BBC seeks enhanced video player for Olympics

Tender reveals broadcaster set to pay up to £300,000 on intelligent video player in advance of games

The BBC is looking to pay up to £300,000 for the provision and support of an intelligent video player that will be used to cover all the Olympic Games in London 2012.

The tender was published on the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) today.

The broadcaster is seeking a third party to build, provision and support an enhanced Flash video player that integrates data from BBC back-end systems in real time with live and on-demand video streamed via HTTP Dynamic Streaming.

The player will be used to stream all Olympic disciplines.

The tender indicates that the BBC requires a working model of the video player by 31 December 2011 in order to test it on sporting events ahead of the Olympics itself.

The BBC says that if this is not achieved by the end of the year, it "would face a large integration job very late in the delivery of the intelligent video player, and may miss the opportunity to identify and fix performance issues along the way".

As the BBC expects to hold the video rights for the Olympics video for six months after the games, it also requires second- to fourth-line support up until 28 February 2013.