Interview: Cisco outlined how media company NBCUniversal relied on its IP-based infrastructure to streamline broadcast operations of technologies such as 4K or 8K UHD video at the recent Paris Olympics 2024, which allowed it to do production work remotely.

US cable operator Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which includes linear network NBC, cable networks such as USA Network and CNBC and the Peacock streaming service for live and VOD content.

Speaking on the Mobile World Live podcast, Chris Lapp, a technical solutions architect for media and entertainment at Cisco, explained how the company’s IP Fabric for Media (IPFM) is being used by broadcasters to replace purpose-built legacy hardware.

Uncompressed video generates large amounts of data with one UHD camera generating 12Gb/s, Lapp said.

Lapp stated IPFM is used to enable high-bandwidth, multicast production videos.

“We have to deal with these large pipes and thousands of signals in these cases, but we don’t have to use proprietary connectors anymore like we used to in broadcast,” he stated. “We can basically take everything into the network, everything into packets, and distribute them wherever we need to at any point in time and be extraordinarily reliable and extraordinarily efficient.”

IPFM helps NBCUniversal save on space because it doesn’t need as many racks of equipment, which in turn cuts power requirements.

Lapp explained another advantage for IP is it enables distributed production, even across continents. With distributed production, NBCUniversal sent fewer people on-site to Paris because they can work from anywhere, which Lapp said was a key feature during the first outbreak of Covid-19 (coronavirus).

He noted IP provides NBCUniversal with the ability to turn capacity on or off as needed for augmented reality, “instead of having to go through these strange FPGA-based conversion technologies”.

Listen to Lapp’s full interview and a review of connectivity at the Olympic Games here.