PEER-TO-PEER OPTIONS – Backdoor Access to Olympic Footage

If you want to move beyond bite-sized recaps and highlight reels, P2P sites are your best obtions for backdoor access to unedited blocks of 2008 Olympics footage. Additionally, content is likely to be available sooner than the 12-hour delays expected with some of NBC's coverage. Try these web workarounds for full access to the Olympics (Just enter them in your Google or Yahoo search).

• isoHunt, Mininova and EZTV. These are top BitTorrent sites. Miss the opening ceremonies? Or the four-hour finale of table tennis? Try downloading torrents of popular Olympic events.
• Veetle. Stanford University's experimental web TV platform requires a downloadable player, but offers live broadcasts of soccer games, basketball and more.
• Sopcast. This free P2P internet TV player requires a download, but offers a wide lineup of channels broadcasting the Olympic games.
• TVants. This is a P2P Internet TV, which requires a free download. TVants can run on Windows or on Linux's WINE.
• PPMate. A Chinese P2P Internet TV network download. PPMate only run under Windows.
• TVU Networks. This P2P internet TV player requires a free download and only works with Windows, but is a good resource for watching global sporting events online.

Now here are other options that you can explore:

• Truveo and Blinkx . Catch Olympics videos from all different news channels in one place. Some sites like blip.tv also allow you download videos.
• Beijing2008.cn - This is the official portal for Olympic Games that hosts a large collection of videos, photographs, interviews with players from different countries, Olympic Game logos, history of the game, and other interesting material. You may want to visit for regular news about the games.
• CNN , New York Times, BBC UK and Yahoo! Sports. Other than video sites, most media websites have dedicated section for Olympics Games which also feature medal counts and breaking news from the Olympics.

ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF WATCHING THE OLYMPICS ONLINE

Countless sports fans will look for video coverage of the Olympic games online while trapped in their cubicles this week, and chances are at least some of them won’t head to NBC’s official web site but will try their luck elsewhere. In fact, NBC’s decision to delay the online video coverage of popular events for three hours is almost an invitation to waste a few hours of time on pirate sites and P2P TV forums.

The IOC is aware of this problem and is trying to address it by posting authorized videos on YouTube. Too bad these clips won’t be accessible to folks in the United States. So where will you and the U.S. Olympians go?

Here are alternative ways people will use to get their Olympics fix:

P2P Streaming. China is the motherland of P2P streaming, with almost a dozen vendors offering live TV transmissions. The leading Chinese P2P TV platform PPLive is officially licensed to show the games — but only to an audience within China. PPLive will restrict the transmissions to IP addresses from within the country. Hardcore fans might want to try to access the transmissions through a Chinese proxy server, but the chances this will work for a bigger audience are rather slim. After all, people usually tend to use proxy servers to access web sites outside of the PRC. Of course, there are other companies that seem to care less about filters and licenses. Both soccer and NBA fans have previously reported success with PPStream, PPMate, Sopcast, TVUPlayer and TVKoo.

Live video sites. Streaming video hosters like Ustream, Stickam and Justin.tv will see a bunch of people trying to relay TV coverage of the games. The sites will probably try to shut down some of these efforts, but there’s a good chance that some will fall through the cracks. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see new kinds of spot coverage coming right out of someone’s living room, Mystery Science Theater-style?

YouTube. Granted, the official Olympics coverage will not be available to visitors with States-based IP addresses. But that won’t stop users that access YouTube through a proxy server based in India or any of the other 76 countries that have access to the IOC channel. Users will also upload excerpts and highlights from the competitions on their own. Google will try to filter these submissions, but those filters won’t catch everything.

Torrent sites. BitTorrent has long been a good option for time-shifting TV, with some shows even finding their way online between the East Coast and the West Coast premiere, so we’ll likely see quite a few Olympic TV moments on torrent sites as well. Torrents should pop up on major sites like ISO Hunt, Mininova and The Pirate Bay as well as specialized, invite-only communities like Sportbit.org within hours of the major competitions.

Foreign TV. The BBC is broadcasting the Olympics online — with up to seven live streams, no less — and broadcasters in other countries will offer their own coverage on the web as well, oftentimes using fewer technical hurdles than NBC. Granted, most of these streams will be protected by IP filters, but once again, proxy servers should be able to solve this problem. And I wouldn’t be too surprised if someone figures out a way to access a stream of some obscure Russian TV station without any proxy.

ADOBE FLASH POWERS CCTV.COM'S BEIJING OLYMPICS’ INTERNET COVERAGE

In China, CCTV International Networks Co, Ltd. has teamed up with Adobe to bring Olympics online video to mainland China. CCTV.com owns the online video rights to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games for mainland China and Macau.

Choosing Adobe as a partner is a indication that Chinese Internet viewers and sports fans can expect a rich, immersive interactive Web experience. CCTV.com's Olympic Network TV Station, through Adobe technologies, including Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex, will bring the drama and excitement of the games to the Web.

CCTVOlympics.com, will deliver viewers with:

• An unprecedented Web experience created with Adobe Flex and delivered via Adobe Flash technology, which includes Olympic results, statistics, comprehensive bios, rules and expert analysis from CCTV's Olympic media team. Unlike NBC though, CCTV is not eschewing commentators and replacing them with bloggers, although, it also will be diving into the social web via "social networking features that will enable fans to share aspects of their Olympic experience with friends."
• 5,000 hours of on-demand protected streamed video content (3,800 hours of worldwide broadcast Olympic Games video and 1,200 hours of CCTV’s own video) including full event replays, highlights, features, interviews and encore packages.

Over the past year, CCTV International Networks Co, Ltd. has developed new media platforms based on the most advanced Internet technologies. By teaming up with Adobe, CCTV.com can provide sports fans and consumers an engaging online experience for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and beyond. Adobe was chosen as the partner because Adobe technologies enable the TV network to deliver a compelling Web 2.0 experience consistently to people across platforms.

Besides the Olympic Games, CCTV.com and Adobe will pursue other initiatives to develop new media based applications leveraging CCTV.com's brand and content and Adobe's advanced technology platform.

ONLINE VIDEO COVERAGE: Viewing Olympic games as never before!

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 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.

Where to Get Olympics 2008 Live Streams and On-Demand Highlights

Sports aficionados can now watch and/or download online videos and event highlights of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The following sites could provide just what you desire to watch based on your location and web-tech capabilities:

• NBC Olympics. Media giant NBC has exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics in the United States, and will serve up four live streams and 3,600 hours of on-demand video online.
• TV Tonic. NBC paired with Wavexpress to offer event highlights on demand via a download service similar to iTunes. For Windows Vista users only.
• YouTube. Starting Wednesday, Google will provide approximately three hours of content each day from the Olympics Broadcasting Service on a channel dedicated to the games. The content will include highlight reels and daily wrap-ups, but no live coverage. The footage will be available in 77 territories, including South Korea, India and Nigeria, that aren't officially covered by Olympic sponsors.
• CCTVOlympics.com. CCTV will be supplying more than 5,000 hours of Olympic Games coverage for mainland China and Macau.
• BBC Sports. The U.K.'s official Olympics broadcaster will offer six streaming channels showing coverage from BBC TV and BBC News Interactive. Channels will focus on on-demand daily highlights and athlete interviews.
• Yahoo7. Australia's official Olympics online portal offers live streams, video coverage on-demand and behind-the-scenes interviews, specials and features.
• CBC Olympics. Canadians can tune into the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation online for supplemental live streams, video coverage on-demand and behind-the-scenes interviews, specials and features.

Movies are Behind the Success of Video Games

Revenues from video games are growing faster than those of either the music or movie industries as game developers have gotten ideas substantially from music and movies makers. Video games nowadays are a synthesis of music and movies, a collision of entertainment culture that supplanted Brad Pitt and Carmen Elektra with game players who become the stars. Companies spend millions of dollars developing slick-sounding games with smooth graphics, and then promote them with high-priced trailers which highlight an inexhaustible blend of live action, virtual game play and wicked special effects.

One of Sony's most recent games, The Getaway, is a Hollywood movie come to the game console, with 60 minutes of live action and a virtual recreation of 30 miles of London's streets using digital cameras, something almost unheard of some years ago. This game was thought to appeal to both film and game audiences with the intention of getting into play even those moviegoers who might never have considered buying a video game before. Nowadays, games like John Madden Football and other sports games routinely and digitally encode the movements of real players to boost the game graphics. Those graphics are then put into an event trailer. For The Getaway, the preview features a two-minute story following an ex-gangster's search for his daughter, who was abducted by his old boss. Of course, it's not a gangster flick without the good-guy cop out to bring down the entire crime organization.

Where Sony's trailers were glossy, Nintendo's previews of Eternal Darkness, Metroid Prime and Resident Evil Zero brought the house down with their classic feel. But whether retro, cartoon or live action, it's the power of the new game consoles that has turned this once diminutive industry into a $10 billion juggernaut that is rising more rapidly than either the music or movie industry. In the basement of the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, Nintendo fans applauded with excitement when the trailers of the new Mario (Donkey Kong) and Link (The Legend of Zelda) games hit the screen. It's a enthusiasm and craze not seen in any other media circles, where the journalists, game junkies and media wonks consider themselves as much a part of the design process as the mega-corporations themselves.

Like George Lucas enthralling millions of Star Wars fans simply by releasing a new movie, Nintendo has a cult-like following. In fact, Mario's new game thumped Grand Theft Auto 3 out of its No. 1 mark on the sales charts. Nintendo's confidence, that constant innovation and the highest-quality games are essential in truly serving the players, has energized the company’s success in video gaming for two decades.