Quick question, I'm a little confused at the satellite delays between the various locations and the Olympic Park.
I would have thought that all the feeds were coming from other locations to the Olympic Park. But whenever presenters based at the Olympic Park ask a question to commentators at another location, as well as the answer being delayed from the remote site, the response from the presenter at the Park is also delayed.
This would suggest that all the feeds are being coordinated at a central area, something some distance away as to induce a delay in both directions.
Any ideas?
I don't know what they're happening (and I haven't watched enough to see it) but the delay almost certainly won't be caused by satellites.
Like Turin and Vancouver/Whistler it's almost certainly being co-ordinated in the UK rather than on-site in Sochi. (Unlike the Summer Olympics where everything is on-site, the Winters are usually run remotely from galleries in the UK).
So Claire's camera will be a unilateral feed from Sochi to Salford (sound and vision). Claire's earpiece sound (mix of talkback and feeds from other presenters/commentators) will be from Salford. Similarly the commentators in Sochi will be listening to talkback (and Claire's audio if she needs to talk to them) from and via Salford. The host broadcast feed of the event is likely to come back as a multilateral feed (in days gone by this was handled by the EBU - and they may still have the contract). The commentators may have their own camera (as they did at the curling) which will come back as a uni. Similarly most non-host replays, highlights pull-togethers, packages will be played in from Salford, and most (if not all) BBC Sport graphics will be added in Salford.
Multilateral or Multi = Feed taken by many broadcasters - usually a host broadcast feed.
Unilateral or Uni = Feed taken by a single broadcasters - usually a presenter camera, or a feed for interviewing guests remotely.
If the links between Salford and Sochi are satellite you'll get a delay, and even with Long GOP compression on fibre you may get some. Turin was uncompressed SD fibre from Italy to the UK ISTR - so very low delay (and the studio was a bit bigger and the cameras were vision mixed between on-site) So whilst all the feeds may be available and coming through the Olympic park, they only get to hear each other when they are linked in Salford. If not they'd have to have a lot more happening on-site (which costs money for travel and accommodation and also requires temporary galleries to be built - whereas they can use existing facilities in Salford this way)
(Turin was an odd case. The BBC weren't HD, but the host broadcast multilaterals were 4:3 in SD, and only 16:9 in HD. So the BBC and the Aussie rights holders - who wanted 16:9 SD - and I think one or two others - created Munis = which were unilateral multilaterals. They were 16:9 HD to SD downconversion of the events chosen to be covered by participating broadcasters. Not every event was available 16:9 SD as a result - and there were a couple of events not covered in HD which remained 4:3 - but an interesting footnote)
