Ok, maybe that headline was a bit sarcastic, but I have just returned from a 20 mile bike ride (inspired by watching the Olympic bike event) so I am a bit oxygen deprived. Bear with me. What I am getting at is a review of the NBC Olympic coverage. Let's start with the opening ceremonies - China's so called coming out party. Whatever. It was certainly spectacular with very nice tv coverage. But seriously, I could live without Matt Lauer's incessant political commentary. We know, Iraq, Iran, North Korea etc all have problems. We get enough of that from the regular news. Same goes for you Brokaw! Let Bob Costas talk about sports and shut your traps for once. Ok, got that off my chest. I seem to recall Lauer and Costas trying to suggest that the "footprint" fireworks were in fact being shown on tape, but this comment was not mentioned a few days later when "footprint-gate" revealed the truth about the opening ceremonies. I'm not sure if this was the US media trying to discredit China or what, but everyone knows these types of events are designed for television. And as we COW members know, live television does not always go according to plan. Took a few paragraphs to make this post somewhat relevant to our readers, thanks for sticking with this. Next on to the 12 hour time delay. China is 12 hours ahead of the east coast of the US, approximately. Thus, US Prime Time is actually 8am China time, which is ok because a lot of big events seemed to happen in this time slot. Thus, we can in fact watch live events without staying up until 3am. The only problem with live events is, of course, commercials. The same 10 commercials it seems. The most interesting commercial was this morning (or last night/tomorrow morning - now I'm getting confused). The moment after Michael "Superman" Phelps won his 247th gold medal, there was a Visa commercial, narrated by Morgan Freeman, congratulating him. This shows some good planning on the part of Visa and NBC. Speaking of Gold Medals, I say this every 2 years during the Olympics. Why must tv commentators focus so much on the Gold? Winning a Silver or Bronze is still pretty darn good. I'll take 3rd place in the world, thank you very much. Here's what I mean: Swimming Expert 1, "And here comes Joe Schmoe, less than 100 meters left, he's faltering. Not sure he has what it takes to get the gold. What do you think?" Swimming Expert 2, "I agree. Joe won't be getting the Gold at this games. And China takes the Gold, US gets the Silver and Mexico the Bronze. Ohh, poor Joe Schmoe. He must be so disappointed." Expert 1, "You're right. To come all this way and only get the silver. What a loser. He should just drop out of the games." Expert 2, "I'm standing here with Joe Schmoe, his dreams of Gold squashed by his Chinese rival. You must be so disappointed and heartbroken." Joe Schmoe, "Actually, Silver is pretty awesome. And the US team has broken 10 world records. So I can't complain." Expert 2, "But what about that elusive Gold. Don't you just feel like dying?" Joe Schmoe, "No, it's ok. The Chinese put up a good fight. I'm just honored to be here." Expert 2, "Oh. Ok. I see..um, back to you." Luckily, my non-TiVo DVR lets me pause live tv, thus allowing me to watch time shifted live tv, eliminated commercials and horrible commentary as illustrated. And, just this morning, in the case of the US women's basketball team wiping the floor with New Zealand(the whole country, not just their team), I could fast forward through the second half to get the final score of 900 to 50. Good effort New Zealand. Even better effort Diana Taurasi (of UCONN fame!). ____ What I am getting at, tv commentators, is you need to be a bit more optimistic. Just being in the Olympics is an honor. There is no need to sensationalize everything. But then, it is the job of network TV to sensationalize everything. What do I expect. Wow, that was pessimistic! This year, NBC has a great website for the Olympics. http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/index.html In fact, assuming the Silverlight servers are not choking like they were last night, it can be a better experience than watching television. You can watch the live broadcasts, including having any 4 feeds going at once, not that this is very useful, but it seems to be a selling point of Silverlight vendors. Silverlight, by the way, has pretty darn good streaming video quality. Once you are able to use a non Microsoft tool to create Silverlight content, it may give Flash a run for its money. But don't hold your breath. Back to my point about the website. You can choose to watch time delayed live events, and here's the best part...WITHOUT COMMENTARY. There is a God. Call it the unfiltered version of the Olympics. The C-SPAN of sports. The Italian Stallion..oh wait, still oxygen deprived. Sorry. The other piece of good technology application is NBC's DirecTv Olympics menu. You can hit the red button on the DirecTv remote and reveal an on demand menu system. 
You have instant viewing of the current schedule, with instant access to the NBC channels without going to the usual program guide or remembering the channel numbers. You also have a medal count, and a daily trivia game.  
This could be a preview of good things to come in the slow amalgamation (convergence for those in the industry) of internet and television. Speaking of convergence, when I am not watching the Olympics, riding my bike or reading the COW, I am at my new favorite website, Hulu.com. This site has very good quality Flash video of hundreds of old and current tv shows and some decent and not so decent movies, with limited commercial interruption. For example, I watched the entire 3 season run of Arrested Development(not all in one go, it took me at least two sessions), and am now working on Burn Notice, with the occasional episode of Emergency or Galactica 80 thrown in for good emasure. Ok I was kidding about Galactica 80, but it is there if you want it. If I had my computer hooked up to my television, the site would be even better. Netflix sells a $99 box that lets you stream movies to your tv, but 80% of the on demand Netflix movies are not movies anyone would ever watch. Ok, a slight divergence to talk about convergence, but the overall goal of this post was to use the Olympics and related web based video programming to show the good, the bad and the ugly of live and non-live television. Hey, I think I just found my next movie to watch. Thanks for reading. | 
