The perpetual global popularity of The Olympic Games has a long history of focusing broadcasters’ minds on finding new technical ways of making their coverage more enticing. Happily this trend is now confirmed as continuing for the upcoming 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, as Comcast reveals that it’s going to be pulling out all the technical stops to deliver the Games to its customers with more clarity, colour, brightness, contrast, atmospheric sound and immediacy than ever before.
What’s more, Comcast is extending many of its key performance features to its Xfinity Stream app for the first time; they’re no longer only available via an Xfinity X1 box.
Described by Comcast as ‘enhanced 4K’, the new premier Olympics feed will deliver both Dolby Vision high dynamic range and Dolby Atmos sound alongside their 4K resolution. In the broadcast world, Dolby Vision’s enhanced eco system allows more straightforward control over the pictures throughout the camera to TV journey, resulting in a higher quality and more consistent experience on compatible displays. Dolby Atmos, meanwhile, is a state of the art ‘object based’ sound system that creates a highly detailed three-dimensional hemisphere of sound all around you, making you feel like you’re right there in the Olympic stadium with the athletes and crowd.
The announcement that Comcast has managed to reduce the time it takes for its 4K HDR Olympics feeds to reach your screens is also very welcome news. After all, with any sporting event, the longer a live feed takes to get to your screen, the more chance there is that you’ll see or hear the result from other sources – including cheering neighbors! – before you can see it for yourself.
Comcast hasn’t stated exactly how little lag we might now expect from its Enhanced 4K Olympics feed; it simply says “only seconds behind all the live action”. And the exact delay will depend to some extent on local broadband conditions in your home and area. It may be worth noting, though, that Comcast-owned UK satellite and streaming broadcaster Sky announced back in April that it had knocked more than 20 seconds off the time it was taking for its live 4K HDR feeds to get to living rooms.
Comcast states that its rollout of an Enhanced 4K feed with the premium Dolby HDR and audio features follows a successful trial of the technology conducted during the 2024 Super Bowl – and adds that post The Olympics, it sees Enhanced 4K as becoming the new quality standard for live sports on X1.
Comcast extending the enhanced 4K feed to the Xfinity Stream app for the first time with its Olympics coverage really does feel like a big moment for the quality of US live sports delivery, enabling as it does Xfinity X1 customers to enjoy a premium experience ‘on the go’ via a range of compatible TVs and mobile devices.
The enhanced 4K Olympics feed should apparently be easy to find within an Olympics destination portal that will be added to X1 ahead of the Games starting. This X1 ‘destination’ can be accessed simply by saying “Olympics” into the X1 box’s voice remote, and will also host all the other Olympics features and coverage Comcast is putting together. Including – and I quote – “curated and personalzed access to every minute of the coverage across the networks of NBCUniversal, including NBC, USA Network, E!, CNBC, GOLF Channel, Telemundo, Universo, two new Paris Extra channels featuring 24/7 Olympics programming, as well as streaming on Peacock.”
Comcast promises, too, that X1 users will be able to customize their Olympics Destination experience across all their devices in just a few clicks, enabling them to focus on their favourite sports, develop personalized play lists, and make it generally easier to find the live coverage and event replays they’re most interested in.
Also available will be a comprehensive, interactive and filterable schedule of events, an AI-enabled Catch-Up Highlights zone customers can use to quickly jump to top moments from the Games; an area introducing Comcast’s presenting team of past Olympians and Paralympians; tours of many of the Olympic event venues; and, finally, a Sports Zone App via which customers will be able to watch one event while getting updates on others in progress.
I’m waiting for confirmation of exactly when Comcast’s enhanced 4K feeds from the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris are scheduled to start, but my best guess for now would be that they will coincide with the opening ceremony that’s set to begin at 19:30 CEST on July 26.
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