NBC caught a lot of flak for its live video streams during the London Olympics, but for Sochi, the network promises to stream every event live. Just like during the London Olympics, NBC’s partner for making these streams possible (and authenticating cable subscribers) is Adobe – and Adobe itself is partnering with Microsoft to power the streams.
Adobe’s Primetime platform will power the video delivery and video ads on the NBC Sports website and the NBC Sports Live Extra App for iOS and Android. All events will be available live and on demand.
In the back-end, Adobe will use Microsoft’s Windows Azure Media Services to power all of the encoding and streaming. This partnership, Helfand said, will continue even after the Olympics. As the broadcasters move from experimentation to going live with their online video streams for big events, he argues, they also need to ensure that the streams live up to their audience’s exceptions.