Digital Rapids to Provide encoding and streaming solutions to NBC for Beijing Olympics

Digital Rapids has been selected to provide media encoding,
transcoding and streaming systems to NBC for the network’s Internet coverage of
the 2008 Olympic Games from
Beijing,
China, August
8-24.

Digital Rapids’ DRC-Stream encoding and streaming solutions
will enable NBC Olympics’ unprecedented live and on-demand online coverage of
the Beijing Olympics. 2200 hours of video will be streamed live on the Internet
at NBCOlympics.com, primarily encoded from video feeds into web-friendly
streams through the DRC-Stream systems. Streams will be encoded in the VC-1
compression format for a viewing experience powered by Microsoft Silverlight
technology. The encoded live streams will also be archived for viewers to watch
on-demand. Digital Rapids Transcode Manager, the enterprise-class solution for
scalable, high-volume media file transcoding, will be used to convert
affiliate-provided content between compression and file formats for
U.S. domestic
distribution.

“We’re thrilled to continue our relationship with NBC
by supplying our solutions for coverage of this year’s paramount event, the
Beijing Olympics,” says Brick Eksten, President of Digital Rapids
Corporation. “The nearly unlimited scope of
Internet-based video lends itself perfectly to coverage of an event of this
scale, and our solutions are renowned for bringing video to the web with
exceptional quality and reliability. We’re pleased that NBC has again placed
their trust in our technology and expertise for their ground-breaking online
coverage.

“Delivering an unparalleled online experience is a
vital component of our unprecedented multi-platform coverage of the Beijing
Olympics. The Digital Rapids encoding systems will enable an outstanding
viewing experience for our online audience through superior encoded video
quality and robust reliability, while providing us the workflow efficiencies
needed for coverage of this magnitude,” says Rab Mukraj, Director of Digital
Media Delivery at NBC Universal.