No Streams for You!

lim-bim-tim-wim writes "IDG NZ and others are reporting that NBC are determined to be the sole place to obtain streaming video of the Olympics. It appears NBC wants to save the good stuff for American prime time. This is despite local media paying billions for the television rights and time differences between prime times in different countries. Does this seem kinda like the TiVO thing?" My prediction is that for the next Olympics, some venture-capital-backed outfit will pay a fortune for "internet rights" to be the only source of streaming video, and they won't get much traffic, and it will be a big flop. We shall see. :)

Comments

Re:Say No to Streaming

[Kris_J]

I use Streambox VCR to save C-Net radio to a file, then I use Streambox ripper to turn it into an MP3 file that I can load onto my Rio PMP300 Special Edition, so I can listen to interesting news while exercising at a local gym.

Since I live in Australia, US streams suck. Moreover, living in Perth there aren't any decent fast connection options anyway. If I can't download a file and turn it into an MP3 there's not much I can do about it. As such, hats off to Geeks in Space -- I hope it comes back soon.

Olympic Triplecast Redux?

[IHateEverybody]

My prediction is that for the next Olympics, some venture-capital-backed outfit will pay a fortune for "internet rights" to be the only source of streaming video, and they won't get much traffic, and it will be a big flop.

That sounds a lot like the old Olympic Triplecast all over again. Does anyone remember the Triplecast? A few years ago, NBC decided that they could make big money by putting all the Olympic events on three cable channels and charging people to watch them live. This was intended to supplement NBC's mostly taped free coverage of the Olympics. It was also a huge flop.

Say No to Streaming

[Demona]

Streambox VCR (which the company had to yank when Real threw a hissy fit) is still floating around the net; use Google to track it down. Along similar lines, the anonymously produced ASF Recorder is still available from a few of its mirror sites; it's a very nice, source-included, ready to run on Linux and Windows app that saves ASF streams. With these tools, we can once again DOWNLOAD FILES THE WAY GOD AND SPAF INTENDED!

(I don't think I'd hate streaming so much if people had offered it as an alternative, instead of a replacement, and not tried to pass it off as the wave of the future that would replace all that "complicated, time-consuming downloading".

-dj

screaming in digital