Posts tagged Ustream

It's that time again, every four years in late summer the entire world looks to the Summer Olympics as athletes around the world take the field in the culmination of years of preparation. Medals are won, hard work is fulfilled, and national pride is abound. So then, how do you watch the Olympics?

This year, more than any other Olympics before, the games have made their huge presence felt in the online world. We've known for a while that Microsoft made a deal with NBC to have Silverlight exclusivity in streaming video, and you can find that at NBColympics.com/video. Obviously you'll need the Silverlight plugin to see anything, but some of the features make it a worthwhile download if you haven't grabbed it yet. Just being able to see events live as they happen, even if though they're without commentary, is awesome.

Still, Silverlight provides more functionality then streaming video playback. When you enter the enlarged version of the video player there are several buttons along the left that expand the viewer's experience considerably. If you're a bigtime Olympics fan and there are multiple events you want to watch at the same time they offer a Live Video Control Room button. Using this button you can stream 4 separate live events at once, kind of like picture-in-picture on your TV. You get one big video and then three smaller thumbnails of video to the right. From here you can switch back and forth between the separate streams in case something interesting starts happening in one of the thumbnails that you want a better look at.

There's also some other simple functionality like a button to browse events by sport in case you're looking for something in particular, a button for the most-watched events if you're trying to find what's hot, and even an option for "As Seen On TV" video which includes commentary and footage from the event as it was seen on NBC's cable channel.

Microsoft is delivering NBC Olympic content beyond NBC's website though. If you happen to be using Microsoft Vista with Media Center (Home Premium or Ultimate versions of Vista only) you can subscribe to NBC Olympics On The Go. It's sort of like iTunes for Olympic content where media is downloaded to Media Center when it becomes available. In that way it's just like iTunes' podcast subscriptions. A new podcast comes out and iTunes downloads it automatically. The same thing is true for Olympics On The Go but instead of choosing between podcasts to download you choose between sports that interest you. For example, I want to catch as many of the boxing events as I can, so I chose to have all of the fights downloaded automatically. Then, when a new event is available for me to watch, the application lets me know and I can start watching it.

The best part of NBC's Olympics On The Go is that it's true full-screen. Sure, you get pretty good video sizes on NBColympics.com, but because you're downloading these events instead of streaming them you can take them into fullscreen without losing much quality in Media Center. I have to say it looks pretty nice on the iMac's 24" screen. My only qualm is that, as far as I know, you can't get any live content through Olympics On The Go. If I was able to open up Media Center and stream the Olympics just like I was watching TV I might be able to avoid cable altogether for 2008's Summer Games.

In a completely unrelated note, I removed the "See Or Send" page and replaced it with a page for my Ustream channel. I just started it a day ago so if you want to stop by and see what I'm doing please feel free! I'll try to remember to stream during the day while I'm working. I've devoted one of the iMac's Spaces to the chat so if you want to pop in and say hi I'll probably see it. =)

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