Web or TV? Strategies for watching the Olympics

For many, watching the Summer Olympics is itself a sport.

First, there's the time zone difference -- Beijing is 15 hours ahead of California. Then, there's getting through the commercials and the angry muttering from one's fellow couch potato about the America-centric, triumph-and-heartbreak commentary (which some of us love). Finally, there is bedtime to consider, with many of the best events not appearing on TV until late at night.

Do you put yourself in a total media blackout so that you don't hear the results, allowing yourself to savor the prime-time experience on TV later? Or give up suspense and embrace the Information Age?

Fortunately, NBC has promised that many of the top events will be aired live, with a couple hour tape-delay for West Coast folks, according to Show Tracker. But this Olympics offers fans more options and flexibility, thanks to the Internet. Via NBC's Olympics website, U.S. residents can watch more live video online than ever before -- 2,200 hours across 25 events.

But of course, when you are ready to watch, the athletes may not be competing. So NBC is ...

... making available more than 3,000 hours of on-demand video of events and highlights. There's another option for people using Microsoft's Vista operating system on their computers. They can subscribe to events via a service from TV Tonic, leave their PCs on overnight and get full events downloaded by morning. Will this be reason enough for people to upgrade to the much-maligned Vista?

Many of the events that can be viewed online are ones rarely seen on TV. (Archery, anyone?) And much of the online video comes without commentary, says the New York Times. This will reduce the cries of American jingoism in some homes.

Still, TV's prime time rules. Big sports -- gymnastics, track and field, swimming, diving, volleyball and beach volleyball -- will be reserved for television viewers first, Web viewers second.

Big mistake, says Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider, who accuses NBC of being a content-hoarder and believes the strategy will frustrate Olympics fans. The network would do better to make all events available all the time, with a link to live streaming video, he said. "We suspect we'll spend most of the Olympics cursing NBC for forcing us to watch the Olympics according to their schedule and style, not ours," he wrote.

There are alternatives, right? Maybe not. If you were hoping to just check out YouTube every night, you might be disappointed. There's an official Olympics YouTube channel courtesy of YouTube's parent, Google, according to the Wall Street Journal. But it's not available inside the U.S. Drat!

And YouTube will filter content proactively, so great video captured by a spectator's cellphone at the games won't make it onto the site, the Journal said.

Let us know your Olympics-watching strategy.

-- Michelle Quinn

Photo: Natalie Coughlin of the U.S. Olympic swimming team. Credit: Wong Maye-E / Associated Press

Comments

[Peter Young]

I'm confident that NBC will ruin this Olympic Games for U.S. television viewers in light of past performances by the U.S. networks. The actual sporting events will take a backseat to all the hype. Few events will be shown in their entirety. World class performances by athletes from other countries will be neglected. Bob Costas thinks he's a sports guru but he presides over a disaster for fans of sport. Some day we'll be able to get the BBC's coverage of the Olympics and not have to bother with the U.S. networks' fantasy creation.

[Greig Tilley]

No Kidding. U.S. Network coverage of the Olympics since the Early Eighties has been a cavalcade of crap. Manufactured drama and lousy coverage. And Costas! A clown. That guy wishes he has 1/100th the talent and knowledge that Jim McKay had. ABC is really the only one that ever got it right, they let the drama happen if it happened. But they didnt manufacture it. Odds are pretty good I will be watching reruns of Ice Road Truckers, or the Simpsons, before I watch any U.S. network coverage.

[Watch Olympics]

There's more then one way to watch the olympics, and certain sites (I wonder who? lol) are streaming it with the aide of p2p and flash server technology that makes it easy, and free to do.

[Ed Doran]

I find that unless one simply "must" see a "live" coverage, one can wait a few hours or days to see it later, especially since events' results will be already known (thanks to Internet, we don't live in "dark media ages" of scores blackouts anymore,) and "adjusted" for doping or steroids tests.

Olympics, like a lot of sports and sports coverage that's gone "commercial", have lost a lot of natural excitement since the 80's and was replaced by hype which very rarely lives up to expectations. They can only "cry hype" so many times before people tune out. I expect that few events like swimming (due to presence of Mike Phelphs) and some gymnastics, basketball etc. will be watched in usual reasonably large numbers, but doubt there will be unusual excitement this year in overall general population outside of rabid sports fans and sports and general media using them to promote the Olympics hype.

Also should be taken into account that YouTube's censorship of user-supplied content, just because it now may have a financial stake in Olympics coverage, is not a big hurdle to overcome. YouTube's "channel", while probably the largest, is not the only channel for user-supplied content on the Net. That's the beauty of the Internet, which YouTube itself leveraged when it was establishing itself as an alternative content delivery mechanism to "regular", "mainstream" media.

[Jonathan Racasa]

What's my strategy? Hope that NBC shows some badminton on tv and not just on the web. Its extremely hard to watch badminton on a low quality video stream. Just search for badminton on youtube and you'll see what I mean. And it doesn't even have to be in prime time. Show badminton at 3am and I'm there.

I'm one of the people who dislikes the way NBC chooses to show their sports. Its far TOO pro-American. And some of those montages that they use to break away from the competition are just a bit too much... that's more John Tesh than I ever need. I thought the Atlanta games coverage was okay, but of course that was in our timezone.

I got to watch the Athens games from London, from the British perspective. It's so refreshing to see the games from that point of view. They obviously are pro-Great Britain, but in a much less obnoxious way. And I got to see a bunch of sports that aren't even given the time of day on NBC.

I guess I have no choice though and I'll just have to make do with what is presented to me.

It will be hard to maintain the media blackout, I am always surfing the net and it will be difficult to not read or hear about results.

[Andy Hunn]

I just used my Tivo to record sporting events based on our family's interest, swimming, diving, gymnastics, and track and field. I can't wait to see if it gives me what I want. otherwise, with so much content across so many networks, difficult to navigate through the choices and its timing. I'm hoping Tivo is the right tool to do the job.

[Rebecca]

Good luck with Tivo. We broke ours recording the last summer olympics....Tivo boxes have trouble with recording long long segments of things, i.e. like a nice 8 hour block of the olympics, since they'll never just show all of one event for short period of time!

[JM]

I hear these comments about Costas, with which I agree, but apparently NBC is tone deaf. The coverage is droll, xenophobic beyond reason, and generally trivialized. The commercialism has ruined the whole affair. I will watch the track and field primarily. By and large too much hype about sports people only pay attention to every four years. It's just not worth the hype.

[David]

NBC's American-centric coverage of the 2008 Olympics is disappointing and becoming quite irritating. I am glad to see the American athletes and their accomplishments however this is a world competition and I would like to know more about other competitors rather than what Michael Phelps had for breakfast today or how many ounces of water leaked into his goggles.