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."

Comments

NBC's olympic coverage sucks ass

[Clockwurk]

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)

Re:NBC's olympic coverage sucks ass

[RedWizzard]

Snowboarding and freestyle skiing shouldn't be olympic sports; save that shit for the x-games.

I agree that "artistic" sports seem to be a bit of an oxymoron. But how can you single out those two and not mention ice dancing? That'd be first to go if I were choosing. Besides, the snowboard cross has (IMO) been one of the most interesting sports at the Games.

DRM, IP protection?????

[presarioD]

1. Enable proxy
2. mplayer -dumpfile Olympics.wmv -dumpstream -playlist "http://NBC.sucks/Olympics-DRMed-don't touch-Americans only.wmv"

BBC

[mr_tommy]

Don't the BBC do this.... daily? And not just for the Olympics?!

Re:How to improve NBC Olympic coverage

[yetiman]

The CBC is covering it as always...and doing a damn fine job as always.

Re:Medal Not Metal

[grub]

It's the Winter Olympics. The fun is watching them getting their tongues stuck to their metals.

anyone else?

[SuperBanana]

The video stream will have DRM and IP protection to attempt to limit access to residents of the US

Raise your hand if you're:

• Tired of the location Olympic games being picked based on a bribe-fest (with your tax dollars as the ante money)
• Tired of your tax dollars going towards facilities that most often are never used again
• Tired of being shown only the most 'marketable' events or not seeing them at all, because only one news source is granted "rights"
• Tired of the drama
• Tired of people who happen to be good at a particular sport getting acts of congress to instantly give them citizenship while hard-working, tax-paying greencarders have to wait years and pass exams
• Tired of the olympic committee getting special legislation to protect its interests and giving it the ability to shut down businesses simply because they contain the word "olympic" in their title
• Tired of the drug scandals and an IOC obviously looking the other way, like virtually every other major sports sanctioning body
• Tired of "for the sport" or "for the joy of competition" having turned into "for the money", right down to the recent decision by the IOC to allow athletes to be paid endorsements and more

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.

Re:anyone else?

[freeweed]

Tired of your tax dollars going towards facilities that most often are never used again

Can't argue with the rest of your rant, but rest assured that Olympics facilities very often are used again - at least in places that care.

Calgary's '88 winter Olys left us with some amazing facilities, which have directly lead to Canada doing better each time since. We're looking at a record haul, much of which can be attributed to having a world-class speed skating oval here. Canadian athletes used to have to go overseas to train for a lot of winter events.

Last time I visited Lake Placid, the facilities there were in continual use, as a touist destination and training facility.

Free streaming

[deltagreen]

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.

Re:Free streaming

[ramunas]

you bastard! I was watching that. How am I supposed to watch it now that the slashdot crowd stampedes the site?

Re:Live (except on West Coast)

[NeMon'ess]

I don't watch the olympics because I don't have cable and can't watch the coverage live. It feels like bullshit having NBC package up stories and events, complete with the backgrounds of the athletes, when they already know full-well who actually won. They expect me to watch their stories set to swooning music, and then see that athlete lose, even though that happened 5 to 12 hours ago. The worst as I remember it was in Sydney and Nagano when the coverage was tape delayed on the west coast about 18 hours. Which is truly screwed up because 8pm Pacific time is 1 or 2pm in Australia or Japan. NBC could've given live events prime-time coverage on the West, and East coasts, but waited a day to package them. Besides, then maybe some of the viewers would realize how stupid it is to watch day old events.

Re:What about linux?

[Ilgaz]

I know you are joking but in fact BeOS has Realplayer G2, I am not sure they coded the newer codecs for "auto update" though...

Re:How to improve NBC Olympic coverage

[Kankraka]

Indeed they are! I've been watching it on HD at work, wow that's amazing :D. CBC just does sports right!

Re:NBC ya

[Basehart]

"Maybe they are preparing for 2008 and 2010. Streaming video seems almost ready for real use after years and years of promises it was on the cusp...."

After watching Speed TV slowly turn into NASCAR TV I'm hoping motor sports promoters soon realize the only way they can get through to audiences in the USA is online.

Dakar, WRC and numerous other local, national and international motor sports events have been dropped from Speed TV's scheduling in favor of reality TV style chop shop and street drag racing shows, while the omnipresent NASCAR programming from our friends at NASCAR Corp fills in the gaps that aren't already taken by infomercials for exercise machines and bottle openers.

Whoever gets it together to offer motor sports events online gets my $$$'s.

Re:BBC

[cdrudge]

Excuse me. This is an American-centric forum. Please don't bring up irrelevant facts that others have been doing this for some time now.