Alibaba’s cloud solutions are supporting delivery of feeds from Olympic Broadcasting Services to rights holders for the first time at Tokyo 2020.
OBS Cloud, which has been created by OBS and Alibaba, is offering new models for content delivery and is designed to help transform the media industry for the digital era.
Leveraging Alibaba technologies, Content+, OBS’ content delivery platform is fully migrated to the cloud for delivering short-form content, content asset management and content production.
During Tokyo 2020, between 7,000 and 9,000 short-form content clips are expected to be produced by the OBS Content+ crew to help enhance rights holders’ coverage. A web-based interface is delivering the service to 17 host broadcasters and four news agencies. The clips can be accessed by the broadcasters’ digital and social media teams from any location in the world to supplement their own Olympic coverage.
Rights holding broadcasters can also access all Olympic content produced by OBS, including live content as it is being produced. According to Alibaba, 31 broadcasters have signed up for this full service which enables them to easily browse through the low-resolution files in near real-time, and retrieve any content in any of their global facilities.
OBS is also employing the Content+ platform for remote editing and standards conversion.
In addition, two rights holding broadcasters are receiving live distribution of Ultra High Definition (UHD), High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Internet Protocol Video and Audio package during Tokyo 2020, allowing them to deliver 4K content to their viewers.
Yiannis Exarchos, OBS chief executive officer, said: “The partnership with Alibaba Cloud is transforming how we broadcast the Olympic Games to the widest possible audience – this is perhaps the biggest technological change in the broadcasting industry for more than half a century since the introduction of satellite transmission, which was introduced to Olympic broadcast coverage for the first time at Tokyo 1964.”
