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Full Olympic coverage online but only for paid TV customers

February 12th, 2010, 1:42 pm · 11 Comments · posted by

In anticipation of the 2010 Winter Olympics, which begins tonight, every TV provider is promoting its programming.

Time Warner Cable’s press release says, “Unprecedented Coverage.” Cox Communications is offering “unprecedented coverage.” Verizon FiOS issued a press release, so did AT&T U-verse and Dish Networks.

So who has the most and best coverage of the games?

“Every distributor was offered the same Olympics package,” an NBC Universal spokesperson told me.

So everyone is getting access to 835 hours of Olympic coverage, which includes for the first time ever the entire event in high definition.

But if you don’t pay for TV service, you won’t get as much coverage as paying customers. And good luck trying to find coverage on Hulu.com, which sends viewers to NBC’s site. Instead, NBC created a special website for paying TV customers to watch live coverage and full-event replays.

All of Orange County’s TV providers are included — Time Warner, Cox, U-verse, FiOS, Dish and DirecTV — but you must go to the page and log in to your TV service account to view coverage. Says the page, “If your cable, satellite or IPTV provider is NOT listed above, then it’s not in partnership with NBC Olympics.”

This is not part of the cable industry’s “TV Everywhere” movement to offer paying customers access to certain TV shows online. But it’s an interesting attempt by NBC to give customers who pay to watch TV a little something extra.

For everyone else, NBC does offer this page with some videos and replays for free.

Altogether, NBC says it is broadcasting 835 hours of coverage on channels NBC, USA Network, MSNBC, CNBC and Universal HD. NBC also is offering many of the events on demand, for paid TV services that offer such programming.

Some TV companies are offering a few unique ways to view the Olympics.

► Dish is offering a channel with 6 mini-screens to view what’s happening on CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network and three Olympic highlight channels. On Channel 100, there will be an on-demand information channel to get athlete bios, breaking news and gold-medal counts.

► AT&T’s U-verse also has a multi-view channel on Channel 85 with up to 4 screens simultaneously broadcasting Olympic coverage. The same channel offers similar information about athletes and events as the Dish offering. Some AT&T exclusives: It produced an exclusive soundtrack dedicated to Team USA. Music videos will be offered exclusively to U-verse subscribers and other AT&T customers.

The opening ceremony is at 4:30 p.m., Orange County time. For more details, visit the official NBC Olympics site or the official Olympic Games site.

For the O.C. Register’s full Olympic coverage, visit our Olympics 2010 page. Recent stories:

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • •
 
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 11 Comments

  • LGT says:
    February 12, 2010 at 2:30 pm

    I just want raw feeds of the events, not Bob Costass giving me human interest stories.

  • LGT says:
    February 12, 2010 at 2:33 pm

    Not sure why my comment didn’t appear – I like the coverage, but I don’t want human interest stories from Bob Costass, I’d like to just see the raw footage.

  • BoogerBoy says:
    February 12, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    OMG – the Olympics put Pedobear’s cousin on their logo.

  • Theresa Alano says:
    February 13, 2010 at 9:04 am

    I just hope the anouncers don’t hog the show like they usually do. I’m getting tired of watching 35% ads, 35% talking heads and the rest actual events. Give us the action and turn off the mics. Thank you NBC

  • Kathy McEwen says:
    February 13, 2010 at 3:17 pm

    I have tried to watch the NBC Olympics special coverage on my Verizon FiOS internet connection while watching live on my Verizon FiOS HD TV service, but can’t seem to get NBC website to acknowledge I am a paying TV customer. So can’t get access to the content it seems when your a Verizon customer.

  • CJ says:
    February 14, 2010 at 5:50 am

    Its interesting that an event meant to promote world unity has become such a venue for capitalistic greed. Shouldn’t everyone, everywhere have free access to such an event ?

    Additionally, the coverage is shaping up to be nothing short of a great example of censorship. I live in the North East part of the US where we experienced a huge snow storm just a few days ago. The local NBC network covered this storm non-stop for nearly 24 hours pulling all other programming off the air. I was SO happy to have the news tell me over and over that snow is white, cold, and slippery. However, an event that occurs only once every four years is apparently not as important and only worthy of a few hours of coverage per day.

    I think the network and its affiliates that covers the Olympics should be required to air it 24 hours a day for the duration of the event.

    • jeff77k says:
      February 16, 2010 at 12:45 pm

      NBC will probably loose money on the deal :

      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/sports/olympics/11olympics.html

      Someone does have to pay for all of this and if NBC is loosing money showing us the stylized, tape delayed, highlights version of the Olympics. Imagine if they where giving us 4 channels 24 hours a day of it? No one would air it and viewership would be down since all the events are during the day while people are at work.

      Without capitalism driving the demand for the 4 channel + web coverage we are getting now, there would be little more than a few hours of highlights each evening.

  • EDG says:
    February 15, 2010 at 5:11 pm

    we subscribe to basic Time Warner and buy their internet service – yet we are not eligible for the online Olympic coverage!! You need to have a TV package bigger than the basic. Give me a break. Correct me if I’m wrong, but some of my tax money goes to the US Olympic teams, and as a subscriber of TW for years, some of my subscription monies have gone into the company’s equipment that is being used to cover the Olympics. If I can buy hideous boxing matches, etc., why not the Olympics? Talk about elitism.

  • ryan says:
    February 16, 2010 at 1:05 pm

    I have Charter tv services and found on Charters web site that I can get login to view the online coverage. No such luck though, all the customer services reps I have spoke to told me they had no idea how to give me a loin for the nbc site. They say I have to have charter internet as well and use that log in.

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