Slashdot Mirror
NBC To Live Stream Olympics Event
An anonymous reader writes "According to Broadcasting Cable, NBC is going to stream the gold medal Men's hockey game live on the NBC Olympics web site. This is in preparation for (hopefully) many more live feeds throughout the year. The video stream will have DRM and IP protection to attempt to limit access to residents of the US, like the other event video on the site. With the stream served by Akamai's CDN, it will be interesting to see if it can sustain the load. The game starts around 8:00am EST on Sunday, Feb 26 if you are interested in checking it out."
It's not hard people. You can't rely on spell check for all your editing.
I didn't know they had that event in the Winter olympics!
|/usr/games/fortune
medal this is as bad as when i saw "died coke" on a menu.
My other car is a slashdot UID.
Didn't the previous story go over this? Something about Akamai being unable to handle too much load?
1 8
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/25/21152
Yeah, I know that Cringley didn't actually mention Akamai.
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
You failed at the olympics coverage! Offering a carrot in the form of an internet stream just shows how much you suck at covering these events.
So can I assume that with DRM protection I won't be able to view it on linux?
It should be noted that the gold medal game will also be broadcast by the main NBC network live at 8am ET to affiliates in the Eastern and Central time zones. The game will be seen at 8am local time in the Mountain and Pacific time zones.
99% of the TVs in America has access to an NBC affiliate, and this web stream is designed not to be viewable outside the USA, so it's kinda questionable just who this stream is aimed at. West coasters who can't wait out a three hour tape delay and want to see the game at 5am PT? People who have an office job who are working at 8am ET on a Sunday morning?
Two years ago the online radio stations I normally listen to (Dutch Radio 1 and Australian ABC Radio National / News Radio) went off-line during the Olympics because the news reports on it contained news and snippets of the Olypmic games and weren't allowed to be broadcasted outside the country itself and thus were turned off.
This year, Olympic games again and I'm still listening to the three stations mentioned earlier. Is this a change of policy of the Olympic council or doesn't it matter too much for the winter olYmpics? Anybody with any insight in this?
bash$
Nobody!
I rather watch a college party hurling contest than an olympic curling contest. Image a rich white boy sliding rocks across the ice while more rich white boys sweep imaginary snow out of it's path. My remote has been programed to automatically skip NBC for the past week.
The BBC have been doing this for UK residents for the duration of the Olympics - not just Ice Hockey (which I have been following closely - go Niittymäki!), but a host of other sports that involve sliding too.
:)
It's a Real Video stream, and it works pretty well; I've only had a few occasions where congestion has killed it. The only other problem is that quite often the compression they're using removes the puck from the image. Quite amusing
And its no surprise since they have exclusive broadcast rights in the US. Rather than show most of the events, they hand pick a small few where the US is supposed to win and then cover them. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'd much rather watch the biathlon or curling or x-country skiing than sit through another "spirit of the games" hype session (this olympian has battled through cancer, loss of family, broken leg, blah blah blah). Every olympian works hard and overcomes personal obstacles on their way to the games, its nothing special.
Snowboarding and freestyle skiing shouldn't be olympic sports; save that shit for the x-games. When I'm watching the Olympic games, I should never hear a commentator say "he got sick air on that phat run".
The only thing that has made these games less than absolute shit is the fact that I get CBC (hoser tv), and they actually cover the games, not the hype (Bode Miller needs to change his name to Sir Chokesalot)
and with the absolutely brilliant performance of the american hockey team this year; they might actually get a half-dozen hits on their stream. ebersol himself could host the stream on his home broadband connection and still have the pipe left to seed the latest survivor episode.
AOL has already proven with Live 8 that a large stream event is possible. The press release from AOL says 175,000 concurent streams at more then 60Gb/s. The AOL backbone is comprised of OC-192's (atdn.net) and all of this content was served in house with out use of Akamai to the ENTIRE world. This is hardly reveolutionary.
NBC does. I've got Sweden 3-1.
Good grief. When's the last time anyone saw a past olympic event that was more than a 3 second blip on a prepackaged news blip. And they're worried about DRM here? Let's be clear. They are going to show the event for a day. Some people will watch it, most won't and almost everyone will NEVER SEE IT AGAIN. Wow, there's a lot of repeat business in that brilliant model!
They don't have a clue about today's internet culture. You think they would have caught on last time, but obviously they are still clueless.
:T:R:A:N:S:
I'm kinda pissed that only US residents get to watch the feed, leaving my fellow Canadians out...
:P
But then again, Canada's out of the running - so I don't give a shit about the Olympics anymore.
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
For the benefit of people who come accross this article in a search, you might want to notice that the /. article posted immediately before this one estimates that Akamai can only handle 150,000 streams at a time.
Put these two articles together: and you come to the conclusion that Internet streaming just isn't ready for prime time. TV will always be more easily moved over broadcast technology, not something that has the overhead of IP.
DRM means that I won't be able to watch it in Linux, right? I hate DRM.
Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
Jack, meet ass. His name is "elister" and he just dicouvered Slashdot!
Given that those things aren't made of actual gold anymore, perhaps this is more of a Freudian slip than a typo?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
well now that it's been posted to slashdot it will be even more interesting..hmm..
They weren't really in the running, were they? It's a good thing we have women who can play hockey, eh?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Da BBC Has ALREADY been up IN DIS bitCHHHH
1. STOP MIXING EVENTS! I want to watch downhill skiing and I don't care about hockey! (I do but that's besides the point). I want to be able to watch a single competition and I want to know when it will start and when it will end. I don't want to have them mix everything together! I have to tape all of this and then watch all this stuff! 2. They have NBC, CNBC, MSNBC and USA. Three out of the four can be used to broadcast olympic events 24/7. So you set appart time slots on each channel for each sport and advertise it as such. The less popular sports should be shown on cable and the more popular sports should be shown on broadcast channels (or vice-versa if the cable companies pay them). 3. USA is not the only country there! Since they have so much underutilized timeslots, why not show other countries? I, for example, want to watch other countries' competitors and I'd be willing to tape this at 3 AM if I had to. 4. If they don't have enough slots for less popular competitors/sports, why not tape them and put them online with DRM/IP restrictions? I'd be glad to watch them that way too. 5. Hopefully I won't need stupid NBC next time around since I am planning on going to the 2010 Winter Olympics since it's coming to my coast (Vancouver) only a few hours' flight. BTW. Who is covering the Olympics for Canada and how are they doing?
-Palal
I guess I'd better get crackin'...get it? C'mon LAUGH! All I need is a proxy up in the states...right? That's how my friends get DirecTV. They just bill it to an American address and bring the box down here. It might not be legal, but everybody gets paid, anything else is irrelevent.
What?
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
I think that is ridiculous. They should at least have an alternate format for the rest of us.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
Wow, there's a lot of repeat business in that brilliant model!
Precisely.
I've never heard anyone say "Hey, want to come over and watch last year's world series?"
Are they worried about someone making their own highlights tape? All that the DRM will do is make it hard for someone like me to watch. I refuse to use the newest Real or Windows Media players. Maybe I want to watch hockey, but I don't want to upgrade my media players to watch NBC's Wonderful World Of DRM. If it is so damn important to me to watch, I'll program my damn VCR to record it. Other slashdotters may feel free to Tivo it.
You're just jealous.
/side rant /side rant
The silver medal game was on TV today at 2pm eastern.
Could they not schedule the gold medal game either later today or later tomorrow? Not liking the 8am start.
The streaming is something they should have been doing for the entire Olympic Games, instead of this one hockey game. It would have been nice to catch some of the games from the comfort of my desk at work.
Do they really think that many people in the US are going to be interested in Finland vs Sweden? The only ones that are would be watching it on TV anyway. The game is on at 8am on Sunday morning. I don't see a lot of demand for the internet stream. Be different if it was a weekday.
Having said that I do think the Olympic committee should require, at least here in the US that any media company, like NBC that carries the Olympics provide live internet streams of all the events. That would make catching the Olympics particularly during the week a lot easier.
Don't the BBC do this.... daily? And not just for the Olympics?!
With all the NHL stars out of the competition finally we will see a decent game of hockey, the stupidity the NHL have sumerged into the last years have hit the players hard, to the point they forgot hockey is a fast game not chess.
Good for NBC
Too bad we don't get to see a US vs Canada match. Those are always exciting. Ah well, the Fins definately deserve to win this one. They don't have four lines of superstars like Canada, but they play amazingly well as a team.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Yeah I know is off topic but canadian women kicked mens asses on this olimpics.
Beer drinking, ass scratching, hockey watching and couch potatoes canadian men suck ass.
Go Canadian Leasbian!!!!...So Sexy....
Raise your hand if you're:
The list goes on...and don't get me started about the sex-fests that go on in the olympic "village"; ever wonder why the media isn't allowed in? It's for "privacy" all right...
Used to be that when the olympics came on in the winter, we'd fire up the TV, make popcorn, and watch. We stopped watching right around the same time they started doing 10 minute long fluff pieces about athletes, instead of just showing us the damn competitions.
Please help metamoderate.
Dutch television has free streaming at http://www.nos.nl/gfx/winterspelen2006/live/index. html. Not hard to figure out the schedule below either, even if you don't speak dutch.
What's stopping people from watching this on the TV? Wouldn't that be more convenient and higher quality than some web stream? Myself I hope Sweden wins as I am a Swede, but Finlands team has seemed awfully good this year, so it will be a tough match. I guess there are some people without access to TV but having access to a computer. But those are likely at work and shouldn't be watching the game anyway ;)
Cycling.tv has been streaming cycling races live from Europe for the past year or so. They streamed the Het Volk this morning, and I think they are streaming Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne on Sunday. Yeah not as exciting, or as fast-paced, as hockey; but seeing as I'm stuck in Canada where cycling gets almost zero coverage on TV, it's better than nothing. And they don't bore the viewer to death with endless stories about 'Lance', unlike OLN.
If I watch this puppy will I later discover an NBC rootkit on my computer? They do mention something about updating the DRM on my machine.
We've been watching the Olympics using the pcHDTV card, old GeForce2 FX5200( DVI ) to HDTV via HDMI-DVI cable picking up the local NBC station off the antenna. Awesome. So sending a live feed on a subchannel would be my wish.
I know. This just pisses me off. About a week before the games started Flip4Mac was working. I played a couple clips and it worked. Then the day the games actually start they break it and we haven't had coverage since. And NBC goes to great lengths to not list any ways to contact them to complain about this either. Fuck NBC.
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
And the reason is simple: Disney could use ESPN, ESPN2, likely ABC Family Channel and possibly ESPN Classic channel to cover Olympic events live around the clock without interfering with normal ABC programming, so that ABC doesn't lose the profitable daytime soap opera programs. This will allow ABC to show a nightly compilation highlights program during prime time that is three hours long.
Certainly if Akamai succeeds, it will set a precident that NBC will tap again, and that other broadcasters may join.
m bol=AKAM&event=peek.
For those that have cashed out of Google, perhaps now's the time to invest in Akamai, if you haven't already http://clearstation.etrade.com/cgi-bin/details?Sy
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It's Finland vs. Sweden. I can't imagine too many people will watch this one. Let me put it this way, I'd bet that the Victoria's Secret stream will have had more viewers.
If only it was Canada vs. USA...
Who watches Olympic hockey?
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I wish I could win a gold metal. Nowadays they only give out gold plastic.
Kevin Fox
All your metal are belong to US!
Alot of grief being given to NBC about their broadcast, but I'd point out that I was really impressed by the High Definition Simulcast this year. They seem to have solved some technical issues that their HD broadcasts had been plauged with in the past. There used to be some excess compression in their video feed, probably cuased by bandwidth limitations somewhere, but the Olympics broadcast looked spectacular.
Of course NBC is still broadcasting in 1080i instead of 720p. The interlaced broadcast certainly doesn't lend itself to the high-motion video in the olympics, but even so, the detail was impressive and watching the games was substantially more enjoyable than it would have been over 480i.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
http://www.xroxy.com/proxylist.php?port=&type=&cou ntry=US&latency=&reliability=#table
I think this is one of the channels that I get on MobiTV for my Palm Pilot. Of course, the stream is all proprietary, I'm sure, and can't be saved anyhow through the provided app.
BTW... TV channels on Palm hand-helds over Wi-Fi. I can't say it is useful, but it is cool.
No delays? I mean ... what if there's a puck malfunction or something?
The Computations of AdamR
http://www.adamreyher.com
Just once, just *once*, just for the *sheer novelty*, I'd like to see an actual streaming video website that's nice and usable in Firefox in Linux.
Inexplicably, websites with streaming video also seem to be the ones that are badly-tested IE-specific "applications" with masses of Javascript and everything else you can think of, instead of just websites with a "video" link. They're making money off ads here. What possible benefit can it be to them to make it miserable for everyone else?
The only think I can think of is that the people who get hired to do streaming video must be the same crowd that is convinced that websites need to be "media-rich" and either be a single big Flash applet or pop up four windows running various clever scripts that they didn't bother to test anywhere but IE and playing sounds.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I just wanted to say that I think it's hard for people outside Finland to fully comprehend how huge this game is. Olympic hockey in Finland is like baseball, basketball, american football and hockey in the USA, all rolled into one, having the finals of all of those rolled into a single event, played only once every four years, and against your arch rival. Picture it happening against the Soviet Union back during the cold war. And not just that, but Sweden has a history of beating Finland in close games. Not just once has Sweden come back from being behind by 2 goals in the last 60 seconds. Pretty much every single person in the country will be glued in front of the TV screen 3 hours from now when the game begins and they will remain glued to the screen until the final second. It's like the Boston Red Sox vs. the New York Yankees. It's almost like a curse. The outcome of the game will either result in the biggest victory celebrations in the history of the country, or in streams of tears.
I understand very well that most people in the USA don't even know the entire game is being played. Much less do they care about it at all. But for those that might watch it, I just wanted to let you know what's at stake in Finland and what the feelings will be like...
I love the Olympics, and our family loves to gather together and watch them. But NBC's coverage this year is the worst I have ever seen...
"Omigod, this race is neck-and-neck, not only does it look like a record may be broken here, but the Italians may win this race for the first time ever, here they come, down to the wire...
Ladies and Gentlemen, we'll be back to that race in an hour or two, maybe, if we feel like it, right after these commercials and then after we leave you completely hanging while we switch our coverage over to the first of many bobsled trials..." Etc etc bla bla bla...
What the hell is up with all of the "teasers" and showing of just snippets, and cutting away from events just as they are getting good? I have never seen that kind of thing before in the Olympics, ever. In the past, the TV station would allow suspense to build by showing you the whole freaking show, one event at a time. If you sat down to watch women's skating, you GOT women's skating, not a few seconds of skating, and then we'll switch over here to some bob sledding, and then we'll switch over THERE to some curling, and then we'll focus in on Bob Costas's wrinkles for a while, and oh yeh, now let's have some commercials...
You should hear my kids complain about this coverage this year. They are assuming some little kid with less attention span than THEY have has taken control of the NBC studios, Kidzilla-like, and is messing with the cameras and the equipment.
NBC, YOU SUCK!!! After a beautiful opening ceremony, showcasing the wonderful job the Italians did in presenting these games, your TV coverage has failed miserably! You ruined the whole Olympics for all who were unlucky enough to be stuck with watching your station!
I guess when you get in bed with Microsoft, you start sucking as bad as they do.
Why is the NBC stream an item on Slashdot? The Dutch public broadcaster NOS has six live feeds from Turin to choose from! And has been streaming continuously for free from day one!
. html
Feeds are restricted on ip-address and are viewable only in the Netherlands and some other European countries.
http://www.nos.nl/gfx/winterspelen2006/live/index
These streams are also from akamai, by the way. But (as long as you have the codecs) they also run fine on Linux machines. I've been watching (and at work only listening, of course ;) ) it for the passed 2 weeks. Hurrah!
Doesn't work on my *Thinkpad* T41 (Pentium M 1.6, and one of NBC's *sponsors*). *None* of their DRM'ed clips work - they peg the cpu at 100% & playback is jumpy. Non-DRM clips work fine, both in Windows & with a Mac running Flip4Mac. And on the Thinkpad *no* videos of any kind (their pop-up) work with IE6 (!). Maybe it's a setting with IE6 but they do "work" (DRM excepted) with Firefox & Opera. The DRM clips jump both browsers to 100% CPU and the clips skip/jump. And I've found *no* "contact us/help/tech-support" available, especially on NBC's site.
Ard (http://sport.ard.de/spe/turin/news200602/10/video _livestream.jhtml) in germany has a similar service, but they only have one channel. But there is no DRM protection at all.
It also works in other countries.
Just like NBC they're also using Akamai and GEOCoding.
o ndemand/7/1873/21874/v0001/ebustreaming.download.a kamai.com/21760/broadcaster/21874/_!/euroA bjbddNbjalbRbMd9cycU-beaCVF-b4-vnH-q6s8/v01o ndemand/7/1873/21874/v0001/ebustreaming.download.a kamai.com/21760/broadcaster/21874/_!/euroA bjbddNbjalbRbMd9cycU-beaCVF-b4-vnH-q6s8/v01
pnm://a1873.v21874d.c21874.e.vr.akamaistream.net/
vision_territory_error_message.jpg/da_b6dycra7bza
pnm://a1873.v21874d.c21874.e.vr.akamaistream.net/
vision_territory_error_message.jpg/da_b6dycra7bza
Of course when that fails, find a EU proxy. :)
t /live/D/76/21873/v0001/reflector:62076/da_bOavdpbd cvb0avaXbsaXcgdtdncKa1bI-beaC6z-b4-nkE-o7m9/v01t /live/D/77/21873/v0001/reflector:62077/da_dncFbaaY cFbwdldLcobUcZcMcqaCc_cZ-beaC6z-b4-qmE-j6j9/v01
pnm://a76.l2187362076.c21873.e.lr.akamaistream.ne
pnm://a77.l2187362077.c21873.e.lr.akamaistream.ne
It's hockey. And it's only available for streaming in the U.S. And they're worried about load? I think NBC needs to reavaluate the value of their content.
Okay, I'll admit I don't like the special legislation stuff.
But the rest I think you're just wrong on or else I don't agree.
The olympic committee is not turning the other way on drugs. I have to say, they're having trouble catching people, but ask the director in any sport, they know there are "designer steroids" out there now and they haven't figured out how to catch them yet. There also is tons of red blood cell packing (likely via EPO), but how are you going to catch those people? Having red blood cells in your blood is normal, they're not a foreign substance. They do refuse to let people compete if they have too many red blood cells in their blood, stating the "health risks" of doing so.
The bribe-fest was almost exclusively not with tax dollars. If you are referring to Salt Lake City (or Nogano), the bribes came from individuals/companies with an interest. Using tax money for bribes would be traceable, which isn't going to work.
I do find it ridiculous how much money is spent on arenas and such that are never used again. Most of the money comes from local sources though and I don't live in Utah. Note that after the ridiculous bath Montreal took, most cities have tried to reuse facilities. Atlanta was moderately successful, although creating a fake river/rapids for the kayaking was ridiculous.
The "most marketable events" argument was very strong in the past. But now, with 4 channels showing the Olympics, nearly every event is shown (esp. since winter has so few events). You see, the biathalon has been show on the primary channel (NBC) in hidef! No one in the US gives a rip about that event, and it's not only getting shown, but in the primary coverage. I got to see every US curling match. The non-US curling matches in the round-robin were for the most part not shown. This is not at all unusual since these matches all go on simultaneously. Simultaneous events have always presented a problem for TV coverage, this isn't new.
For the citizenship, I presume you are talking about that skater. I don't watch skating, so I don't know much about it. However, if I spent my time getting angry about our government playing favorites, I'd be one pissed off guy. It's simply not worth it. (Note that Rupert Murdoch didn't have to wait to get citizenship either, and he isn't known for his skating.) I wonder how much of that stuff takes place for the World Cup? Quite a bit I would guess.
I don't care about the sex-fests. I don't spend my time moaning about other people getting some, nor looking down on them for it. If you get a bunch of fit, young adults together, there is going to be sex. Count on it.
There is a ton of backstory stuff nowadays in the NBC coverage (almost none in the non-primetime coverage on MSNBC or CNBC), all I can say is get a TiVo. The coverage is already delayed 12 hours, just delay watching it for another 2 hours and blast right through the backstories. This isn't new either, if you saw the coverage of Curt Gowdy's death, they had plenty of footage of him in Innsbruck, Austria in 1964 doing fluff pieces and interviews.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Short track takes place on an international-sized hockey rink (30x60m). An NHL rink (like most in Canada and the US) is much narrower and simply wouldn't work.
Calgary currently has the only bobsled run in Canada. Before it, Canadians had to train at Lake Placid (which is still closer to most Canadians than Calgary is). I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Calgary has the only ski jumps in Canada too.
So, yes, before the Calgary Olympic facilities many Canadians had to leave the country to practice for the Olympics.
I think when you talk about ridiculous facilities, the Summer Olympics has to take the cake. In Georgia, they built an artificial river rapids for the kayaking events. London isn't known for their mountains either (where rapids naturally occur) so I'm guessing that won't be the only such facility for long.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The rest of the media is reporting the Swedes won.
I really feel for you.
;)
But hey, I think I cant talk for all of sweden when I say that there is no team wed rather see win the silver.
Polish interactive TV (aka iTVP) - division of public TV streamed all the olympic games on the 5 (five;) channels in parallel. iTVP page: http://www.itvp.pl/
Technology: of course.. windows encoders and their DRM.
This may be a stupid question, but I don't see any explanation in the summary/story or any comments here.
Why's the rest of the world not allowed to watch this? Isn't the Olympics an international event?