds via IP multicast at its encoding center in Las Vegas, where it will use its workflow automation service to automate video decoding, routing, and encoding. Using Inlet Technologies' Spinnaker technology, it will encode each video stream into six different bit rates for use with Microsoft's Smooth Streaming adaptive bit rate technology.

Akamai will serve as the content delivery network for the Winter Games, replacing Limelight Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: LLNW), which handled streaming video for NBC Sports' coverage of the 2008 Summer Games. Akamai will serve up the video using Microsoft-hosted Windows Servers and leveraging the recently announced Akamai HD Network.

Conviva Inc. will also be in on the Winter Games, providing reporting and monitoring of the streams, so that any potential problems with the video feeds can be fixed in real time.