NBC Olympics Live Streaming Free (not really)
It’s rather disappointing that in order to watch the live stream of the Olympics - something NBC is touting as a “first time ever, free for everyone” - you have to have a paid TV subscription to either Cable, Satellite of Telco. If you don’t —- then no you can’t watch it because NBC can’t prove that you paid to watch their public broadcast and evidently the inundation of advertising on their site and mobile apps isn’t enough. Oh… and you have to have that same paid TV subscription to watch live streaming on your phone too.
Also, all the “streaming from YouTube” is a lie as well. YouTube is handling the video back-end but you can only watch it from the official NBC Olympics website which means it’s not “live from YouTube” it’s “Live from NBCOlympics.com (thanks youtube for the functionality partnership)”. I don’t blame YouTube though… they are just doing what they were paid to do and if they didn’t do it some other streaming service like Vimeo or Ustream would have picked it up.
I wish I could hit up the BBC Olympics site streams and apps. They are going absolutely coverage crazy and their apps and stream services look very good. Unfortunately it’s only available for UK residents (and those that know how to find a UK proxy server).
I guess I’m still waiting for more companies to let go of old technology and service structures and embrace internet streaming services…
