NBC Universal expands deal with Vyvx

NBC Universal has expanded its multi-year agreement with Vyvx, a Level 3 company, for support of sports broadcasts and other programming. Under the terms of the agreement, Vyvx is NBC’s exclusive provider of NFL backhaul, a primary provider of NHL backhaul and will enable NBC to receive feeds from all other Sunday games for highlights on the NBC Sunday pregame program.

“Vyvx is a logical and trusted choice for NBC’s sports events collection and backhaul needs,” said Michael Meehan, vice president of Sports Operations and Production Planning at NBC Universal. “In addition to its commanding presence at sports venues and impressive track record with NBC and the industry, Vyvx worked with us to innovate a specialized, scalable solution to address our specific challenges, giving us better monitoring capabilities and control over the backhaul transmission of our programming.”

The Vyvx Broadcaster Access solution enables NBC and Vyvx to work together to develop a broadcast network for NBC’s video and data services. Vyvx provides a converged platform that transmits high quality digital video (ASI, SDI, SDTI) services, while supplying NBC more flexibility to meet their growing data transmission demands.

The flexible design enables NBC to move ASI, SDI, SDTI video formats across the network, giving NBC more control over content. The solution greatly increases scalability, as the direct fiber connectivity to NBC’s control center enables capacity to be increased quickly and efficiently. Additionally, the Vyvx Broadcaster Access solution provides increased redundancy while eliminating local loop capacity constraints and the coordination with multiple vendors, which in the past could cause bottlenecks and inefficiency.

This unique solution was designed to provide high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) feeds for NBC’s newly won NFL contract to broadcast Sunday Night Football. Additionally, the solution provides for the HD and SD feeds of the day’s game highlights from other networks to broadcast during NBC’s Sunday Pre-Game show. Because the solution provides a scalable architecture that can expand based on additional content growth fueled by increased HD sports and event programming, Vyvx will also carry the majority of all NHL feeds for NBC in both HD and SD formats,

“NBC has been a valued customer for 15 years, and we are pleased to be providing expanded support for NBC’s sports broadcasting endeavors,” said Derek Smith, senior vice president of Level 3 Content Markets Group. “This collaborative effort in support of new solutions for NBC is a prime example of our ability to innovate and be flexible on our customers’ behalf.”

In addition to its direct connections to over 100 sports venues, the Vyvx network also reaches a large number of networks, broadcasters, studios, production houses and other locations with HD broadcast and distribution needs.