[Macworld]

Post your comments for Online Olympics offerings leave iPhones, some Macs out in the cold here

[MacTechAspen]

And.. You have to be in the US. We are currently traveling around the world, and I could not watch the videos from Bulgaria. It asked for a home Zip code, but it obviously checks the IP and wouldn't let us watch. Shame that.

[jcraig]

I find myself being turned off by the present-day Olympics anyway. No longer is it about amateur athletes overcoming great difficulties to compete for their respective countries. Now, we have professional athletes who live full-time in fully-funded training facilities who make millions of dollars from corporate sponsorships who compete for medals which will result in even greater endorsement deals. I really miss ABC's coverage of the Games, when it was about Sport, and not these sappy exploitational personal drama stories that NBC likes to tell. And why does every USA Basketball team have to have some stupid name? Ah yes, marketing. Maybe I'm just getting crabby in my old age, but I would never install Silverlight on my MBP either ;-)

[dfraley]

Please give credit where credit is due. Although there are no highlight reels available in the store if you browse to nbcolympics.com on the iPhone you get an excellent experience with video highlights. Every online company struggles currently with getting all the content on that everybody wants but the mobile version is sweet. Silverlight is not impressive since it is just Microsoft's "flash". We need to solidify a web standard for interactive video and why should it be the new guy on the street rather than building on the currently used version that everybody is using.

[macFanDave]

jcraig said:

I find myself being turned off by the present-day Olympics anyway. No longer is it about amateur athletes overcoming great difficulties to compete for their respective countries. Now, we have professional athletes who live full-time in fully-funded training facilities who make millions of dollars ...

I disagree. I want to see the very best athletes in the world compete regardless of their amateur/professional status. That whole "amateur" thing was total BS anyway. The Communist countries would say that their athletes were soldiers in the Red Army (or whatever they called their military), but they were really professionals while the US had to throw college kids at them in many sports. Also, the definition of "amateur" in track and field was always a ruse. A track star could make millions in endorsements, but as long as they weren't paid for racing per se, then they conformed to the Olympic Ideal.

But, I agree about the corporate sponsorships. We ought to nationalize the US Olympic teams, sponsored by the taxpayers (the whole thing would probably work out cheaper than a week in Iraq) and donations from individual citizens. But this would mean that no corporation could have exclusive rights to cover the games, either. Let all media organizations duke out in what one might call a free market.

[flybynight]

When will these companies figure out that we don't want another format from every vendor. I suppose SL is the new .wmv, which also sucks, but at least you can get a QT plugin for that so you don't need another player.

[flybynight]

You call for a free market and nationalization in the same paragraph? WTF?
We are paying for the government to screw up too many things as it is. They need to get smaller, not larger.

[leicaman]

Silverlight can only be developed on Windows PCs, and only hosted on Windows servers. It has zero chance of displacing Flash. Period.

Now, Microsoft has contributed to Ajax, as have many other companies. Apple's website dropped Flash for Ajax. Users of any OS can develop Ajax applications. That could possibly become the standard on the web for streaming media. That I have no problem with. But Silverlight can take a flying leap - and it still won't even win a Bronze medal.

[tmedia1]

I couldn't agree with you more! And whats up with the American swimmer Coventry representing Zimbabwe. She lives and works in Austin Texas.

[tmedia1]

I tried to watch the opening ceremonies on my Mac and sad to say couldn't get it to play at NBC.com. So much for standards, thanks Silverlight, way to go Micro$oft....

[rab777hp]

This would explain why I can't watch the Olympics using safari, too bad, I heard the opening ceremonies were great.

[natmusak]

Yeah, this is exactly why Apple doesn't support Adobe's Flash or Microsoft's competing Silverlight proprietary runtime environments on the new iPhone or iPod touch. With the former you've got poor Mac optimization, with the latter MS has the ability to simply discontinue all Mac support just as they've killed support for PowerPC Macs.

I'm hoping next year's Quicktime X will help combat some of this.

[Stephen123]

NBC and Microsoft block Apple users from watching the Olympics. This can't possibly help their ad revenue, so the only real explanation is that they are being mean and vindictive.
It's sad really. And rather contrary to the "Olympic Spirit".
Some people will claim that they couldn't get it to work for all machines or such a small market share, but the share is over 1% so there's real money involved. And Microsoft is perfectly capable of hosting universally compatible video. There just throwing money away because they'd rather be mean to Mac users that earn that revenue. Yahoo does this from time to time also.

[kresh]

I don't care how many companies jump on Silverlight, it will never make it onto any of my family's computers. Ever!