The Beijing Olympics 2008, the world's largest sports event, has begun placing on litmus test currently available Web technologies with online video coverage. The cyber-pipeline infrastructure has been effectively set up to allow viewers to download any event to watch on their personal computers for free. That’s any event on their personal computers . . . for free. Wow!The sole U.S. broadcaster for the 2008 Summer Olympics Games in Beijing, NBC has teamed up with Microsoft for 3,600 hours (17 days) of live streaming coverage on NBCOlympics.com. With USA Network, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, and Telemundo to the mix, as well as high-definition coverage on USA HD and Universal HD, the prospect of quality viewing entertainment has become clear. NBC will make use of the Internet to "send out mass quantities of video in high resolution". NBC's online coverage will be powered by Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Media Player. Limelight Networks is being used to route the video streams to Internet service providers.
The only down-pull is that the coverage will only be accessible to users in the US, since that's where the Web technologies are installed to support such extensive online video coverage, and it’s where NBC has rights to broadcast the Olympics. Despite the geographical restrictions, NBC is promising loads of 'new media' features in its Web coverage. These include:
The only down-pull is that the coverage will only be accessible to users in the US, since that's where the Web technologies are installed to support such extensive online video coverage, and it’s where NBC has rights to broadcast the Olympics. Despite the geographical restrictions, NBC is promising loads of 'new media' features in its Web coverage. These include:
- The ability of users to watch whatever sport they want and when they want to, unlike on TV where they get what the broadcaster dishes up. They can choose from the all the available live and background footage, and watch whenever it's convenient with the enhanced Silverlight Player.
- Getting the best and brightest Web video experience around with amazing, clear, crisp video no matter what the bandwidth is. Silverlight makes the most of your internet connection without the exasperating wait for what you want.
- 3,600 hours of "on-demand encores of full events and highlights". That means NBC will be covering 28 sports, 302 events, and will be broadcasting seemingly 24/7.
- · Switching between up to 4 live streams. Yes, sports fans can view 4 events simultaneously with picture-in-picture controls. They can customize the media player to capture their favorite events!
- Seeing the standard world feed that is sent to all broadcasters, so there will be no network TV commentators. Instead, the NBC expects to see bloggers "serve as play-by-play voices and analysts".
- Access to statistics, biographies and other information. Viewers can get expert commentary, dynamic statistics, play-by-play captioning and athlete profiles...all at their fingertips.
Well, does these sound too good to be true? Oddly, “NBC Olympics on the Go” is considered to be only available for the Microsoft Vista operating system and then in just two editions — Home Premium and Ultimate. This somehow implies that millions of XP users, not to mention Mac and Linux folks, might be left on the sideline. Maybe the Vista thing has something to do with Wavexpress, an Internet video distributor whose media platform, TVTonic, will be used to distribute the Olympics video online. TVTonic already provides 350 media channels through Vista.
You could check this out for yourself.
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