SVG held its third-annual Sport Technology reception at IBC. The party drew more than 200 SVG vendors and members, gathering to catch up on the latest news and gossip and also to honor Beijing Olympic Broadcasting (BOB) and all of the vendors who made the Summer Games a smashing hit around the world - including Bexel Broadcast Services, a proud provider of one-of-a-kind HD flypack systems for several venues.

Bexel Broadcast Services, an SVG Platinum Sponsor, was a co-host of this year's event in Amsterdam. Scott Nardelli, Joe Wire, and Lee Estroff represented Bexel Broadcast Services and its subsidiaries throughout the evening.

Due to the Paralympics broadcast still ongoing, the BOB team could not make the event. A few comments were relayed from the BOB team from Sotiris Salamouris, who heads up engineering for BOB and says that things in Beijing are going "boringly well" - always a good sign!

Over a dozen Bexel engineers worked tirelessly for months to help make the 2008 Beijing Olympics a truly outstanding technical achievement with innovative HD solutions like the "Hercules" HD flypack. Hercules, and the effort that went into its creation, will be one of the things remembered as a technical landmark for delivering countless hours of content to viewers around the world via HDTV and the Internet.

Beijing 2008 has been a challenging work with many firsts: first Olympics in full HDTV, full 5.1 surround-sound audio, virtual enhancement in HDTV by the host broadcaster, central HDTV server in the IBC, HD RF coverage in all outside races with no helis, high-motion cameras in multiple sports, etc. It would be impossible to achieve any of these objectives without the strong support from the international broadcast industry, vendors, and service providers from all over the world that contributed with their expertise, resources, and hard work.