“For Americans, coverage of the Olympics in London is mainly limited to NBC’s video stream offerings,” Jordan Kahn reports for 9to5Mac.
“Unfortunately, the network’s coverage, especially online, is receiving a ton of complaints as witnessed by the #nbcfail hashtag on Twitter,” Kahn reports. “Fortunately, there is a way to bypass NBC altogether and take advantage of the BBC’s official live stream coverage from inside the U.S. of almost every major event.”
Kahn reports, “All you have to do is use a DNS routing service [like Unblock Us] to get around the BBC’s region blocked streams… It is free for a week, and then it is $5 for the month.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Note to NBC dunces: The Internet happened, therefore tape delays are moronic. We couldn’t avoid knowing the outcomes if we tried (and we did).
Five hours before you decide to finally roll the tape of Phelps winning his 19th Olympic medal, we’re all asking, “So, are you going to watch Phelps win his 19th gold medal tonight?” It makes for less than compelling television, this not being 1976 and all.
So, NBC morons, take one of your many channels and dedicate it solely to live coverage and continue to rebroadcast the signature events in prime time as is your wont. That way, everyone is satisfied. That is all.
Always preferred the ABC coverage in the past, Roone Arledge was the maestro of olympic sports coverage.
..and college football coverage, ESPN sucks the tar outta the kitchen linoleum.
I thought that was asbestos in the kitchen linoleum.
Linseed oil (extracted from flax seeds), not tar, in linoleum
Considering how old the invention is, it is a remarkably “green” product being primarily linseed oil, pine rosin, cork dust (ground scrap cork), and wood flour (ground scrap wood).
Actually, pine rosin is sometimes called “pine tar” in baseball so I guess you get a pass on this one, botvinnik 😉
lol, gee thanks Tesselator!…it was a euphemism my late brother liked to use.
When issues reach this level….
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1722.html
Here’s where to send your cards and letters:
“The audience number for the London opening ceremony is a great early sign that our strategy of driving people to watch NBC in prime time is working,” said Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Sports Group.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/28/olympics-2012-nbc-sets-opening-ceremony-record
If they really don’t understand that a ceremony can be watched later but a sporting event has to be live they don’t deserve to broadcast any sports ever, let alone the Olympics. Would they put a five hour delay on their Superbowl coverage?
NBC (and the entire TV industry) are like a dying Brontosaurus in its death throws. It is still thrashing its deadly tail about. Not to fear for long, it will be dead soon!
NBC: No. Body. Cares.
NBC: Nothing. But. Cr@p.
NBC: G3. E4. C4.
I can hear it now.
F@ck NBC! BBC coverage is light years better.
NBC – No Brainer Channel
And this relates to Apple products just how?
RTFA.
You watch it on your Mac (and then AirPlay Mirror to your large HDTV, if you’re smart, which you obviously aren’t).
RTFA – How to set up Unblock-Us on Mac OSX.
Thanks for this, MDN!!
The same way it relates to Kevin Bacon
Ratings are up across the board. Apparently those dunces know what they are doing.
Meaningless. The ratings could be higher if they catered to the audience for live sports. By ignoring them, how much audience are they losing? For many viewers, the answer to MDN’s question, “So, are you going to watch Phelps win his 19th gold medal tonight?” is “No, why bother. I already know the outcome.”
NBC is run by fools like you.
(facepalm)
Approximately umpteen zillion hours of live coverage on NBC, NBC Sports Network, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, and two special HD channels dedicated to basketball and soccer, plus a website that streams every event in every sport live. EVERY EVENT. IN EVERY SPORT. LIVE.
And NBC isn’t “catering to the audience for live sports”. Give me patience.
What do you want them to do, have the sports director come over to your house and personally **** you?
——RM
Naw, I just want his adult daughters to come over to my house and personally **** me?
I knew the the girl gymnastics won gold, and I watched it twice last night. Loved it both times
As long as this is true, there’s no way they will change.
They have a monopoly on presenting the Olympics in the US, of course we will watch. I don’t have time to compromise my security to use some third party DNS/VPN etc.
Basically do what MDN said, setup a bank of live feeds somewhere high in the channel listings, let it be raw whatever, just as long as it’s live.
I could not believe it when the opening ceremony was on – I was watching it live with a friends PC turned on Skype in Brazil. It was pathetic that NBC chose to broadcast freakin Family Feud above the Olympics Opening Ceremony, and when they did finally come on, Costas and Brokaw started talking about security (!) while the show was on live and the torch was being lit! NBC is pathetic.
As there were no Americans involved in the opening ceremony, NBC probably assumed nobody in the US would be interested in watching it. They probably don’t actually know where London is, unless it’s in Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas or West Virginia. England would be stretching their geographical knowledge to breaking point.
I refuse to watch any network television (ABC, CBS, NBC or fox) until the election is over. My life is too precious for me to waste even one second of it as captured audience for the FILTH the 1% are drowning us in this election cycle. They can waste their millions of dollars in ad lies and deceit, but they can’t make me watch it! I have the same attitude about M$ products. 😉
+1. Filth is one of many related adjectives that adequately describe these whore mongering, money driven vermin.
Not only that, but NBC promoted the evening’s coverage of “Will Missy Win Gold?” by showing her biting her gold medal.
Uh, it’s not appropriate to spoil your own promo, NBC.
You sure that wasn’t the gold she’d won in the previous event?
——RM
I’m an Olympics junkie. And I couldn’t be happier with NBC’s coverage.
You want channels dedicated to live coverage? How about seven of them! (If you include NBC’s daytime coverage, which is more than they’ve ever run.)
Over the weekend, ALL SEVEN CHANNELS were broadcasting LIVE Olympic coverage simultaneously! I felt like I was going to overdose!
Only the so-called “marquee” events are tape-delayed, and then only if you don’t watch them online!! Seriously, are we going to bitch about having to watch events online?? Us? The “cut the cable / iTunes and Hulu are all I need” crowd??
This has been the best-covered Olympics ever. Just four days into it, and I’ve already lost track of how many sports I’ve watched. This is just more proof that no matter what you give them, people will always find a way to complain.
——RM
Only seven? The BBC are broadcasting 25 streams in total, most of them in HD. Why aren’t NBC taking those feeds? Do they only want to show the sports where the US are winning?
No, seven cable channels!! Not streams! I haven’t even counted how many streams NBC has, but it’s gotta be more than 25!
NBC is streaming EVERYTHING in HD!!
EVERY GODDAMN SPORT. EVERY EVENT. LIVE. IN HD!!!!
Here’s a clue: Instead of spouting outrage on the internet and making yourself look like a complete uninformed idiot, why don’t you head on over to NBC’s website and see for yourself what they’re offering?
——RM
You know what’s moronic? The idea that you could take a single channel and dedicate it to live coverage when there are, oh, a dozen or so events going on at any given time.
I just pointed my VPN to one of its servers in Manchester and the Beeb coverage works just fine.
Of course if you have cable, you can watch pretty much everything on NBC’s website. I’m falling in love with the Russian Beach Volleyball team right now…
Curse the London weather for making the volleyball players cover up!
——RM
Verizon Fios DVR permits u to record future events. Trouble is they got the schedule wrong or NBC gave it to them with multiple errors. I wanted to record the equestrian cross country and got boxing…Horrible screw up on someone’s part.
So how can the BBC have 25 live channels as required while NBC can’t do one live
NBC is covering all the sports live on their website. This is the live-est the Olympics have ever been in the US.
——RM
In its descriptions of countries participating in the Olympics, NBC decided that Australia was now in Europe. I guess it didn’t realise the Austria and Australia are two countries with only Austria being in Europe – just two letters to handle. But another example of Americans’ lack of grasp of geograpy beyond the US.
NBC broadcast the opening ceremonies when they did because of ratings. Most of us have jobs and appreciate being able to watch Olympic coverage after we get home! I would like to see a bit more variety in what they show, but as many have pointed out, go the website. None of my Apple devices are new enough to AirPlay mirrored screen though, and NBC didn’t make that option part of their iPad/iPhone app.
There is actually a rather geeky but successful way to watch all things BBC from the USA. I’ve been loathe to write up the method for fear of RIAA/MPAA retribution or pissing off the BBC. But it exists! I’ll just state the short version of the method for those who don’t know the starting points. It involves using either the Tor browser of Vidalia with the Tor Button on Firefox (my fave method). The secret is figuring out how to have an exit IP in the UK. (Sorry, that’s all I’m going to share!) Enjoy, :-Derek
[Oh, and there is one other method. But that’s MY secret.]
[PS: I am a dual citizen of the USA and UK, so I’m sort of, kind of, not indictable. Hahal]
ERROR! Please read “the Tor browser OR Vidalia”…
Well its msnbc as in Microsoft NBC so no surprises there with the cock up 😄😃
I use the Laptop Telly service down here works fine for BBC & ITV
http://www.laptoptelly.com