2010WinterOlympics
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How does NBC justify tape delaying the Olympics? Pretty easily
You can't throw a rock on the internet without hitting someone frustrated by NBC's handling of the Winter Olympics. ESPN and The New York Times can barely hide their giggles while posting event results hours before they air and West Coast viewers have to endure an additional delay to watch an event happening in their own time zone. Compare these quotes by NBC Olympics chairman Dick Ebersol, first in 2001, then later in 2008 posted by Deadspin and The Bastard Machine: 2001 - "A domestic Olympics cries out to be telecast live across the entire country as previous U.S. games have been," he said. "I am emphatic that delaying our primetime Salt Lake coverage is a mistake." 2008 - "...the viewers have repeatedly told us that the vast majority of them, well in excess of 80 percent, want to see the Olympics when they're available to see the Olympics. They don't want to see the key events of the day happening at 4 or 5 o'clock their time." Meanwhile NBC CEO Jeff Zucker a.k.a. the guy who keeps Heroes on the air appears completely pleased by the ratings results in this video interview with CNBC embedded after the break. Whether it's still the local affiliates who are to blame or simply a silent majority of tape delay loving Luddites, it doesn't appear NBC plans on changing course for any reason. Still, feel free to drop by their message boards and let them know how you really feel about it, and hope ESPN nabs the rights for future Games.
Hands-on with the interactive Olympics and web videos
Events like the Olympics usual bring new technology home -- which is a good thing -- but unfortunately these apps really show us how far we are from the interactive TV future we've been promised. There really isn't any realistic way to try out every version of interactive Olympic coverage since so many providers are only offered in certain areas of the country and some providers -- like Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, Charter and most Cox areas -- aren't offering any at all. In addition to interactive TV the Winter games have actually taken a step back in regards to online video. While anyone could watch all the live videos and replays online before, the Winter Olympic coverage requires that you to prove you pay for TV before giving you full access. In the case of Verizon's FiOS TV, it allows viewers to access the EBIF interactive information from NBC Universal's channels, which is the first time we've every experienced the use of CableLabs' new interactive platform, as for how we like it or Comcast's mosaic channel, click on through to find out. %Gallery-85579%
Ready for the first all-HD Winter Olympics? NBC is
Forget Torino and its quality issues, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver promises to be a different event, and this time it is coming home shot 100% natively in HD. Watching on TV, viewers can expect a slew of coverage across NBC's networks, plus a continuously updated HD VOD package of the day's highlights, and interactive TV features to pull up medal counts, athlete bios and Team USA reports. Checking in online? NBC is back with a new iteration of Microsoft's Silverlight streaming, promising even more HD footage, with the ability to fast forward and rewind streams, plus save clips to your computer. Behind the online efforts are the encoding skills of iStreamPlanet providing 23 different video feeds, with Akamai's new HD distribution network distributing the adaptive bitrate streams directly to your PC. Remember when we were just happy to get 5.1 surround?Read - Akamai and iStreamPlanet to Power Live and on-Demand Video for NBC's Coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games
