The Olympics in Beijing have provided companies around the world the opportunity to jockey into the media spotlight to gain exposure for small Olympic technology feats.
For example, many companies in recent weeks have announced seemingly exclusive deals with either Olympic sponsors or the International Olympic Committee. In particular, deals with CCTV, China's government-run television channel, and CCTV.com have been frequent. CCTV.com has been recognized by the International Olympic Committee as China's only official Internet and mobile broadcaster of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, and therefore owns exclusive rights to the broadcast of all audio and video content via online and mobile distribution channels in Greater China.
CCTV has reportedly selected SafeNet's Digital Rights Management solution to provide copyright protection for live and on-demand online video footage of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. But ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre Net Edition has also been chosen by CCTV.com as the online media player to bring the 2008 Beijing Olympics to viewers live on the Internet in China. While allowing viewers to watch the games anytime they want on the Internet, this collaboration between CCTV.com and ArcSoft also ensures that the games broadcasted are protected, preventing them from being misused.
"ArcSoft is pleased to partner with CCTV.com to bring this worldwide event to millions of Chinese viewers," said George Tang, ArcSoft vice president and general manager of the company's Video and Home Entertainment Group. "With the exclusive broadcasting right owned by CCTV.com, protecting the online contents from being pirated is extremely important; TotalMedia Theatre Net Edition was chosen for its strong security ability."
While the services offered by SafeNet and ArcSoft are different, there is overlap, and their press releases and claims of support for both the Olympics and CCTV underline the urge for companies to take advantage of these next few weeks to gain whatever limelight is cast by the Chinese Olympic lantern.