Cobalt Digital’s Role In NBC Universal’s Tokyo Olympics Broadcasts

An IBC Special Award presented to NBCU for technical capabilities during the Tokyo Games, naming Cobalt Digital in the submission.

The award honored NBCU for its technical proficiency that brought the Tokyo Olympic Games to its audience, offering them the opportunity to enjoy live action in UHD.

NBCU covered the whole content pipeline, from acquisition in HLG and distribution in PQ to a new version of its Skypath distribution system, ensuring the Ultra HD versions were made available to more than 50 local TV stations across the USA. This guaranteed that the full HDR Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos Ultra HD experience was available to 70% of the country.

NBCU used the 3D LUT processing feature on Cobalt Digital’s 9904-UDX audio/video processor cards as the engine for its own NBCU’s LUTS which fed their UHD playout system. Incorporating the Cobalt cards into its workflow allowed NBCU to achieve quality conversion of either SDR to HDR, or HDR to SDR, and cross-conversion from HLG to PQ providing the broadcaster with the enhanced agility to deliver the finest possible video quality to its audience.

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