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2012 London Olympics to feature 3D broadcasts from 10 venues?
There's no word from the official Olympics host broadcaster OBS, but equipment manufacturer EVS is already confirming the 2012 London Olympics will be covered in 3D. According to The Hollywood Reporter, at least 10 Olympic venues are on deck for 3D cameras with broadcasts for "a few of the main events" planned. In the UK the rights holder is the BBC who has already toyed with 3D broadcasts a bit, but it's hard to tell what that could mean here in the US. NBC has shown no inclination towards 3D itself, but it is owned by Comcast who has been more than willing to put special events produced by its (now part of NBC Sports) Versus channel in 3D from time to time. With the Olympic Games less than a year away we should hear more soon and, as the article remarks, have an idea how this might affect the sales of 3D-capable TVs around the world.
NBC Universal wins Olympic broadcasts through 2020, promises all events live starting in 2014
We've got some bad news if you're not a fan of how NBC covers the Olympics because the IOC just announced NBC Universal has won the rights to broadcast the Games through 2020 with a $4.38 billion bid, winning over rivals ABC/ESPN and Fox. ESPN and Disney had been very upfront about their desire to broadcast the games and mentioned more than once they would provide all the events live the way we prefer to see them. The good news is that according to NBC Sports Group Chairman Mark Lazarus, every event will be aired live on TV or over the internet -- starting in 2014. While Comcast and NBC try to turn things around from the 2010 Games that it lost money broadcasting, we'll probably have to suffer through tape delay one more time for the London Games next summer.
Pentathlon switching to laser pistols for 2012 Olympics
It looks like your chances of hearing someone say "pew pew" at the 2012 Olympic games just got a whole lot better -- the world governing body for the Pentathlon announced this week that the sport will be switching from air pistols to laser pistols for the next summer games. That follows a successful trial at this month's inaugural Youth Olympics, which apparently went off without a hitch and without any impromptu games of laser tag. According to Klaus Schormann of the UIPM governing body, the switch will now also allow for competitions to be held in places like parks and shopping malls, and it will make it easier for athletes to travel with their guns on airplanes. Of course, the move could also open up a whole new can of worms: performance-enhancing hacking.
Winter Olympics 2010: The iPhone experience
The Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics kicks off tonight at 7:30pm ET/PT. Here's a list of some ways you can enjoy this year's games on your iPhone. 2010Guide - Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games: The Official Mobile Spectator Guide [iTunes link] Free. This app is a location-aware schedule detailing more than 2,000 sport and cultural events taking place over 17 days between February 12 and 28, 2010. Updated throughout the Games, the schedule adjusts to your time zone and works even without a data connection. Plan your Olympic experience by creating a personalized itinerary using Favorites. The app also includes real-time results for every sport as well as headlines, photos and twitter streams. CTVOlympics.ca [iTunes link] Free. The official CTVOlympics.ca iPhone app. Covers up-to-the-minute headlines and news on every sport at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Stunning photo galleries with hundreds of spectacular photos, in-depth Canadian and International athlete profiles, venue information and the upcoming event schedule for the Games. It's everything you will need on the Games from Canada's official broadcasters: CTV, TSN, Rogers Sportsnet, RDS, V, RIS Info Sports, OLN, OMNI, APTN and ATN. More Games-related apps and downloads after the break.
Digital 'Cloud' could form over London for the 2012 Olympics
No, we're not talking about "the cloud" where data goes to disappear and (hopefully) be retrieved again. We're talking about an actual (well, artificial) cloud that promises to be both a real structure and a massive digital display. That's the bright idea of a team of researchers from MIT, anyway, and it's now been shortlisted in a competition designed to find a new tourist attraction to be built in London for the 2012 Olympics. Dubbed simply "The Cloud," the structure would consist of two 400-foot tall mesh towers that are linked by a series of interconnected plastic bubbles, which would themselves house an observation deck inside and be used to display everything from Olympic scores and highlights to a "barometer of the city's interests and moods" outside (that latter bit comes courtesy of the group's partnership with Google). As if that wasn't enough, the whole thing also promises to be funded entirely by micro-payments from the public (which would also determine its final size), and be completely self-powered, with it relying on a combination of solar power and regenerative braking from the lifts in the towers. Video after the break.
Beijing Olympics, DTV transition to thank for skyrocketing STB adoption in China
While we doubted ABI Research's assertion set-top-box shipments would peak in just over three short years, new data from the house of CCID Consulting sure helps substantiate that very notion. The outfit has taken a cold, hard look at STB adoption in China, and what it found was that citizens were snapping 'em up this year like never before. The numbers show that sales were up 83.4% for the first three quarters of 2008 compared to the same window a year ago, and a couple of main occurrences were to thank. First off, the drive towards ditching analog signals in favor of digital has increased adoption and awareness, and also, many locals picked up boxes in order to either catch the Beijing Olympics more clearly or in high-definition. The takeaway? If China's already buying in big to set-top-boxes, maybe that 2012 prediction isn't so off base after all.
SES ASTRA tardily trumpets 12 channels of HD Olympics across Europe
There's nothing here that wasn't apparent already, but SES ASTRA is just now getting around to boasting about a dozen HD channels that it's hosting to broadcast the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Ready for an exhaustive list? The channels broadcasting the Olympics in HD include for the UK, BBC HD, for France, France 2 HD and CANAL+ HD, for Germany, ANIXE HD, for Poland, TVP HD, for the Slovak Republic, STV3, for the Netherlands, 1 HD, for Belgium een HD, for Spain, TELEDEPORTE HD, for Sweden, Viasat HD and SVT HD and for Austria, ORF HD. So yeah, if you somehow missed this for the first week of the Games, at least you're clued in now.[Image courtesy of Beijing 2008]
Poll: Due to HD, have you tuned into the Olympics more?
One masochist notwithstanding, we're pretty sure you haven't sat down for days straight to watch the Summer Games from Beijing, but we're wondering if the superabundance of high-def Olympics programming has changed your perspective on the entire spectacle. Here at Engadget HQ, we've found ourselves captivated by more Olympics footage in the first week than we can ever remember in Games' past, and there's no question that having the events in high-definition caused us to keep flipping back. Is the same phenomenon happening at your house? Are you inexplicably anxious to come home and check out some of the world's greatest athletes in beautiful high-def? Tell us how the HD onslaught has affected your Olympics viewing (if at all).[Image courtesy of Yahoo! Sports] %Poll-18174%
Masochist sits through 24 straight hours of Olympics, writes about it
Just because there are 3,600 hours of Olympics coverage being beamed out in one form or another this year doesn't mean you actually need to watch all 3,600 of them. For one particular pain lover, however, he consumed 24 straight, and thankfully, he had the decency to write about it. Starting at midnight ET on August 12th, he flipped on NBC just in time to catch Alexander Artemev save the bronze for the US in men's gymnastics. 24 hours later, he watched the women's team disappointingly snag a silver in the same sport. Nearly every minute in between is chronicled in the read link below -- seriously, this is a read you can't afford to miss.
Lenovo shows off stable of Olympics-themed USB flash drives
Lenovo already rolled out one Olympics-themed flash drive long before the Beijing Games kicked off, but now that the Opening Ceremonies have come and gone, the outfit is showing off a few more for good measure. The Mascot series contains a half dozen colorful 4GB units that'll go for around $30 apiece, while the so-called Medallions will only be available on the second-hand market thanks to the original batch selling out. Lastly, we've got five slightly different 1GB titanium drives that boast swiveling plugs and arrive in a swank mahogany box. Huzzah?[Via EverythingUSB]Read - Mascot drivesRead - Medallion drivesRead - Titanium drives
How to get the most out of the 2008 Olympic Games
The 2008 Beijing Olympics -- the first covered entirely in high definition, with super slow-motion cameras and 3,600 hours of coverage, online and on TV -- approach. Think you're ready to get the most out of the Games, and maybe, just maybe catch the event you actually want to watch live as it happens? Head over to Engadget HD and get the full rundown on the different ways the Games are coming home and how to take advantage of them all.
Birdo & Silver & Jet & Donkey Kong at the Olympic Games
As if Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games wasn't already home to enough abysmal characters, a group of hackers have discovered a way to unlock numerous other unused playable characters in the title, including Silver the Hedgehog, Jet the -- ugh -- Hawk, and Donkey Kong (who would have been a welcome addition, actually). Birdo is also available, though comes with some sort of hideous facial deformity, as though the model never had its nose finished. It looks kind of wrong, truth be told. Not as wrong as this, mind.There are plenty of other background characters that can be played with (some of which are fairly obscure), though only in certain events (such as trampolining). These include Shy Guy, Toad, the gut-churning Charmy, Espio, Cream, Boo, Bullet Bill (!), Goomba (!!), "Heroes Enemy 1," "Heroes Enemy 2," "SA1 Monkey," and -- nooo! -- Big the Cat. Sprint through the tape and into our gallery for a couple more screens.%Gallery-4697%
aigo delivers USB TV tuners for Chinese, European markets
We heard that Legend Silicon and Intel were teaming up to push HDTV dongles in China, and push they have. aigo has just announced that it has used technology from the former to build USB TV tuners for catching OTA HD signals on laptops, PCs or any other manner of devices capable of watching video. In China, it's estimated that many of the devices will be used to watch the upcoming Olympics in Beijing in glorious high-definition, while DVB-T users in Europe will have yet another choice for snagging HD on-the-run. Reportedly, the tuners will demand around $100 a pop, but there's no word on where or when they'll show up.
Kodak intros Olympics-branded M2008 digital camera
It certainly hasn't gone to the lengths Lenovo has gone with its Olympics tie-ins, but we wouldn't exactly expect anything more from Kodak given its past adventures in athletic cross-promotion. Dubbed the M2008, this latest entry appears to simply be a rebranded version of the company's M1033 compact camera, with it boasting the same 10-megapixel resolution, 3x optical zoom, 3-inch LCD, and 720p video recording features as its non-Olympic counterpart. No word on a release 'round these parts, it seems, but those in China can apparently pick one up now for about $270.[Thanks, Ehren G]
Mario & Sonic team up to sell five million
If you didn't believe that putting both the words "Mario" and "Sonic" in the title of a video game was a viable enough marketing strategy, you'd be wrong. The DS and Wii versions of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games have sold over five million copies combined; we're sure you don't need us to tell you that five million is a lot. Sales will probably only climb much higher when the Beijing Olympics take place later this year.At the very least, we bet that this ensures a Winter Olympics rendition in two years. We wouldn't mind if that happened, but this blogger's stance is firm -- no biathlon, no sale.[Via NeoGAF]
DS Fanboy Review: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
Over the Christmas period, yours truly spent a genuinely exhausting evening drinking with three friends, a Wii, and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. The drink flowed freely that night, and we were all fairly inebriated by the time we hit the sack, happy but tired.The next morning, we were feeling less jolly.It wasn't just the hangovers. Thanks to our exertions in Mario & Sonic, shoulders ached, arms were leaden, and simply putting a shirt on was a painful experience. Despite this, we all agreed we'd do it again. And we did. And yes, it still hurt the following morning. Why am I telling you this? Simple: because it underlines just what a fantastic social experience the Wii version of Mario & Sonic can be. Break the game down in the cold light of day, and it becomes easy to nitpick at its flaws. It's far from perfect. Yet it is immensely fun with friends. It's worth the pain, you could say.And the DS version? Well ... not so much. In fact, as a social experience, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games on the DS falls a long, long way short of its bigger, stronger Wii brother.%Gallery-4700%
Friday Video: Bring your own BUUUUHHH
Yeah, listen. We know we've talked a lot about Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, and now it's out, and maybe we should just leave it alone. But we can't let go yet. We've had too much fun making jokes about rubbing and destruction, and with the yelling and ... and ... it's an emotional time. So we had to have one more video. One last moment in the sun. You'll have to do your own yelling with this video, however. It's stuffed with melodramatic descriptions, but there's a distinct lack of BUUUUUHHHH.%Gallery-4700%
DS releases for the week of January 21st
Legions of gamers have been waiting for this week, which brings the release of the latest Advance Wars. Even with the risks that come with picking up the newest version, we're sure that quite a few of you may be disappearing for the next few weeks. Know that you'll be missed, and try to remember to eat.Not a war person? No worries; if you feel like doing a little yelling, you've got some options. Unless, of course, you live in Australia, where there are no new DS releases being reported for the week. How sad. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games For releases in the rest of the major markets, march on past the break.
Rub! Pull! Ogle! New Mario & Sonic screens
While there's no yelling in this new set of screenshots from Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, there's plenty of rubbing, pulling, and other sharp, staccato commands. Also, there's bonus character art when you need to rest from all the touchscreen-mutilating action. It's not all about the games; there's got to be lots of posing and stretching as well.Y'know, we've seen the Olympics before, and we don't remember any event with three floating basketball hoops. We'd like to go ahead and call for Mario's drug screen, 'cause something just ain't right about all this. Looks fun ... but perhaps chemically-induced.%Gallery-4700%
Mario & Sonic at the official web site
With Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games finally heading out in January for U.S. and Japanese gamers, and in February for the European market, it's no surprise that Nintendo's finally gotten around to putting up their official site. Sega's site has been up for some time, as has Nintendo's site for the Wii version, but the DS game has lagged a bit behind. On the Japanese site, you can see some of the games and how they'll control, in all their touchscreen-destroying glory, as well as characters, event breakdowns, and more.[Via Gamefront]
