Norwegian broadcaster NRK has the free-to-air rights to the Olympics back for the first time since 2012, and it is celebrating by bringing the action to viewers with a mixture of onsite and remote production, augmented and extended reality, and is producing in 1080p for the first time.
NRK has its central studio in Oslo, two other studios on site in Italy for both the biathlon and cross-country, where it is carrying out a full OB and flypack operation respectively, and then 10 other ENG teams on the ground, which will be sending their reports back to Oslo live using bonded technology.
In the main studio in Oslo - which Andreas Sommerseth, the head director for the Winter Olympics has designed and is building with his team right now - presenters will follow the Norwegian action on the slopes, bouncing from sport to sport as key moments happen.
yvind Nyborg, director for NRK's own feed from the biathlon in Italy, adds that audiences should be able to see a lot of Norwegian athletes as there are fewer competitions in the Winter Games as opposed to the Summer Games.
The challenge in Norway is that winter sports are very popular and we are also fairly good at it, Nyborg says. Having different sports happening at the same time where we can win gold here and there, that's also a challenge, but that's something we can live with because it's nice to be this good in winter sports. It's a lot easier in the Summer Olympics for us because then you have some random sports that are quite big, but we're not good at them, so you can treat them differently.
Nyborg continues on what will happen in Oslo: The main studio is here in Oslo where all the feeds come in. Normally for biathlon, if we do that remotely, that will be close to 20 feeds in total, but what we will do [at the Games] for biathlon and cross-country, is we do the production onsite and send home one feed, and the rest will come home.
Control room frenzy
NRK's main studio in Oslo in the process of being built prior to the Winter Olympics 2026There are four control rooms in Oslo working on feeds coming in from the ENG crews in locations around Italy, and a further two onsite at the biathlon and cross-country.
Two of the control rooms are a first for NRK in that they will be one-person shows so the broadcaster can make use of limited space in the face of a large volume of content. Explains Jostein J re Fjeldsk r, NRK sports department's technical and production coordinator, who is overseeing the entire production for the Winter Olympics: We don't really have that many events going on at the same time usually, so we have a limited amount of control rooms. So for this event, we've built a couple of smaller control rooms. They are nothing technologically very fancy, just basically manually typing in the graphics, punching on the vision mixture and so on.
NRK's online streaming platform is NRK TV. This free service will showcase every sport for viewers from start to finish, so if someone wants to watch all the curling, they can. Meanwhile, Sommerseth will be pulling the hottest sports and most exciting moments for Norwegian viewers into the linear feed for channels NRK1, NRK2 and NRK3.
Nyborg says: Andreas in his control room in Oslo will take down whatever feed is the most interesting for the linear coverage. If they show biathlon, they will take my feed. If they show curling, they will take a feed from a different control room in Oslo. If we are not showing the curling [on linear TV] for instance, the curling will instead be online. So there are several control rooms doing all these different feeds for the online, and then Andreas will gather what's most interesting at any given time through his control room, using the studio to bind it all together.
XR and 1080p
NRK is using a new Technocrane for its coverage of Milano Cortina in the oslo studioThe main studio is the site of a trial by the NRK team using Unreal Engine and Pixotope for real time virtual production, with Pixotope serving as software platform using Unreal Engine's photorealistic rendering for live augmented and extended reality in the studio, plus virtual studio graphics.
Comments Sommerseth: We're not reliant on it but it's a trial which we're going to evolve even more for the World Cup. We'll be using a very similar studio for the World Cup, so this is in the beginning and then we're going to develop it more for the summer.
Another first for NRK is that for the first time the Winter Games will be broadcast by NRK in 1080p instead of 1080i. Sommerseth says: I would say the biggest technologically change that we do now - which sounds awful in 2026 - but we're finally for the first time broadcasting the whole event in progressive instead of interlaced. For NRK, this has proved challenging to say at least, but at least I think we're getting there.
We were built in the 1960s and the technology [we use] has steadily evolved, but never made the change over to progressive. So we're still using Quantel Rio [now known as Grass Valley Rio], the editing system, which we have set up in interlaced formats. So all the news editing still happens in that, but we use EVS and we have our control room set up for progressive, so we can use that. So we have this hybrid version [which means we are faced with] both logistics and technologically challenges to have the up converting, down converting and everything. So it's been a hassle, but hopefully next time it'll be easier, concludes Sommerseth.
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Norwegian broadcaster NRK has the free-to-air rights to the Olympics back for the first time since 2012, and it is celebrating by bringing the action to viewers with a mixture of onsite and remote production, augmented and extended reality, and is producing in 1080p for the first time.
