IPTV for ESPN at the US Open

We had a great opportunity to work with ESPN again in 2008 mixing for their service, ESPN-360, which is a subscription based business model for unique content delivery via the web. In this particular case we had a multiple shows going to multiple distribution points. Specifically an application was written for each of the following content delivery concerns. Direct TV, Echo-Star, and ESPN’s in house web delivery vehicle ESPN 360. Each in its own right is a subscription based model, with the Direct TV application being the most evolved.
IPTV
is one of many areas that ESPN is experimenting with. The core effort is providing unique content that the viewer see enough value in to warrant their subscription dollars.
From the creation and origination standpoint there were some firsts for this outing. For example the uplink to get the feeds out to the distribution was carrying 4 Standard Definition feeds and 3 Hi Definition feeds ( all the Hi Def audio feeds were embedded with the AJA HD10AVA ), all paths transmitting out of 1 unit with our man Eric at the helm.
The Bexel production truck was tended to by John and Lane from Dallas doing an incredible job of working on a super tight turnaround for a show that had not been built before.
Of the 4 feeds generated from the remote sight both the Up Close and the Par 3 show saw the lion share of production work, basically creating content in 2 hour chucks and turning it around, then repeating the process for the 37 hours of content built out in the 2 days of preliminary rounds of the USGA’s US Open.
I’ve posted a 1 minute video here ( no audio ) just to demonstrate 1 of the applications that was serviced by this undertaking.

Direct TV demo of interface from Steve Fisher on Vimeo.
In short the Direct TV viewer had the option to view multiple shows at once and call up leaderboards and player stats with this application. The Echo-star build out seemed to suffer from latency in downloading its application and the ESPN 360 interface on the web was promising but suffered bandwidth issues at out monitoring point (the originating compound for the telecast in San Diego).
It would seem as things move forward with the IPTV efforts that some attempt to unify the presentation across platforms would be in order. This can be quite a tall order with all the parties involved but ultimately the end user will speak to what is working and what is not by buying the services or not. It seems that the always hungry for action NASCAR folks have moved forward in this regard with the advent of this sight
With the US Open behind us we’re moving into the summer with some new territory with some live blogging efforts from a leadership training concern in Denver CO. More to follow.