ESPN, the NFL draft, Glowpoint and Polycom

ESPN will again use videoconferencing technology for its coverage of this weekend’s NFL Draft. The network has teamed with Glowpoint and Polycom to link all 32 team sites with analysts in ESPN’s Connecticut studios. To get the sites up and running, Glowpoint rolled out a T-1s o each location and added some local networking equipment where necessary. The connection between the remote site and ESPN is about 1.2M bit/sec. Polycom ViewStation FX endpoints will provide the audio and video from the team location. At ESPN, four rack-mount videoconferencing codecs are linked to the studio’s video mixer. By having four endpoints, producers can queue up the interviews ahead of time. Glowpoint says nothing special is happening in its network to support the event, though there will be a few extra hands on deck to ensure all goes smoothly. So when the Patriots’ Bill Belichick is explaining brilliant picks to the ESPN guys, it’s not satellite, but regular H.323 videoconferencing.