[RobK]

After you install the plugin and wade thru the advertising, it works rather well.

[ronincali3002]

I've watched MANY videos of the Olympics via the NBC Olympics website on my 2008 MacBook Pro (since day one of the Olympics), and it's been a great experience. It's been fast, clean, clear, and pretty large video size as well. And, I've gotta say, it's been nice to control what I watch, and watch only what I want without scouring through three to five hours of EACH recording on my DVR trying to find the events I want to watch.
I don't care if it's Microsoft, Adobe, or Apple software, as long as I can access the Olympics content, which I have, can, and will.

[karlfranz]

I was one of the fools who installed the Silvertlight plugin on my Penryn MBP in order to watch the video streams on nbcolympics.com.
Unfortunately, and in typical MS fashion, the plugin causes Safari to completely crash and go away. I tried rebooting but that didn't do anything. So far, it's the only plugin I have ever installed that has managed to bring Safari to its knees. A quick search on Google proved that I wasn't alone in these problems. Eventually, I gave up on trying to use it.
The sad part, is that I'm sure that MS will count my plugin download and that of all the others who could not get it to work when they tally up and later claim "look at all the people that are now using Silverlight" in their marketing spin.

[martincooper]

Does the Canadian CBC site work in the US?
http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/livevideo/
They got it working for Mac users late last week. QuickTime had a problem with the video stream. I believe Flip4Mac worked.

[derekm]

Well, there is that, but I think it's more do to with the fact that the USA pretty much dominates and NBC is going to show any sport that the USA is virtually guaranteed to get the gold medal. Same goes for the 6 on 6 indoor variety (although the USA does actually have some competition there).
[quote name='Chris Breen']
I have no doubt that beach volleyball is a highly competitive and challenging sport, but it's pretty clear that the ghost of Aaron Spelling has dictated the amount of airtime it gets.

[Chris Breen]

derekm said:

Well, there is that, but I think it's more do to with the fact that the USA pretty much dominates and NBC is going to show any sport that the USA is virtually guaranteed to get the gold medal.

Yeah, I railed about that a couple of weeks ago in another Playlist blog. I'd love to see the jingoism taken out of Olympics coverage (as well as the heart-wrenching sob stories that we apparently need in order to root for the "right" athlete) but my understanding is that every country spins the Olympics to its viewers. So, I rely on TiVo's ability to blip over any bit where Bobby C begins "But before we get to the competition...."

[flosofl]

Jamus:
I read about the technical architecting of the Olympics streaming solution a while ago, so most of this may be due to poor recollection.

You're actually very close to how it's all architected. I can't remember the company's name (I think they're in AZ or other southwest state), but they have deals/agreements to have servers colocated at 100s of ISPs in the US to respond to the Silverlight requests from NBCOlympics.com. These are all interconnected over a private network of some really beefy fiber links (probably some sort of mesh network) so the staggeringly huge amount of data never really traverses much of the Internet backbone ( I think they have a dedicated satellite link for the feed from China). This also keeps the client end fairly snappy since the communication is relatively close geographically speaking --less router hops, lower latency. Of course, you can have the lowest latency in the world, but if the bandwidth isn't there...

I've been pretty pleased with the ability to watch the Men's Team Sabre events, and fairly impressed with the video feed. Silverlight on a Mac isn't terrible, but it's the entire thought of letting MS into my beautiful OS :P

[reifer]

There are many more issues with NBC
Is the US the only country left in the World that thinks that the Olympics is only about money?
First the coverage on NBC is ridiculous. Had to watch the opening ceremony in primetime, several hours late. Luckily I was in Mexico City and there were three local networks showing it all live with VERY few commercial interruptions. Coverage of international events in the US is ridiculous. I hate the networks. Hopefully the time will come when we can avoid them all together.
I did all the BS to make it possible to download from NBC and couldn't do it. I was out of the country. First they asked for my US zip code and carrier. I use Dish, then I downloaded something and I got a message that they were not allowed to share it outside of the US. WTF, if I was home, I could turn on the TV, a big value to me of the internet is the ability to keep up with stuff when I'm not at home?

[BCcat]

As a Canadian I've been very happy with CBC's on-line coverage of the Olympics.

http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/

As for jingoism - when the maple leaf waving gets to be too much I just skip to another sport :-)

[Chris Breen]

What's that? You mean Canada is participating in the Olympics? Gee, you'd never know by NBC's coverage....

[Kyle_Varnell]

BCcat writes

"As a Canadian I've been very happy with CBC's on-line coverage of the Olympics."

I'll add to that and go one better. As an American I am once again happy with the Olympics coverage on CBC. Woe to those who must sit through the pontifications of Bob Costas and the "Live" events shown on NBC.

[doglesby]

Chris Breen said:

But honestly, when I get to the long segments of beach volleyball, my thumb firmly mashes down on Mr. TiVo's fast-forward button.

Me too, although I do so because I can follow most of the action at 1 ffw (especially since they replay in slo-mo so often I'm basically watching at real speed). Al Trautwig, now that's someone I fast forward past as soon as I hear his voice.

This is also a really fun way to view flat water kayaking, especially the K4 :)

[doglesby]

reifer said:

There are many more issues with NBC
Is the US the only country left in the World that thinks that the Olympics is only about money?

Given that baseball is due to be pulled because the MLB players don't participate (the IOC wants a Major League dream), I'd say that the US was the first to recognize that the Olympics is about money and you are the last.

[doglesby]

The Canadian team scored a run against the US Softball team (the only team to do so going back to Athens), only to lose when the US scored 4 runs without a single base hit--ouch. NBC covered that :)