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The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics start tonight, notes the Washington Post. But if you’re among the 9 percent of U.S. households who have broadband but don’t subscribe to paid television, it will be nearly impossible to (legally) watch the games online this year.

That’s because while NBC is streaming all of the events live online, full access to the livestream will only be available to paying cable subscribers.

NBC Sports will live-stream every event of the 2014 Sochi Olympics. The Opening Ceremony on Feb. 7, however, will be reserved for primetime.

NBColympics is also on social media, of course, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. Gizmodo has 19 Sochi Olympians You Should Follow on Instagram.

TeamUSA has its own Instagram account and Twitter feed celebrating the Olympians. There’s even a special hashtag, #CheersToSochi, that will display messages in the Olympic Village.

Here’s the full list of U.S. Sochi Athletes, or the entire list of tweeting competitors from around the globe.

Since the acquisition of NBCUniversal by Comcast in January 2011, NBCUniversal owns 19 broadcast/cable networks and more than 60 websites.

C/Net explains how to stream the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. To get started visit the NBC Olympics Web site and verify that you are an existing subscriber by entering your username and password. Service providers that have partnered with NBC include Xfinity, Time Warner Cable, Direct TV, Dish, Verizon FIOS, COX, Charter, AT&T U-verse, Optimum, Suddenlink, Mediacom, Cable One, Brighthouse and RCN, among others.

AP.org, ESPN, Globe and Mail, USA Today, Washington Post and Russia Today have Olympics sites.

Aggregators and social media include Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr, Mashable, Blog Runner, TechMeme and Yahoo. C/Net reviews the top apps, while The Verge and Engadget have Olympic stories for nerds. The NY Times Firehose has a real-time live stream of photos. AdWeek has the numbers.

NBC paid $4.38 billion to the International Olympics Committee (IOC) in 2011 for the exclusive broadcasting privilege in the U.S. through 2020, so cord-cutters don’t have a lot of options. NBCUniversal paid $775 million for the media rights to the 2014 Sochi Olympics, but is all but certain to recoup the cost of its original investment.

Production designer George Tsypin was tasked with creating a show to dazzle the 40,000 in attendance at the Fisht Olympic Stadium and the three billion watching on television.

from Bot & Dolly on Vimeo.

Projection-mapping on robotically controlled moving surfaces is part of the tool kit.

NBC will endeavor to stream over 1,000 hours of live Olympic action on NBCOlympics.com, boosting its streaming capacity with partners like Adobe, Microsoft and Akamai. NBC will use Windows Azure Media Services, hosted in Microsoft’s datacenters, to publish and stream more than 50 live high-definition streams and on demand content.

NBC Sports is providing two mobile/tablet apps with live streaming content and up-to-the-minute news. An NBC Sports Live Extra app and a new NBC Olympics Highlights and Results app, both enabled by Adobe. In addition, customers can access digital-only original programming, including Gold Zone and Olympic Ice, which are exclusive video channels on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports Live Extra apps.

Now in its fourth Olympics after debuting at the 2008 Beijing Games, NBCU’s Billion Dollar Lab will measure consumption of Sochi Olympics video content via TV, computer, mobile, and tablet in hopes of reaping insight into the everyday video-consuming habits of the average Joe.

The Gorki Media Center houses the International Broadcasting Center, which will serve as the main broadcast hub for the Games. It is expected to host more than 2,000 media representatives worldwide and more than 6,000 television and radio broadcasters from around 70 countries.

The Olympic Broadcasting Service supplies neutral pool video to rights-holders worldwide.

NBC’s Sochi coverage will utilize real-time displays of a competitor’s speed, exact location, difference from the leader’s time and G-forces.

NBC is using mobile broadcasting facilities from NEP, and Avid’s Interplay Media Asset Management system. About 288 TB of Avid Media Grid storage and 85 TB of EVS storage is on-site at NBC’s IBC operations, and more than 5.5 PB of archived material is in Stamford, CT.

NBC’s Server and media-asset–management (MAM) technologies moves files back and forth across the Atlantic via Level 3 circuits. NBC will use NSS-7 to link directly from venues to the IBC.

A portion of the capacity provides emergency backup to North America over the SES NSS-7 satellite, if necessary.

Sony is supplying NBC more than 70 Sony HD studio and portable field cameras, using the XDCAM, HDC, HSC and HXC-100 models for 1080p HD coverage as well as its F55 4K camera to capture footage at various venues. Panasonic will record the opening ceremony in 4K and is supplying nearly 7,000 security cameras among other gear.

Rossiya 1 is the host broadcaster in Russia. Russia’s ANO Sports Broadcasting (Panorama) production company is using four 16-camera OB vans and seven ENG vehicles. The Russian telco Rostelecom will deliver feeds from Sochi to AT&T, which is supplying 55 HD feeds to the U.S. and 14 HD feeds back to Sochi from the U.S.

Rostelecom has switched on its LTE network in Sochi. The state-backed operator has deployed around 40 LTE base stations in the mountain range and coastal clusters using 791-820 МHz, 821-862 МHz, 2530-2620 МHz and 2650-2690 МHz basestations.

2014 Winter Olympics broadcasters include the BBC, CBC, CTV, Sky News, France 24, Al Jazeera, TeleSUR, Foxtel, Telefónica, European Broadcasting Union, Cable TV Hong Kong, NHK, All-Russian State Television, Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, and others. Personal live streams are available from Ustream, Justin.tv, LiveStream and others.

Posted on Fri, 07 Feb 2014 21:15:31 +0000 at http://www.dailywireless.org/2014/02/07/...s-tonight/
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