Every two years, the nations of the world come together for the Olympic Games, a global competition of ambition, endurance, focus and athletic ability.
Madrid, Istanbul and Tokyo were the candidate cities for the 2020 Games, and this weekend, we learned that Tokyo will host the 2020 Summer Olympics. We thought it'd be interesting to look back at the last 25 years of Olympic broadcasting to see how the audio visual technology evolved over the years and look forward to what we can expect of the footage of upcoming Olympic Games. Panasonic became an official partner of the Olympics in 1988, for the Calgary and Seoul Games and will continue broadcast each Olympic Games.
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Take a look below to see how audio visual technology — despite being cutting-edge at the time — has improved dramatically over the years. As new technologies emerge, Panasonic's footage has become crisper, sharper, more vibrant, more engaging and more 'round-the-clock, making it feel as if we, the viewers at home, are actually there. We hope you're as excited as we are for the stellar footage that will come out of Sochi in 2014.


The Barcelona Games marked the first digital broadcast. A crew of 2,500 manned the 1,000 digital VTRs in the International Broadcast Center and Olympics venues and provided one conventional analog VTR for every two digital VTRs as a backup. It was the first time most of these camera crews had touched digital equipment.



Torino marked the Olympics' first foray into HD broadcast (for part of the broadcast, not the whole thing), and also marked the Olympics' foray into streaming, as host network NBC posted two hours of coverage online.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics were shot in HD, and NBC also put 2,200 hours of Games coverage online. Beijing marked the first instance when an Olympic Games had a separate YouTube channel to host video.

For the 2010 Games, Panasonic brought a suite of HD equipment, making Vancouver the first Winter Olympic Games to be produced and broadcast completely in HD with multichannel surround sound.

In 2012, the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), an agency of the IOC, broadcasted the Games, the sold the audio and video to other broadcasters. The 5,000 hours of official footage was shot on Panasonic P2 HD shoulder-mount cameras in DVCPRO HD format and was produced and distributed from the International Broadcast Centre in 1080/50i HD.
mage via Panasonic
More than 300 cameras shot the Games in standard 2D, but another 30 ENG cameras, 20 rigs and three Olympic Broadcasting Services trucks were dedicated to 3D coverage. These crews logged more than 300 hours of the London Games to be broadcast in 3D, making it the most widely distributed 3D program at the time. 3D broadcasting had been tested at Beijing and Vancouver, and NBC and Panasonic went full-force to bring the 3D experience to the 80% of U.S. households that could access 3D programming.

On February 7, 2013, exactly one year before the Sochi Olympic Winter Games kick off, the “One Year to Go” event was held at Sochi's Olympic Park. In the Bolshoi Ice Dome (the hockey venue), Panasonic LED Large Screen Display Systems, broadcasting equipment and security cameras had already been installed. Come February, you can expect even morecutting-edge AV equipment — you'll be dodging hockey pucks in your living room, it'll feel so real.
Looking forward, you can bet the Olympic viewing experience will be more crisp, more clear and more immersive. Let the Games begin!
Image courtesy of Flickr, Scorpions and Centaurs