NBC Universal has announced that it is teaming up with MSN and Microsoft to create NBCOlympics.com on MSN, an online experience for Olympic fans across the United States. The alliance was announced during Bill Gate's keynote presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show. The two companies will work together to deliver Olympic coverage to the U.S. online audience, powered using Silverlight technology. In this Q&A, Microsoft fills us in on a few of the project details.
Q: What is MSN's involvement with NBC and the Olympics?
A: NBC Universal is partnering with Microsoft to make "NBCOlympics.com on MSN" the official online home of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. NBCOlympics.com will provide online users with exclusive access to more than 3,000 hours of live and on-demand video content.
Q: What kind of content will be available on the site?
A: NBCOlympics.com will provide users with access to over 3,000 hours of live and on-demand video content (both in short form and long form formats). Video content will cover over 34 Olympic sport categories and be available to users at multiple bit rates.
Q: When will the site launch?
A: NBCOlympics.com is live today and covers every Olympic summer sport as well as key athletes and events leading up to the 2008 Beijing Games. Coverage will expand in May 2008 to include the U.S. Olympic Team Trials. The site will expand to include the new video player Microsoft is building with NBC, using the Silverlight technology, in time for the Olympic Trials starting in June.
Q: Why Silverlight?
A: Built on Silverlight technology, NBCOlympics.com will let NBC deliver Olympics content to a broad U.S Internet audience -- all through an immersive and interactive video experience including rich meta data like results and athlete information that can be overlayed on the video stream to create a richer experience for fans.
Q: Is there a download required to watch these videos live?
A: For those users who do not have Silverlight already installed, a quick and easy download of the Silverlight plug-in will be offered.
Q: How long is this deal for? Will Microsoft have all rights to the content after the Olympics is over?
A: This deal covers the 2008 Summer Olympics only; however, Microsoft and NBCU continue to explore collaborating on future Olympic events. In addition to this partnership, Microsoft and NBCU have teamed up to provide additional NBC content on MSN, including providing original online content through our partnership with Reveille, the availability of several NBC TV shows at tv.msn.com and the recent partnership, biggestloser.msn.com, to encourage Americans to lose weight together.
Q: Will these videos be available outside the US? What will this experience look like?
A: No, video content is only available in the U.S. due to the terms of the broadcast license NBC has in place with the IOC.
Q: Will the content of the site only be available in English?
A: Yes, primarily in English although some video content from NBC's Telemundo broadcasts will be available in Spanish.
Q: For how long will these videos be available after the Olympics are completed?
A: MSN has rights to distribute video content through end of 2008.
Q: How many viewers do you expect to tune in daily?
A: Over 100 million people visit MSN.com per month. We believe that having Olympic content available on this site will draw even more viewers to the site.
Q: What are you doing to make sure that the site is able to support all these streams?
A: The NBCOlympics.com site is much more than just the visible user experience that Silverlight will provide. Starting at the source in Beijing the content will be encoded using Windows Media based encoding systems. The streams will be hosted by top tier content delivery networks (CDNs) and streamed using Windows Media Services running on Windows Server systems.
Q: Are there any mobile capabilities with this site, can users view Olympic videos on their mobile phone?
A: No, mobile is not covered as part of the MSN agreement (NBC has separate mobile obligations).
Q: You say that over 3000 hours of Olympic videos will be available, how much server room is this taking up?
A: We do not have an exact number for the amount of server room the Olympic videos need. Overall, the MSN video infrastructures currently handles thousands of hours of content, both in on-demand and live events, and we have the networking capacity and technical know how to handle large events like the Olympics.
Q: NBC talks about the quality related to Silverlight, what does this mean? Why did NBC choose Silverlight?
A: Silverlight brings support for HD quality video playback through use of Microsoft's VC-1 codec technology which provides high quality video at the lowest bitrates. VC-1 is a SMPTE standard video codec that is used by both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray high definition discs. Additionally, Windows Media Services provides scalability and reliability for streaming video on the web.
Q: What is NBC doing about content protection?
A: Silverlight supports Microsoft's PlayReady Digital Rights Management (DRM) capabilities for protecting media streams.
Q: In addition to the on-demand streams of events, highlights, and replays, NBC is planning to provide live streams of nearly every event during the 2008 Olympics. How is that possible?
A: NBC will be encoding each event live from Beijing into VC-1 streams which will be encrypted with PlayReady DRM technologies then sent across dedicated networks back to the U.S. where the content will be reflected by leading content delivery networks (CDNs) to users throughout the U.S. The VC-1 codec will provide incredibly high quality video at very efficient bitrates and PlayReady DRM will ensure that the content is secure. Users will be able to select the events and play the content on their PCs from the NBCOlympics.com website which is built using Microsoft's Silverlight technologies.
Q: Is Silverlight only used for the video streams?
A: In addition to playing the video streams, Silverlight is also used to provide much of the user experience surrounding and on top of the video window. Silverlight will let users to receive notifications overlaid on top of the video to alert them to other events starting, athlete statistics and profiles, and other useful information. Additionally, in the enhanced playback mode Silverlight will be used for all aspects of the video, user experience, overlays, media controls, and interactive features of the NBCOlympics.com player.
Q: Is Silverlight available now?
A: Silverlight 1.0 was released to the web in September 2007. A beta version of Silverlight 2.0 will be released in Q1 2008. We haven't made any announcements about the final release of Silverlight 2.0.