ORF goes ITV for Olympics
Story Highlights
By Ken
Kerschbaumer
Austrian
sports fans will be in for a treat next summer when ORF (Austrian Broacasting)
debuts a new technology that will dynamically deliver a wealth of video,
statistics and other information to fans. The technology behind the system is
on display at the “Live” section of the EBU stand in hall 10.
”We want
to make the viewing experience more pleasurable and provide a better service
for customers,” said Carmen Mac Williams, media researcher at the
Academy of
Media Arts
in
Cologne.
The system
will allow viewers to access multiple story streams that are created in
real-time and will change based on the interests of viewers. Thanks to digital
set-top boxes the viewer will be able to access interactive content like
statistics and athlete profiles while ORF will receive instantaneous feedback
and audience measurement to better meet viewer needs.
The
production support system hooks into the ORF infrastructure and will rely on
Thomson K2 servers and Bluefish 4:4:4 cards to automate the gathering of
metadata. Williams says the team in the control room will then use that
metadata to access content from a deeper archive as well as statistics and
other data.
The system
is currently undergoing a 2,000 home trial and is expected to be used during
primetime telecasts of the Summer Games.