Olympics Post-Mortem: Almost Great
by Chris Fontecchio on Aug 13, 2008 2:27 PM EDT
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First, let me say that I'm aware of the upcoming track events, and will probably devote some coverage to them, in the hopes that someone who actually understands track will be on the job. I don't fit the description though, and for the rest of you focused on the road, it's time to say farewell to another Olympiad.
First, the good: the course was mostly great. I'm not completely sold on tollbooths on the course, but otherwise the route was straight out of some sort of "Essential Beijing" tour guide, in terms of scenery. And the fact that it was so unusual made for some very intriguing calculations on the part of the big teams. In the end, we saw powerhouse climbers like Sastre and Evans working to spring teammates who might have a better chance in a sprint. We saw the Italians playing their best hand, just inches ahead of the bizarre/awesome attack of Fabian Cancellara (a one-man country, whom I will now simply refer to as "Switzerland"). Apparently we saw repeated, exciting finales in the women's races and the men's time trial too. We definitely saw star-studded fields that could be considered perhaps the best in the sport.
As for the bad... on the flip.
UPDATE: take the poll!
First, the arguably bad: the environment of Beijing. Simply having it in the polluted and/or ultra-humid environment was a drawback, but this factor has been a little overanalyzed, thanks to the real or perceived sense that the Chinese government is offended by pointing out the obvious. I'll go with real, and would suggest that a far smarter approach was available. Here are the last six Olympic host cities: LA, Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens. Only Sydney isn't roasting in August/September. Humidity... ever spent a summer in Atlanta or Seoul? Smog... remember Alberto Salazar training in his garage for the '84 marathon? That's life at the Olympics. If you want perfect weather in August, go to the southern hemisphere. Or Norway. Or the Pacific Northwest (not an actual suggestion). However irresistible it is to the media and China's critics to poke China over its miserable environmental policies (and it is irresistible, particularly when you can get such a rise out of them), the reality is they haven't cornered the market on crap weather and bad air.
Lastly, the truly bad: NBCOlympics.com's streaming. I'm told by the people who could get it working that it was excellent. But for whatever reason, it appears that NBC chose a very demanding method of streaming, which only certain (Intel-loaded) computers could handle at all, and even then after downloading Silverlight, which then would only work on the most updated browsers. Not that I have any data, but I clearly wasn't alone in being shut out. At first some alternative streams were available and easily accessed (e.g., channelsurfing.net), but by last night, NBC's army of IP lawyers had closed all the loopholes as well.
I consider it virtually a right to watch the Olympics. This isn't the Tour of Flanders, a small private company that can sell its coverage to Cycling.TV who can then ask me to subscribe before I watch it. This is a contest of national teams supported by public funds. So when NBC had a choice between a shiny toy of a stream that worked great for some and not at all for others (a schism enforced by whatever their lawyers did to shut down the mirror sites)... versus a less shiny toy that actually worked on all computers, their choice of the former was a stupid one. The more I think about it, the more it makes me want to... want to...
Whew... I feel better now. Anyway, this bears watching: UniversalSports, NBC's partnership with WCSN, has the rights to the World Championships. WCSN's stream was always extremely easy to use, so hopefully Universal's will be too. I plan to email a couple guys over there today on this very subject.
Thanks to all for participating. For a few, short days (compared to July's grind), the Podium Cafe community was on fire. Lots of input, zillions of comments, and I found I had to hustle just to get up a thread before Gavia or Dan beat me to it. If anyone thought this was a site for people who only sorta care about Cycling, they know better by now. Chapeau!
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Curious how many the streaming worked for
and who watched it through other means, might make a good poll.
"...The mind has to rule the body and tell the body, shut up and do what I tell you to do..." Jens!
Poll added
good suggestion!
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Aug 13, 2008 3:21 PM EDT up reply actions
Worked
great for me at home – Intel iMac with Silverlight installed using Firefox.
"...The mind has to rule the body and tell the body, shut up and do what I tell you to do..." Jens!
Same, but Dell instead of Mac
For once I found cycling streaming to be pretty bulletproof. I’ll be watching the TTs over the next couple of nights and track next week.
"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum."
I'm hoping to be glued to the track stuff!
Taylor I think is one of the first up for us and then Reed and Hammer and then I think Lea and Meatball. Plus there are several others riding for the US in other events. I have not checked the schedule real close though – yet.
I had no problems with the online video at home but from work (even with silverlight installed) I was unable to watch any of it at the office. I have a pretty updated IE but I never even got the zip and cable company question while here. From home though I thought it was great video. It stinks that it sounds like many could not access it at all.
"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."
don't use your zip and cable company question
just select directv
"Wizard's first rule. People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true." -- Terry Goodkind
or, use your zip... but select DIRECTV
"Wizard's first rule. People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true." -- Terry Goodkind
Here at work I don't even get to that point.
All is good at home.
"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."
Poor Taylor
His Oh-so-helpful team are getting his little sister to do a few blog pieces over at their site. And when you are eighteen and psyching yourself up for your Olympic debut, what can you guarantee that your fourteen year old sister will notice most of all:
Yesterday, Sophie, my dad and I arrived in Beijing at around 4:30 p.m. and after getting lost several times in our taxi, we made it to the Marriott Hotel where we got to see Taylor, my mom, Neal Henderson and some of the other track cyclists. Sophie gave Taylor a big kiss
Your IT peeps are probably blocking it
I’m guessing your company is blocking the feed from crossing their firewall. Understandable to some degree, since they probably don’t want their employees watching the footage on company time ;-)
That is too bad
that the olympic site does not work for many. It has worked well for me so far and I have watched some cool stuff on it.
Gavia mentioned an article in the New York Times the other day about the users trying to use work-arounds on opening night
link here
My favorite cool thing on the olympic course was the ride through cool down shower for the riders.
Work arounds
This story drives me nuts. NBC will claim they need to stop the work-arounds because it hurts ad sales, but I ask you: is there a single human alive who would watch online if they had the option of just turning on the TV? In the article they’re talking about the tape-delay of the opening ceremonies (which I couldn’t care less about) but they could easily have been talking about our experience. People watch online if they have no other option. So let them.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Aug 13, 2008 5:23 PM EDT up reply actions
Excellent point
and what the heck is NBC showing at 2 am anyway? Why not show the cycling (or, heck, any sport, for that matter) live? Or if NBC’s post-midnight programming is too important to interrupt, what about MSNBC or USA? Do they have some weird agreement not to televise Olympic sports between the hours of midnight and 6 AM?
Ooohh I would love to be able
to watch a race in full HD Live.!!
"...The mind has to rule the body and tell the body, shut up and do what I tell you to do..." Jens!
you talking about 2am your local time?
2am on the east coast us is 2pm in china… there are a lot of live events shown during that time
"Wizard's first rule. People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true." -- Terry Goodkind
Bingo
This is exactly my problem with geo-restricting and exclusive contracts. Most people will watch the local coverage on their teevee. If that’s not available, then they’ll turn to streaming video with local language commentary. Why else would cyclingfans offer a mashup of non-english viddy with eurosport commentary? That’s the preference of most English-speaking people: to have English commentary. Given no restraints, very few people are going to log on to non-local coverage, in my view. So all these lame you can’t watch this stream, blah blah. Basta! This is just silly. In fact, another NYT article – actually I think it was that one – said that viewership for the openning ceremonies actually increased because of the buzz created by people who had watched it online.
Okay, I confess, if there were no geo-restrictions, I would always watch either Italian or Belgian cycling coverage. Because it rocks. But I understand the commentary, which makes a big difference. If I didn’t? I probably would be doing the Eurosport mix-and-match game.
NBC said on Nightly News tonight
that viewership is way up to 30 million peeps each night.
They are getting up to 750K for a 30 second commercial!
Layout much better
The layout of the NBC site was much better than cycling.tv. I could see what was available right there and pick a live channel or a re-run on the same screen and bingo it came up. I didn’t have to go through a labyrinth of pages like a bunch of twist passages all alike. Or have to re-sign in over and over.
The actual streaming was on Ctv level – a little smoother but still with glitches. I think that is more internet than the site though. Routers getting loaded and such.
Agreed
NBC does have a nice Olympic site. I seems some people had problems with the Sliverlight player but to me it served up some of the best quality online video I’ve seen all season except for maybe the NRK Giro coverage. I liked the unpolished raw video with the natural noises. Almost like I was there. What does it say when I didn’t miss the bike racing audio commentary? The extended post race ambience segments with the complete award ceremony was a nice touch as well.
Regarding tolls in bike races. Some almost paid a heavy price by cornering wide before the booths. Here’s Larsson.
Sanchez nearly hit it earlier.
I wondered why they did not go for the 3rd lane
it looked like it might have made the turn easier and the set up for the next corner a little straighter. Of Course that is just from the viewer prospective, maybe it was different in person.
"...The mind has to rule the body and tell the body, shut up and do what I tell you to do..." Jens!
No, no, no...
... it’s the carpool lane. He’s only one guy. Ricco could have gone through because he could have counted his ego as a passenger.
I know, it said "als" instead of "ist"... don't give me any crap...
Just saw Chris' updated comments
Sliverlight is just player for a video source. NBC must have known that it would be limited to newer browsers and hardware. RAI used Sllverlight for the their Giro archived video but dropped it midway. The Silverlight security may be way media companies like it?? Otherwise, they would have a common player like Flash.
I am personally
loving the Silverlight client. It’s definitely one of the best I’ve seen, I love the ability to watch any sport in a variety of formats (raw feed or some broadcasted with commentary.) Sorry to hear about those of you having problems; I’m glad I tested it out before the Games started. I agree NBC could have done more to make it more widely available (the no-Linux option is a bummer but not much of a surprise.)
there is a silverlight version for linux
"Wizard's first rule. People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true." -- Terry Goodkind
Time trial was great on US TV
I recorded the HD overnight feed at home and watched it this morning when I got up. I love my DVR. Didn’t include the podium, but without podium girls, I don’t really care…
The road race was less enjoyable due to NBC’s spotty coverage and breaking into other sports.
I didn’t feel a real need to watch either online.
I’m hopeful that UniversalSports will show the World Championships on Universal HD, one of my HD options. HD cycling is amazing…
Agreed-bike shower was really cool. I’d love to see that on the local centuries-I’ll bring it up to the Davis Double folks…this year could have used it.
What? They already broadcast the TT stuff ?
Following these damn Olympics is only slightly easier than figuring out when the next new episode of House is going to be on.
I know, it said "als" instead of "ist"... don't give me any crap...
I tivoe'd this eve
b/c the teevee said “cycling” in the eve slot, not earlier.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Aug 13, 2008 6:30 PM EDT up reply actions
NBC Website says...
... coverage for the Men’s ITT was at 2AM PST this morning on MSNBC… Women’s ITT coverage tonight in Prime Time on your local NBC affiliate.
I know, it said "als" instead of "ist"... don't give me any crap...
GODDAMMIT
I need to do my angry dance again.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Aug 13, 2008 6:53 PM EDT up reply actions
Thank you, Kristin Armstrong,
for winning the gold medal and thereby putting the women’s tt into primetime on NBC, even if we’ll likely only see about three minutes of your ride and then the podium ceremony. With NBC’s gold-or-you’re-a-loser mentality, I guess Levi’s bronze was only good enough for red-eye coverage on cable. Fabian who?
by Susie Hartigan on Aug 13, 2008 6:53 PM EDT up reply actions
Actually
it’s been scheduled that way on NBCOlympics.com for at least a couple days. So NBC didn’t do it b/c Armstrong won; that was (for them) a happy coincidence. I set my DVD recorder to record it and am watching it now (the guy introducing it – before turning it over to Craig and Paul – referred to the Swiss rider as “Fabrian” Cancellara. Hm…)
The prime time coverage of the women TT
....lasted all of 15 minutes….......aaaaaugh! NBC evidently thinks that there are only 3 summer sports….swimming, gymnastics, and beach volleyball.
We didn’t even get Armstrong’s podium…which was very cool!!
closer to 8 mins, dear
"Wizard's first rule. People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true." -- Terry Goodkind
The TT coverage actually was pretty good on NBC tv.
They gave more than an hour of coverage and showed a good bit of all the major contenders.
I had hoped to take a nap then wake up in time to watch the TT live. We ride at 5:15 am here locally to avoid automobile traffice. The TT was scheduled to end at 4:30 local time, which is when I have to wake up to ride with the local group. But I was too tired to I recorded 12 hours of coverage to watch the men’s TT. The women’s TT was ending as I started watching yesterday or last night so I did not record it.
Are the road races and TT recorded online somewhere?
I think this link will get you close to the "encore" presentation of the cycling events
that have been run to date:
http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/nbcencore/index,page=3.htmx
men's time trial was on in the 7 hour block on usa this am
"Wizard's first rule. People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true." -- Terry Goodkind
I’ve got a digital cable setup, so on the days when I know there’s an event I want to see, like the ITT, I check the guide for each channel showing the Olympics. I’m getting 6 or 8 channels showing stuff, with two high def. If the guide mentions the event or sport at all, I record it.
When I’ve got the time, I fast forward through the crap to find what I want. Worked well so far. Not knowing the real time is cool because I’m not tempted to get up at some gawdawful hour to watch it. My body makes me pay for the 5:30am west coast TdF broadcasts every year…
Dan, that's because NBC
“IS RISKING A PATIENTS LIFE!”
"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum."
Bike shower
loved it. China appears to be assuming the mantle of gadget-land, from Japan.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Aug 13, 2008 6:27 PM EDT up reply actions
No stream for me
This was really frustrating, because if I’d known that I would not be able to access the NBC stream, I would have found an alternative. But silly me, I assumed since it was being streamed by a major American network and I’m American, that no funny business would be required for once. Eh, not so fast. I didn’t have the time or patience to find a proxy. Uh, I can’t believe I needed an American proxy. Gah. I pretty much gave up on watching anything live.
I thought that it was my local Cable company who loves to take all our money interfering. But now I’m wondering if the problem was Silverlight all along. The Windoze brick we were using wasn’t exactly the latest and greatest, just a spare laptop that the BF had from work. Maybe this is why we couldn’t get the stream to work at a decent speed. Certainly, the processor monitor thingy was at 100% when we were on it. All we got was slideshowage. Dunno, really, our ISP is lame about restricting stuff, but it’s also poss it was just the Silverlight stupidity.
I’ve run across Silverlight in the past – some pro surf contests use it, but they also always provided the old skool wmp, which pretty much works for everything, even my mac thingy. There is a really fab client – and I’m forgetting what it’s called – that an Aussie co developed – it lets you remind live stream. Sweet. Super clear viddy, too. That thingy worked great on all our lappytops. LOL, we don’t own any desktops any more.
Anyway, I’m right there with you, Chris. I consider it my god-given right as a free American to watch the damn Olympics. Now give it to me!
Or, I’ll go steal if from somewhere ;-)
Well put
also… pro surfing online?
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Aug 13, 2008 6:54 PM EDT up reply actions
yep
Every contest is streamed online live, and usually at least highlights, if not the entire heats, are available on demand. It’s free and always simple. I’ve never yet been shut-out. The sponsors recognize that it is the key to getting their brands exposed – to offer free easy to use stream, because the majority of their audience can’t fly to Indo to watch it in person. Freakin’ sweet. Also, they usually have a choice of a couple languages for the commentary – English, French, and sometimes Portoguese (there are a bunch of Brazilians on the pro tour.)
There was one contest where it really sucked – I suspect the venue was too remote and there was like one wire connecting the island to the outside internet world.
Best streaming evah!
I watched Mavericks this year
It was cool being back on that beach virtually
You can go on to the Mavericks site
and sign up for the automatic e-mail notification of the event that says Its On!!
ooohhh track!!!!
....fun, fun, fun!!!
My predictions:
Men
Team Sprint: France
Sprint: Chris Hoy
Keirin: Chris Hoy
Team Pursuit: Dutch
Individual Pursuit: Taylor Phinney
Madison: Dutch
Points race: Greg Henderson
Women
Sprint: Jennie Reed
Individual Pursuit: Sarah Hammer
Points race: Marianne Vos
...though Lyne will be cheering for a certain French world champion….WINK!
though I am also thinking of going with
men sprint….Theo Bos and
women sprint…..Victoria Pendleton
decisions, decisions….
And
that’s that. ~11 minutes (including a commercial break). And no ceremony. I had thought they would show the medal ceremony since an American won it, but I evidently thought wrong. Well, maybe they’ll show it later…
not many of the medal ceremonies are shown....
.... if so, lumped in as a blitzkreig at the end of the prime-time coverage or during the “late night” coverage
"Wizard's first rule. People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true." -- Terry Goodkind
Anyone else happy Al Trautwig went to the Olympics this year instead?
It was so great not hearing him at the TdF this year. Craig Hummer was much better.
The women’s (girls’?) gymnastics coverage just grates because of Mr. Trautwig (not to mention the inherent creepiness of the whole sport from parents to coaches to judging). Here’s hoping he’s done with cycling now that Lance has retired.
I'd guess
there’s something approaching unanimity on this point.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Aug 13, 2008 11:04 PM EDT up reply actions
"Craig Hummer was much better"
That’s not saying much…
Okay, this is interesting
I was chattin’ with one of my friends who has the same ISP. They had stream.
So, my problem was processor power with Silverlight. Why is that interesting? Because there are three laptops at the Gav Shack. Ubuntu, Windows, and my toaster. Obviously, we selected the Windows brick, since of the three it was the only one that would run Silverlight, at least theoretically. The Windows thingy isn’t all that new, but it never occurred to us that Silverlight wouldn’t run on it. And BF of Gav is a software engineer. Gah, that’s scarey, right there. Now, all the techies in the room are saying, why didn’t you dumbasses test it out ahead of time? Uh… We don’t have oodles of time on our hands? Anyway, had we any idea this Silverlight thingy was such a hog, BF could have brought a newer lappy from work.
Why is this interesting? Because we three computers, a large chunk of education, and one techie, we could not make NBC’s streaming viddy work for us. Gah. Imagine the grandmothers!
It ain't power of box
Uhm my brother has an 800 Mhz old Dell and it worked fine. 512M of memory I believe. (Maybe more). It worked. It wasn’t the power of the box. nbcolmpics had something wrong with their site code right at the start of the mens TT. If Silverlight ran at all it worked – just like flash would. They are very comparable – SL a little more efficient simply because its newer. It IS stupidly MS just like the previous thing that cycling.tv run that even worse mms stuff. I am sure there were some tech problems, and the stupid Intel thing. I know there was a website problem because if you kept the womens stream on you got the men, but you couldn’t get in for the men unless you kept trying. (I use an automatic script and it took a long time – 40 minutes or more to get in.
We couldn't get the mens' road race
to stream beyond the speed of a slideshow. The processor monitor thingy – so techie, that gav – was at 100% the whole time the stream was running. So it ran, but it ran really really really unwatchably slow.
This is why I thought it was my ISP, because that’s what they do with sites they don’t want us to play with like some torrent sites. But since a friend was able to access it over the same ISP, I went back to thinking it was the ‘puter we were using.
But really, my point still holds. Three computers in my house, and none of them could get the stream running in watchable form. That’s a pretty abysmal failure on NBC’s part, since I’ve never been shut out of stream before, other than geo-restricting or server overloads.
disappointed...
re: TT coverage via CBC – no way I could stay awake for the men’s live online, but Radio-Canada’s schedule supposedly was going to include women’s and men’s TT coverage in their morning block so I recorded it – just went through it, women’s only and what looked like a nifty feature on road and track TT’ing in general (not that I could understand all of it, in French).
as for archived online stuff at CBC, they have almost 4 min of the men’s RR vs 265 min of the women’s, and 3:39 (min) of the women’s TT highlights with nothing of the men’s… supposedly they’ll be showing something on the main network Friday late evening into Saturday middle of the night, we’ll see.
where can i find...
the CBC archived stuff? i’ve been looking on the Olympics site but can’t seem to locate it…
Didn't really know where to post this
but here’s a cute article in the NY Times about Jason McCartney going for a “casual bike ride” in China
Agree - thanks for the link. :-)
It’s fun to read that some of them are getting out to see some sights and have some fun before they head out.
"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."
Not sure if this has been posted somewhere else,
Really good article on Velonews about the Pros embracing the Olympics
link here.
I love that they are both so happy and proud of the jobs they did!
"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."
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