I thought the opening ceremony was spectacular, but it did get tedious after awhile.

I agree with you about the delays. Not only that, but I get a red ass every four years over the lack of coverage of "my" event, Olympic Judo. But just when I was preparing to get pissed off about another Olympics where they show only those sports where the U.S. has realistic medal hopes, I found NBC's live Web feeds, where it is possible to watch live coverage of Judo, and other non-televised events.

I just now watched the concluding matches of the Womens 48KG and Men’s 60KG Judo. You'll need to get up pretty early in the morning to watch the live feed, but it is also possible to watch matches that have already taken place (by clicking “rewind”). Not unlike other forms of wrestling, it is possible to watch a lot of Judo and not see much interesting action. But both the women’s and men’s competions were won by "Ippon" (analogous to a knockout in boxing), so those two matches are worth a look, even for someone who doesn't know how matches are scored.

The link is here:

http://www.nbcolympics.com/wvtm/index.html

As there are seven weight classification in Olympic Judo, there will be both a men's and women's competition to see for each of the first seven days of the Olympics.

Joy!

Rapture!

I don't care what time the events are broadcast. Live, 12 hour delay, the middle of next week. I do care whether or not they actually show an event, and I care whether the event is carried in full or if they just show a couple of snippets as bookends for another heart-warming biography of an athlete that has overcome the odds to make it to the Olympics. And I care what is shown. A little bit of gymnastics and figure skating goes a long way. Bring on the javelin toss and some of the other field events that barely get mentioned.

I watched the opening ceremonies for 90 minutes. The spectacle was amazing and I was duly impressed. For 90 minutes. But that was all I could take, and I never did see an athlete, let alone a competition. Sure, this meant something more to Beijing than it did to Atlanta, but enough is enough.

First, thanks WhoNvitedhim for the NBC link.

I have always felt that this exclusive coverage deal thing they do for each Olympics is absurd. They give too much coverage of select sports and almost no air time to the vast majority of the sports.

The IOC should not allow exclusive coverage. This is not a professional sporting event, it's the Olympics!!

Any network, boardcast, cable or internet, should be able to feature the games. If they want some type of exclusive then each sport could be bid on. NBC could could pay they're big bucks to show the gymnastics and swimming, while other networks show the other events. Hell even Spike could get in on the Olympics then!

By only allowing one vantage point, that of NBC this year, the entire games are generalized and weakened. Wouldn't it be cool to get multiple viewpoints and we could chose whose coverage to watch!?

I find it really annoying that they are announcing something that happened 12 hours earlier here and they talk about how they have to leave for a commercial break.

We know it's not live; why pretend it's live by talking about leaving for commercial breaks? Wouldn't it be easier just to create some kind of commercial segway to break away from long continuous events?

There's one more way to see live coverage: live close enough to Canada that you get a CBC channel as part of your cable lineup.

It's only one channel, so you're subject to whatever sport they decide to broadcast (and their focus is very much on the Canadian athletes), but I watched a fair amount of gymnastics and the cycling road race last night -- live.

You shouldn't be watching it anyway. You should be sending a message. Human rights violations, oppression of Tibet, censorship, massive toxic pollution, exporting contaminated products including fish and pet food, eating dogs, allowing substandard buildings including schools that collapse and kill people, religious persecution, supporting genocide in Darfur. Why would you want to support this? This is how evil is allowed.

Oh, by the way, someone should boycott the US too.

This electronic age has put the "FUBAR" or "SNAFU" in the less than capable hands and minds of GE/NBC management decision making putting the "Almighty-Dollar" above the viewing public again! Here in Denver we were without audio, then video, then both, got video back to see commercials without any audio......what a joke in the name of money. NBC Olympic coverage was a JOKE and then we were advised that we could watch at 11:30PM to see the Opening Ceremonies with full audio and video.....many thanks, but I think my sleep is much more important than your commercials on a 16 hour delay.

When will these so called leaders of free television figure out that the internet, sans commercials, enables a good portion of America to watch events, get scores, and enjoy the athletic prowess of the world without the encumbrances provided by GE-NBC. We need better treatment by all of the networks as we are currently getting enough mistreatment from Washington.

I have found my interest in the Olympics declining with every iteration of NBC's Jingoistic packaging of the games. After they denied all of the US a chance to see the women's soccer (so that we could get deliciously maudlin gymnasts), I have been unforgiving. When, however, in 2004, they decided to only show sports with American winners, I decided that they were intentionally trying to make our nation dumber.

I remember the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, and what I loved most was discovering sports that I had never known about. The pursuit bicycling is really cool. Curling is fun to watch. All of these games are strong games, games with fans, games with strategy, and all of them are interesting (and there are even Americans in most of them). It is absolutely counterproductive for NBC to keep denying us the chance to become fans, keep telling us "USA #1!," and keep giving us soap operas overlaid onto competition.

Enough with Olympic Idol already, and enough with 12 hr editing delays while announcing that the games will occur tonight.