Comments on: Olympics Online a Modest Hit for NBC

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 05:20:32 +0000

The BBC coverage of the Olympics is pretty amazing, though typically quite UK oriented. Online streaming is comprehensive and as live as what you can see on digital TV, though I wish the quality matched what you could see on standard-def Tv.

By: amidude

amidude — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:27:02 +0000

I saw that they were using SilverLight and there was no way I was going to install that on my MAC or PC. :-P

By: stefan24

stefan24 — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:28:16 +0000

I for one am not watching on-line or off-line also trying to stay away from printed media about the Olympic. For an event of this nature which is about bring together different countries, races, religions I can’t see how China’s human rights policies and treatment of its people can be used as an example of these aspirations.

I’m in the UK and I believe that is being handled by Adobe Flash, so I was wondering is Microsoft’s silverlight being used and what is the technology is like?

By: Dougist.com

Dougist.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:38:05 +0000

The Olympics are wildly popular, politics or not…

The issue almost raised, but not quite hit, is the missing full screen view. If you can see your desk top you will wander off. If there was a full screen option the stickiness would increase dramatically.

By: brothercake

brothercake — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:18:35 +0000

I’d also be cautious of jumping to technical and consumer explanations; I get the impression that interest in the Olympics generally is far short of the hype. And I think the reason is that it’s in China, being hosted by a dictatorship.

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:08:50 +0000

I think the idea of the “long-form” coverage is great, but the execution is sorely lacking– two-hour long bocks of undigested video are not really all that watchable. They need to come up with at least a rudimentary menu system, and the commentary generally could be greatly improved. And the menus are amazingly uninformative– I just checked out “Women’s Group B (RUS v SWE)”. Without actually selecting it, how would I have known that this was group handball?

All told, a reasonable start: maybe next time they’ll actually get there.

By: EastCoast

EastCoast — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:08:49 +0000

They’d have probably had better viewing figures if they’d not used silverlight to show the live video. With silverlight still having a low installation percentage, and a reasonably large download to install to view, their bounce rate is probably pretty high. It’s a bit of an odd decision to foist this additional hurdle upon olympic viewers, when there are no technical advantages to implementing the user experience with this technology compared with doing the same in flash that already has a very high uptake.

By: wwb_99

wwb_99 — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:53:12 +0000

For me it is user experience. I can watch the televised olympics on a 46″ flat panel in glorious high definition with booming surround sound. Or I can watch a tiny blurry postage stamp on a big monitor with scratchy sound. You make the call.

By: jess

jess — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:50:58 +0000

I tried to watch some streams yesterday, but the site navigation was confusing to try to pull up live feeds. I left and just flipped on the TV.