whadu
Level 47: Snake Eater
Posts: 31334Timestamp: Tue Aug 05, 08 10:41 PM
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| Post URL: 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics TV Schedule Released
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Dave And Thomas: The Olympics are great for getting some quality timekilling in. When else are you going to care, much less watch, hours upon hours of obscure sports like badminton, ping pong, or women’s field hockey. That’s not to say we probably won’t watch them. The beauty of the Olympics is that they only pop up every few years and there’s enough time in between to forget why we don’t watch badminton on TV weekly.
NBC paid a shit-load of money to broadcast the 2008 Olympics and we are hoping they don’t let us down. Since this year’s events are taking place in Beijing, China, there will be a huge time delay.
Or will there be?
Usually, the networks would package up some highlights and air them during the next day. But in this modern world we demand more. That’s why NBC is streaming events online! Yes! 2200 hours of Olympics sports online!
“The viewing experience on NBCOlympics.com will differ from the TV standard. The games will not be slickly produced or described by pairs of announcers; instead, users will see the standard world feed that is sent to all broadcasters, and bloggers will serve as play-by-play voices and analysts. Users will also have access to statistics, athlete biographies and other information as they watch the action.”
Finally. So much of the Olympics go unseen that the power of the Internet was bound to unleash its beauty. So what do you need to watch the Olympics online?
“In China, then, NBC will stream 2,200 hours of live events across 25 sports on NBCOlympics.com, NBC’s Olympics Web site. The network has been spurred on by technologies that can send out mass quantities of video in high resolution and confine them to users in the United States, the only territory where NBC’s rights are relevant.” (source)
First off, you’ll need a Microsoft program called Silverlight. Damn! It’s like Flash but made by Microsoft and you’ll need it to watch the events. Hint: get one early before the bandwidth crunch makes it take 8 hours to install. When we downloaded it tonight it was 4.7 Mb and it works like any regular Flash player. Troubles? Head to Microsoft’s Silverlight page for the answers.
“As Bill Gates announced at CES back in January, all video at the NBC Olympics site requires Silverlight, Microsoft’s rich web application and video streaming technology that competes with Adobe’s market-dominant Flash. Microsoft’s been pushing Silverlight pretty hard lately, and if a lot of consumers don’t have a reason to install it yet, the Beijing Games in August should be a good a reason as any.” (source)
So now you know what you need to tap into the 2200 hours of Olympics on your computer. Now, check out the schedule of the 2 weeks of games. NBC has them listed on their website. Go to this link and enter your zip code and find the NBC station near you. Then it will pop up the listings for both TV and Online. Very nice! Let’s just hope China doesn’t censor too much of the events.
NBC will also broadcast the 2008 Olympics Games on it’s traditional stations like NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Universal HD, Oh - Oxygen Network, and Telemundo. The best bet is the Universal HD which looks to turn into the NBC Olympic Channel for 2 weeks. This station is for HD TV owners so you may not be too familiar with it yet. However, here’s a trick for you non-HD TV Owners to watch it.
If you have the Comcast DVR and do not have a HD TV you can still watch it. Most Comcast DVR’s have built in HD Tuners. You may not know it but it’s there already and you’re paying for it. Check your lineup and you’ll see it in the HD Channel listings. You can still watch it with most standard TVs. It will just show black bars on the top and bottom but you’ll get the picture and sound rather nicely. DVR’s are widely popular and most people are unaware of the HD Tuner built in.
Source: daveandthomas.net
2008, Beijing, Summer-Olympics, Television
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