After months of hype surrounding the Olympics in Beijing, we are only a week away! Earlier this year Microsoft and NBC Universal announced plans to make NBCOlympics.com the official online home of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The partnership is expected to result in the largest online broadcasting event in history, offering viewers a new level of choice and flexibility in Olympics coverage.
What makes these Olympics so exciting is that it will be the first time that anyone with an Internet connection can view events of their choice for free on the NBC web site. NBC will be streaming more than 3,000 hours of live and on-demand content during the games. 20 Simultaneous streams will be serving the content for up to 34 of the most popular sports at the Olympics.
The Best Part of the Live Stream Is…
The best part is you will be able to not only watch one live stream, but up to 4! Simultaneously! Also, while you watch your favorite sport, you will be getting live up to the minute results and statistics on the event, athlete information, play-by-play, commentary, and much more. You will be able to set alerts and reminders, and watch events with your friends, sharing in the experience.
A few years ago streaming even one live feed would have been choppy and unusable. What will start next week is something that has never been attempted before. All this will be made possible with Microsoft Silverlight. Not only will Silverlight offer some extremely high quality streaming video feeds to viewers, but it also makes the real time stats, “control-room” and picture in picture features possible.
It’s Go Time for Silverlight
Microsoft has really played the “Put up or shut up” card here. Should the event go off without any major complications, it will probably be the biggest install festival of Microsoft Silverlight to date. Media coverage will be very positive touting a huge win for the Internet, and it’s future as the next big broadcasting medium. However, if some of you recall the Sydney Olympics in 2000, sites were down for days as traffic numbers reached ridiculous proportions.
Silverlight will be under a huge magnifying glass through the Olympics. Should the servers and network bandwidth not keep up with requests, this could spell PR disaster for Microsoft when it needs huge wins like this to get back into the online game.
You can get ready for the Olympics by checking out the new Microsoft web site promoting the Beijing Olympic Games coverage, or you can go right to the NBC Olympics Web Site. Make sure you click on the “Enhanced Player” to see the new features. Just remember not everything is working until the Olympics start.
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Not off to a good start. I just tried to watch the replay of the US vs. Norway womens soccer match and the video was unbearably choppy.