I remember the 2008 and 2010 Olympic Games, and being shocked that, in those “modern” times, there were still no truly reliable and easy-to-use ways of watching the games on a computer.
NBC, who held the U.S. broadcast rights, tried to get some Internet coverage going, but it never quite worked as advertised. They were so paranoid that someone might be able to watch an Olympic event online “for free” that the limited, restrictive access that was provided discouraged many people from even trying; never mind the fact that they were broadcasting “free” Olympic coverage from local TV stations through the air to millions of antennas around the nation. Internet “broadcasting” was somehow different, and ended up being controlled in ridiculous ways.
There were also diverse technical issues that made the process of watching the Olympics online more tedious than it should have been. Computers had to be running up-to-date versions of Adobe Flash and Microsoft’s pointless (and, mostly abandoned) Silverlight plugins in order to view the streaming video feeds. Data traffic jams at Olympic-related websites were common, making them unreachable for hours on end. If your computer had anything less than a powerful processor, tons of memory and speedy video hardware, it would frequently freeze up or crash. If you did not have a nice, fast Internet connection, you were often stuck staring at a little spinning hourglass that said, “buffering.”
Fortunately, things have improved, but there is plenty of room for improvement. You still need Adobe Flash Player and a fast Internet connection. Even so, NBC, who still holds the U.S. broadcast rights, has added tons of capacity to their systems, making online Olympic games watching a sometimes quirky, but mostly doable experience. Of course, these statements are based on my experience with their website and software before the games have even started. All I’ve done is use NBC’s special “Live Extra” functions watching pre-Olympics events. Nobody really knows what’s going to happen when millions of folks connect to the NBC website at the same time, all trying to watch the same event.
I setup NBC’s “Live Extra” service (www.nbcolympics.com) on my Windows 7 laptop PC without a hitch. As long as you are a subscriber to a major TV provider, and your package includes CNBC and MSNBC, you qualify to see every single Olympic competition live, in real time, on your computer, for “free.”
Part of the process requires that you login to your account with your TV provider. In our area, this means you need to know your online login information for the account you have with Cox, Dish Network, DirecTV, or AT&T U-Verse. If you do not know your account’s username and password, you will not be able to watch live Olympics on your computer, so get that information together in advance.
NBC also has “apps” for mobile devices like iPhones, Android phones and tablets, and iPads. I installed the Live Extra app on a brand-new Apple iPad with 64 GB of memory, a super-fast Internet connection, and was disappointed. It never did work properly. Every time I would access certain features, a little window would pop up that said, “An unknown error has occurred.” Then, the app would crash and freeze up the iPad. I got the same results after uninstalling the app, restarting the iPad and reinstalling the app: unknown error, crash, and freeze up.
Maybe NBC will have fixed the iPad app by the time the Olympic Games are in full swing, but, as of two days before the opening ceremonies, the iPad app is a buggy piece of junk. Hopefully, it will improve. I have not tried the app on an iPhone or Android phone.
I did, however, install the app on an Android tablet, an 8GB Barnes and Noble Nook Color. It was a little quirky getting it setup, logging in every time is a hassle and each time you want to use it, it has to be launched from the Google Play store, but, by golly, it works.
Many Olympic events never seem to make it onto regular broadcast TV channels; the ability to watch them online is a great way to witness world-class athletes competing in less-popular sports, like Tae Kwon Do. Maybe by 2014, the bugs will be worked out enough to make it enjoyable for everyone. Even so, in spite of the quirks and bugs, in 2012, it’s still worth a try.