Unified Streaming’s new platform for the Dutch broadcast foundation’s 2012 Summer of Sports. This use case discusses implementation of a newly created platform by Unified Streaming for the high-volume, high-speed needs of the Nederlandse Publiek Omroep (NPO)’ broadcast of its 2012 Studio Sportzomer. The ​“Summer of Sports” required live coverage of three hugely popular international games: the Summer Olympics in London, the Tour de France and the UEFA European Championship.

Three years later, NPO continues to use this platform for live streaming of other major world events like Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, 2014 FIFA World Cup and its catch-up TV service.

NOS, the Dutch broadcast foundation, is the largest news organization in the Netherlands and a pillar of the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep (NPO), the Dutch public broadcasting system. NOS broadcasts real-time coverage of news, sports and international affairs through multimedia channels, including www​.nos​.nl, radio, TV (connected and not), mobile applications, social networks, game consoles and other internet-connected devices.

The solution

Broadcasters need audio and video multi-platform content delivery to be consistent. But with so many screens – each with its own operating system, format and way of handling content – this is a challenge. And it affects all devices, from handheld to desktop, as well as the connected TV in your living room. What’s more, broadcasters must support multi-platform consumption without compromising content security or network efficiencies. Some legacy solutions have difficulty scaling –RTP/RTSP, for example, needs a per stream connection, which precludes large-scale use. Others lack basic web delivery functions. That’s where Unified Streaming comes in.

Read more about this use case in our related white paper.

Achievements

• Proven to be a stable, scalable streaming platform throughout the 2012 Summer of Sports and other events at scale
• Accommodated over five million viewer visits to NOS​.nl during the 2012 Olympics
• Handled peak Olympics viewership when combined traffic surpassed 100 GB/​s on the HASP platform
• Created an additional overload for subscribers to Dutch telecom company KPN, upping the amount of streamed data during the Olympics to over 130 GB/​s
• As of 2015 the slightly modified platform handles over 200 GB/​s