With the 2008 Summer Games winding down this weekend, one can’t help wondering if this is the end of an era when networks sent massive production teams to the location of the Olympics. As our own Ken Kerschbaumer's Live from Beijing journey comes to a close, he tells us why the world may never see an Olympics like this one ever again.

The Beijing Olympics has proved to be a major showcase for Europe, not just the individual national teams competing but also broadcasters, facilities companies, and satellite link providers involved in either producing pictures of the action or getting them back to viewers in the West.

New high-definition outside broadcast trucks may not be earth-shattering news any more, but they keep coming, and among the latest in the pipeline is the first HD vehicle for nobeo, part of the pan-Europe Euro Media Group. Accommodating between 12 and 16 Grass Valley LDK 8000 cameras, nobeo 1 is being built by systems integrator Sono, which has worked on a number of HD studios for the company, and will be used to cover sport, light entertainment, and concerts.

The numbers are far from in, but there’s no doubt that the Olympian challenge NBC Sports has taken on by bringing many events online will yield lessons that will shape future online coverage. Behind the scenes, Digital Rapids -- a Canada-based developer of hardware and software for video ingest, encoding, transcoding, protection, streaming, and delivery -- has created much of the infrastructure needed to make this happen.

Viewers of this season’s NASCAR Chase for the Cup will get a somewhat bigger earful, thanks to more-intensive microphone placement throughout the activity spectrum.

Sports Video Group would like to welcome Eutelsat America as our newest corporate sponsor. Based in Europe, Eutelsat America operates a fleet of 24 satellites that support direct-to-home broadcasting, video distribution, corporate network solutions, and IP applications.

Ken's Olympic adventure is coming to a close, but typhoon-like conditions could not keep him from sharing some secrets he unearthed in the swimming and diving compound on his penultimate day in Beijing. Craig Schiller, VP/general manager of Bexel Broadcast Services, filled Ken in on some cool new discoveries in the compound, pointing out some features of the Bexel Hercules that could apply to flypacks from other manufacturers.

Olympic viewers in China are watching the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing on five CCTV stations which rely on an array of HD broadcast graphics systems from Orad Hi-Tec Systems.

KickApps is combining its KickApps Platform with Akamai's media-management platform, Stream OS, and Web publishers now will have access to powerful tools for turnkey creation and management of players for video publishing.

Based in Shenyang, LiaoNing TV chose to equip the Outside Broadcast vans for their Olympics coverage with some of the latest camera support equipment from Vinten.

Intelsat, the only global satellite operator to provide coverage of every Olympic Games since 1968, is currently offering transmission support for Latin American rights-holders and non-rightsholders of the Beijing Summer Games, delivering more than 12,000 hours of live coverage and recorded highlights to the region.

Through just 13 days, NBC Universal's Beijing Olympic coverage has surpassed the 16-day viewership total for the entire Lillehammer Winter Olympics, making it the second most viewed television event in U.S. history.

Crawford Communications, Inc. has chosen the Genesis Networks fiber infrastructure as a key component in the launch of a new high-definition service offering for World Fishing Network (WFN).

The Vitec Group Broadcast Systems Division companies Clear-Com Communication Systems and Nucomm are helping viewers stay close to all of the action as the broadcast networks assume their positions for the coverage of the games.

PANORAMA dtv, the video products division of Wohler Technologies Inc., has announced the release of the HDMon-260, a production-grade 26-inch widescreen TFT display that enables HD monitoring in field and studio applications. This latest addition to Wohler's HDMon line of HD color video displays accepts video signals up to 1920x1080/60P.

RF Central is rolling out its new RFX-PRX-II portable handheld COFDM monitor/receiver at IBC.

Alfacam is providing 16 outside broadcasting trucks to Beijing Olympic Broadcasting to be used at several athletic venues at the Olympics. Nearly all the trucks are equipped with NVISION routers and AXON’s Synapse Modular Signal Processing Equipment.

With the football season fast approaching, MediaPost reports that Sprint is teaming with the National Football League to deliver live radio and television broadcasts of NFL games and other content via mobile devices. Sprint's NFL Mobile Live offering, launching Sept. 2, includes radio broadcasts of all regular-season games and telecasts of eight Thursday-night games on the NFL Network starting Nov. 6.

In the latest edition of the metered Internet saga, the New York Times reports that Comcast Corporation plans to slow service to its heaviest Internet users during periods of congestion. After regulators ordered the company to devise a new method for managing its Web traffic, top Internet speeds for the heaviest users will be reduced for 10 to 20 minutes to keep service to other users flowing.

Nucomm’s CamPac 2 wireless camera transmitter and Newscaster DR diversity receiver helped WHDH-TV Channel 7 News deliver Boston Celtics’ heartfelt reactions to winning the 2008 NBA championship. The station broadcast all of the team’s post-game festivities and victory parade live.

STATS LLC is partnering with the National Football League to become the league’s exclusive domestic provider of real-time game data. All NFL teams will rely on STATS Pass, an online statistics tool that franchises can use to create statistical databases and print customized reports of team statistics. The ability to share and download the information makes it a valuable tool in player scouting and media relations.

Fox will carry 10 of the Cowboys' 16 regular season games this season -- and it won't be in high definition, with its sharp, crisp, high-resolution image. Five of the other six games will be televised by CBS, NBC or ESPN, which broadcast locally in HD.

The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) tested prototype white space devices in two high-RF environments last week: a Broadway theater and at a preseason NFL game. The agency did not offer a formal publication of results, which were witnessed by interested parties on both sides of the debate. The devices tested were submitted to the FCC by Philips Electronics and the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) in Singapore.

Residents of Montana may be seeing some strange things in their state this National Football League season.

For those of us who follow such things, there’s always a bit of a disconnect when watching news reports that show domestic life in developing countries. Most of the time, the family in the living room or the men in the coffee house are huddled around picture-tube TVs.

Dan Fouts, NFL Hall of Famer and former All-Pro quarterback with the San Diego Chargers, returns to CBS Sports as an analyst for "The NFL on CBS." The announcement was made today by Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports.

NBC knows gold when it sees it. In the wake of Michael Phelps’ sweep of the swimming gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, all captured by NBC and even repackaged already for DVD sales, the network signed a deal with USA Swimming to broadcast the 2009 World and U.S. Championships, as well as the U.S. Championships in 2010 and 2011.