NBCU to Double 2010 Olympics Coverage

NBC Universal has laid out its 2010 Winter Olympics schedule and is nearly doubling its coverage from the Torino, Italy Games in 2006. NBCU will offer 835 hours of coverage (compared to 419 hours for the 2006 Games) from all 15 sports competitions across six different platforms – NBC, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Universal HD, and NBCOlympics.com.

The Vancouver Games, which will be the first to be shot entirely in HD, will be available to viewers in a host of different coverage levels. Multichannel News reports that NBC will televise 193.5 hours of major events, the USA network will serve as the home of the U.S. Olympic team, and NBCOlympics.com will feature some 400 hours of live event competition and more than 1000 hours of on-demand full event encores and studio programming. That’s compared to just two hours of live streaming coverage in the 2006 games (the men’s gold medal hockey game ran as a test).

The site, powered by Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, will feature extensive highlights such as event recaps, best-of montages, commentator analysis and athlete-specific clips in full HD quality with DVR controls that allow viewers to pause and rewind video.

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