A guide to NBC's sleek Olympics video player (pros and cons)

NBC's Olympics video player has a nice big screen and is pretty easy to use.

For the Beijing games, NBC has partnered with Microsoft design one of the most sophisticated video players yet created. The NBCOlympics.com player has a slew of functions -- some more useful than others -- but its real value is in the flexibility it gives online viewers to watch a wide variety of sports and events on demand. 

If you want to test out the player, make sure to switch to the enhanced version, which has a larger screen and more interactive features. One the left side of the screen, you'll see a bar with the following five features:

• Live Video Control Room - The ostensibly nifty feature, where you can monitor four videos at once, turns out to be a total dud. Even on a big monitor, the four screens are so tiny, the most they can show you is whether the event is in progress or not. Instead of bothering with this feature, just select the sport you want to watch from the list on the right, and then double click on the larger of the viewing windows to open...


• The main video screen (see top): Here's where you want to be. The player offers a schedule of the day's events, and you can quickly begin watching anything in the catalog. Today, for instance, if you wanted men's soccer, you could pick from any of yesterday's eight first-round games. In many cases, the videos don't have commentary -- they're more like raw feeds with a couple of instant replays thrown in -- but it's great for jumping around and watching whatever you feel like, and the video quality is good. 

  What's not so great is the misleading name: Unless you're watching in the middle of the night (Beijing is 15 hours ahead of L.A.), little of the content is actually live. I'm not sure why they decided to call it Live, then -- though admittedly it does sound better than Tape-Delayed Video Control Room.

  I'm a sports rewinder -- I like to be able to replay moments to figure out what happened, or just to revel in their grace or awesomeness. But this video player makes rewinding a chore, especially if you only want to move the clock back a few seconds. Small quibble, but hey.

• Olympic Sports tab:  As far as I can tell, this is a library of "Up close and personal" segments, organized by sport. You know, if you're into that kind of thing.

  Most Watched: a selection of popular events and interviews.

  As Seen on TV: Another repository of normal-length TV segments, including marquee events with commentary, plus interviews, and news coverage.

  Highlights:  Lists of the best goals, throws, swims, jumps and hoops of the day.

Drop a comment if you notice anything I didn't, or even if you find a segment or event worth sharing.

Comments

[Maggie]

It might be great but all of the people with PPC Macs and quite possibly Linux boxes are out of luck becaous Microsoft Silverlight is not supported.

[Denise]

The player bites. I have been able to watch video everywhere on the web with no problem before, but I can't watch this. I meet the Mac OS X requirement, I have the current Firefox browser, but lo! I do not have a Mac with an Intel chip.

Thanks for nothing, MSNBC.

[Scott]

Apple was selling PPC Mac's as recently as Aug, 2006. Hence, the vast majority of macintosh users are locked out of viewing M$NBC video.

Would sure be nice if NBC would post in some legacy format as well, so us "obsolete" users can watch.

In the mean time, I'll just get out my shortwave radio and Morse code book to keep informed. Like living in China. Oh, they have more internet connections than US does, sorry.

[Alex]

"Would sure be nice if NBC would post in some legacy format as well, so us "obsolete" users can watch."

It does. For those who decline or can't install the Silverlight plugin, the site also supports Windows Media Player plugin as an alternative. This should work well for any Windows users who don't wish or can't install Silverlight. If you're a Mac PPC user, install the Windows Media QuickTime components (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx) and all will be well.

[jim gilmore]

WILL NBC TV BE REPLAYING THE OPENING CERIMONIES?

[jim gilmore]

will nbc tv be replaying the opening ceremonies?

[Tivnante]

The NBC is unhelpful for Mac users. What jerks.

[Whiskey]

Even for those of us that downloaded Silverlight and can get it to work, it falls far short of being a good experience. The video quality is pretty good, but the controls are incredibly poor. The videos tend to be long. I was watching one that was 4hrs. The problem this causes is that a minor move of the slide causes multiple minute jumps. I was trying to replay a particular action scene and simply could not control the slider finely enough to accomplish it ... and then couldn't get back to where I was before.
Also, you only get two size choices (full screen isn't one of them), and NBC's concept of commentary is a joke.

[Hugh Person]

Alex's post is intriguing - but seems to be untrue.

I have Silverlight 1 and WMPlayer plugin installed in Safari 3.1 (supported by the NBC site) yet not on an Intel machine.

I get the same error message as before I installed the WMP plug.

Is there a place on the NBC site where you can pick the option to forgo Silbverlight?

And why doesn't Sliverlight 1 work?

[Chris Bauer]

NBC provides no options for linux users to watch video. This is unfortunate. I will probably pirate the content instead.

[Barney Lerten]

Anyone else out there who can't even USE the enhanced player because their cable co. (in my case BendBroadband in C. Oregon) is not an "approved TV service provider" with a "partnership" with NBCOlympics.com?

Talk about maddening... I can watch day-old stuff, but... what of all the over-the-air users? Why do we have to sign up under a specific cable provider? Ugh.

[chris]

Thanks for the post, Im about to watch Sean and Jake play their first game in Beach Volley.

[squawky]

Re: Alex's comments for Mac PPC users -- the link posted is for Flip4Mac (which was updated in May if you haven't checked recently), but it did not help me watch the videos.

If you have an unsupported computer, you do not get the link to "proceed without plugin" when the sys. requirements appear. I've been able to convince the site that I have a supported computer by changing the User Agent in Safari to IE 7 (via the Developer menu - can't recall how that option can be turned on, though). BUT - even with Silverlight 1.0 and the new Flip4Mac installed, the videos do not play... I get the video window with all the various links, but no video.

Please, PPC and Linux users, email NBC and ask for some support - there's a feedback link on the video page.

[Paul Cox]

Why lock out mac users? Why not create an inclusive video link for the widest possible audience? Open source? This is a very corporate solution...one that falls way way short.

[Tony]

I am getting cable so I can watch the replays because I'm an american working chinese hours and I only have antenna so I can't watch nbc's internet videos I figure less money going into the economy, More going into the hands of comcast...Maybe next year comcast will own the olympic video rights, and we'll all be happier...one things for sure, I'm not gonna have any money to spend on NBC advertisers. Who wins?!

[Tykk]

The player should have been good. Heck, the bandwidth is in place and the software is stable. It's a crying shame that it winds up being a rogue's gallery of near-misses.

NBCOlympics.com offers lots of feeds -- unless you actually want to watch something live that happens to also be playing over NBC's legacy technology (television is dead). It serves a nice, crisp video stream -- except you can't bump it up to full-screen and enjoy it on your large monitor or networked HDTV. It offers built-in support for displaying four feeds simultaneously -- in a tiny format that's utterly useless on any conceivable setup excepting, of course, their stated target system, which needs a near-modern CPU, but sports only a 1024x768 monitor resolution. On that note, while the playback limits are frustrating for users with modern systems, the Silverlight technology is cumbersome for aging computers of various stripes (4-to-5 year old Intel/AMD systems and 2-to-3 year old Apples); it's wholly incompatible with Linux; and it requires a non-standard software plug-in that many users in public kiosks and corporate environments do not have.

Did I mention that the entire thing is yet another clunky DRM technology that only serves to keep honest folks from taping events for later viewing? NBC doesn't seem to plan to keep hosting the Olympic footage past December 2008, so it's back to begging, borrowing, and stealing hard copies of footage if someone comes to realize sometime next year that they want to take another look at exactly how a judoka pulled off a throw in the quarterfinals match. I do say honest, because it's an undisputed (and accurate) maxim that "if you can play it, you can record it" -- but that's more than enough said there.

Dear NBC: you've done a great job of combining all the right stuff and still coming up short. Shameful.

By the way, Firefox 3 at least allows you to "zoom in" on the Silverlight pane, making it fit a large screen to a limited degree. It still looks bad, but at least the margins shrink a little bit.

[Jody+]

I have a PPC based mac and my wife has an intel-based model. Both of us have firefox 3.0 and Safari installed. I have tried to watch the Olympic videos on both of our computers, and have installed silverlight on hers (as 2.0 only works on intel-based macs) and I still receive the same error messages. This is pathetic.

[Lynne]

I have an AMD Athlon Processoor, 850 Mhz, 640 Mb RAM, and I can view other videos on the Internet. I have a 1.5 Mbps Internet connection. I can't use Silverlight, as my processors doesn't have what it takes. I tried Windows Media Player, but it says that it won't work with firefox 3.1, that I need firefox 2x, so I tried backing to firefox 2.0.0.16, but that's no good. can't even find earlier ones. It seems the firefox people have scrubbed the web of any other versions.

I don't have tv, and can't view the videos online, so I am like in the stone age and can't see any olympics. I can see pictures, and hear about it on NPR.

Please help!

Lynne

[Curt]

First I discovered NBC's “not supported” message from my PPC Mac. So then I turned to a Windows PC, and after the Silverlight download and setup hassles I can only say it wasn’t worth the effort. I’m thoroughly disappointed. I’d even watch this stuff with advertising if only they provided a decent user experience. NBC and Microsoft, this is awful.

[John Meyer]

I have been unable to get any video from the NBCOlympics.com site to play. I was also unable to install Silverlight. I have five XP computers, and they all failed to play the video. By contrast, I watched entire games during "March Madness," watched "Amen Corner" during the Masters, and watched a lot of outer court matches during Wimbledeon. Thus, the NBC online video experience is completely broken for me, even those these others worked just fine.

Also, four attempts to send feedback via the feedback link provided on the main video page have all been rejected. Thus, it appears that NBC is not paying any attention to what is going on. Hopefully, however, their advertisers will realize that NBC is not delivering the potential audience that they could, and will demand financial penalties.

[David]

95% of videos are unavailable ... says "the video you selected is not loading properly. Please try again as this maybe due to temporary problem blah blah blah blah ... " none of the videos worked I tried over 2 hrs ... real tease ... wth???????????!!!!!!!

[stro]

I have a top of the line laptop 17" computer only 3 years old but its a ppc laptop and cant see the video.... I cant believe they would leave so many computers without access for web video on the olympics.... the guy who came up with this idea must have been the same idiot that
came up with the idea to change the coke recipe in the 80s....

[Gee]

This is so frustrating! I don't have a television, but I do have a lovely Mac with all of the requirements listed to watch video. Can't load a single one. Love the Olympics, hate NBC's idiotic online coverage of it. Thanks for nothing! And they wonder why people try to figure out workarounds to watch Olympics clips on Youtube.

[Paul Atkinson]

I agree, real jerks over there at NBC!!! NBC, now I hate you for life biatch!
ALL mac users unite!

[rob]

I hate NBC. How stupid are these guys? They go with a new media player that only works with intel macs and pc's using the vista operating system. Both combined comprise only a minority of pc users in the U.S. They could have selected adobe and got the widest audience in the country. What stupid marketing is that?? A-holes.