China's Bejing Olympics webcaster goes with Adobe Flash

Stephen Withers
Monday, 04 August 2008 11:56

Business IT - Networking

Adobe has scored a major coup with CCTV's choice of Flash and Flex for webcasting the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games to mainland China and Macau. The arrangement can be seen as a snub for Microsoft's Silverlight.

Microsoft recently announced that NBC and MSN will use Silverlight to deliver more than 3000 hours of Olympic coverage to US web audiences, but CCTV boasts 5000 hours of Olympic content and it was recently revealed that there are more Internet users in China than in the US.

"Over the past year, we've developed new media platforms based on the most advanced Internet technologies,” said Wang Wenbin, general manager for CCTV.com.

"By teaming up with Adobe, we can provide sports fans and consumers an engaging online experience for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and beyond. We chose to partner with Adobe because Adobe technologies enable us to deliver a compelling Web 2.0 experience consistently to people across platforms."

CCTV will use Adobe Flex to generate pages containing results, statistics and other information.

Adobe is naturally happy with the arrangement.

"We are pleased to partner with CCTV.com to bring immersive, interactive Web experiences to millions of sports fans," said Jim Guerard, vice president and general manager of Dynamic Media for Adobe.

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