After 16 intense and emotional days, the London 2012 Olympics has flown by. A herculean effort has been made by broadcasters around the globe to ensure coverage of the Games was constantly available to their audiences and at the touch of a button. NBC’s TV footage of the Games has been deemed ‘the most-watched television event in U.S. history’ successfully attracting 219.4 million viewers. It also trounced online records, recording nearly two billion page views and 159 million video streams of Olympics coverage. While on the other side of the pond, the BBC has reported that its overall Olympics TV coverage reached 51.9 million people, with 106 million requests for Olympic video content across all online platforms, more than double the amount of requests for any other event.

So, what has the 30th Olympiad told us about our viewing habits? In a poll of 100 visitors to the RGB Networks blog looking into how they were planning to watch the Olympics, we gained some intriguing insight into the consumption habits of our readers.

One key revelation is that more of our respondents (30 percent) planned to watch the Games on a PC/laptop than on a TV (28 percent) in a remarkable break away from traditional TV viewing habits. Indeed, nearly 70 percent of our readers said the way they were watching the Games this year differed from past years. Moreover, nearly 28 percent of respondents estimated they would watch online while at work – a trend that is sure to grow given the breadth of content and streaming capabilities available online.

With nearly 16 percent watching on their mobile phones while on the move, the survey further indicates that our readers were expecting to be able to access coverage of what they wanted to see, wherever they wanted to see it. This is reflected in NBC’s two Olympic TV Everywhere mobile apps which were ranked the #1 and #2 most-downloaded apps of the week on iTunes.

Forty-two percent of our respondents stated that they would definitely supplement their viewing experience with the use of a second screen. Billed as the first ever ‘truly digital games,’ viewers harnessed the use of social media platforms in record numbers to ensure they could constantly interact with the record-breakers and comment on events as they unfolded. Looking at Twitter numbers alone, a phenomenal 150 million tweets referencing the Olympics were generated over the duration – 9.66 million tweets captured the flurry of the opening ceremony while an astonishing 80,000 tweets a minute were posted as Usain Bolt swept the 200 meter sprint!

It has been thrilling to watch London 2012 unfold as a truly multi-platform event and one that catered directly to viewer’s demands. As sure evidence of things to come, our poll shows a growing trend of multiscreen viewing across multiple platforms and notably, the use of a second screen to complement the principal viewing experience. If there is anything we can learn from the raft of spectacular athletes that flew across our screens in those captivating 16 days, video service providers need to ‘go for gold’ with the best infrastructure systems in place for the next phase of multiscreen delivery. Without a comprehensive TV Everywhere plan, providers are sure to fall behind the competition as viewer expectations continue to change.

Now that we’re hitting mid-August, IBC activities are coming fast and furious. We just received word that our TransAct Packager is a finalist for a second award for its Just-in-Time Packaging capabilities. Take a look at this year’s shortlist for ConnectedWorld.TV awards – we’re competing with some worthy contenders in the category of Connected Content Technology – Best Streaming Technology.

Another exciting addition to our IBC calendar is our co-sponsorship of the forum Multi-network Solutions in the Real World with our partners Verimatrix and Divitel. Take a look, and if you’re going to be in Amsterdam, we encourage you to register. This informative event will give you hands-on information for dealing with the technical and business challenges that operators face with multiscreen, multi-network services. You’ll hear from our CTO – IP video expert Yuval Fisher – who will speak on the topic of Solving DVB + OTT Network Challenges.

As IBC approaches, we will also be revealing on this blog our plans for the show. So make sure you watch this space to stay up to date on all the latest developments. We also will be discussing and debating the upcoming themes of IBC – providing you with insight into our thoughts on the major topics affecting the industry, as well as the key solutions to address them.

Starting off with the topic ‘content creation and innovation,’ we’ll be discussing how operators can continuously expand the reach of video libraries without re-packaging all of their content, using innovations such as dynamically packaging video on the fly.

In the second blog of our series we will look at the ‘business of broadcast’ – detailing how video service providers are struggling to develop business models that enable them to monetize content while also lowering infrastructure costs. We will also provide insight into how standards are affecting the industry today.

Finally, we will discuss how ‘advances in technology’ such as IP video and OTT have given rise to the hybrid delivery model. We will also discuss how the need for speed and video quality will continue to drive video delivery technology development.

For more on our IBC activities, please take a look at our special IBC page, which offers many helpful white papers and case studies, as well as a link to a free exhibition pass.

Come back often as we add new information – make it easy to stay in the loop by subscribing to our blog and following us on LinkedIn, Twitter and/or our special IBC Facebook page.