NAB Event News
Eurosport selects On2 Technologies for online video, archiving
By
Apr 14, 2008 - 6:38:15 PM

On2 Technologies has licensed its Flix® Engine encoding and publishing platform to Eurosport, a leading on-line sports brand. By using Flix Engine, Eurosport will standardize its online video programming to On2 based video for Adobe Flash, and will migrate its archive programming across Europe and China to the On2 format.

Eurosport, a subsidiary of TF1 Group, is the most widely-distributed European sports satellite and cable network, with availability in 59 countries and broadcasts in 20 different languages. Eurosport offers viewers many major sporting events such as the UEFA Euro 2008; the tennis Australian, French and U.S. Open tournaments; the Olympic Games; major cycling events such as Le Tour de France; World Championship Snooker, Australian Football League; major team sports such as handball, basketball, and volleyball; winter sports, and youth sports such as skating and surfing. Eurosport websites exist in French, Russian, Swedish and Chinese versions, plus four web sites co-branded with Yahoo!: .UK, .DE, .ES and .IT. Eurosport and Yahoo!Eurosport websites offer sports highlights, videos, news, live-scoring and live commentary, and many web 2.0 features.

'We chose to move to On2 based Flash Video programming for all our online video because of the quality versus datarate and decode simplicity the format offers. This means we can also provide high quality programming to sports fans with slower connection speeds and less powerful computers,' said Nicolas Klein of Eurosport. 'Equally important was the range of encoding and publishing tools available from On2 that allows for the future scalability of our services and expansion into other delivery modes within this environment.'

On2, a de facto standard for web video through its adoption in Adobe Flash Player 8 and 9, plays back on over 90% of Internet-connected PCs worldwide. On2 Flix Engine is the leading server side encoding solution for On2-based Flash video, powering some of the most popular video UGC and social networking sites on the internet.

'Eurosport's move to On2-based Flash video is an example of the enduring presence of this format for web video,' said Bill Joll, president and CEO of On2 Technologies. 'The quality and ease of use – available to the vast majority of web video users – makes On2 Flash the format of choice. The quality of programming that Eurosport provides using this format will deliver the experience that demanding users expect of web video.'

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