eWeek reports that NBC will provide 2,900 hours of live TV coverage, shattering the 2,562 hours of combined US TV coverage for all previous summer Olympics games. According to NBCOlympics.com, though, the number is even higher (3,600 hours) when all NBC Universal networks and NBCOlympics.com are taken into account.

What's even more interesting, though, is how NBC will do it. They'll be shooting half of the coverage in HD (they'll need 11TB of storage just for that) and the remainder in standard format (6TB).

Who's Storing It for NBC?

Isilon Systems and Omneon Video Networks are providing the hardware and software needed for the storage data centers NBC will use for this unprecedented level of coverage.

World, Meet Proxy-Based Workflow

To enable NBC to cope with thousands of hours of coverage, NBC and its technology partners have devised a concept called proxy-based workflow. Instead of sending full-quality HD streams from Beijing, the editing process uses lower-quality MPEG-4 streams as a proxy for HD.

Covering the PC and Device World

As you've already learned in our previous coverage, TV Tonic will deliver Vista users with Windows Media Center up to HD Internet TV via TVTonic and will provide Silverlight-based streaming video for other operating systems and browsers. NBC will also provide main event highlights for mobile devices as well.

For all NBC TV, computer, and mobile device coverage of the Beijing Summer Olympics, go to NBCOlympics.com.