kvrdave

Not the sports themselves, but it seems like they are barely putting them on. I would think that having paid a bunch for them, you would want to have a lot of coverage. As I sit at home from 6-8, I think about the random stuff they could be showing (like curling, etc.) that I would much rather be watching than some animal planet show, or anything else. It seems to me like showing anything from the Olympics would draw a bigger audience than the other crap they show. Anyone think differently?

Cusm

Two years ago with the summer games NBC had a HD channel that showed 24/7 coverage, which was nice, surprised they did not do the same this time around.

Bateman

I was thinking the same thing. What is really annoying is they are not showing the more popular events live on USA or MSNBC. I really wanted to watch the combined alpine event but it was long spoiled by the time it aired on NBC.

Chew

All the HD coverage this year is horribly compressed and fast motion looks worse than SD.

I don't know what's going on, but it sure seems like the biggest event NBC handles should be presented better than this.

das Monkey

I agree. I'm seeing compression issues too, and the coverage overall has been very lackluster. One bright spot, however, has been the curling coverage over on CNBC. They know no one is watching, and so they don't take any of it seriously. It's like watching World News Now at 3am. There is all kinds of oddball humor and sarcasm, not what you expect from the stuffy NBC Olympics. I love how they give away that curling rock-shaped bread to all their guests.

das

Gil Jawetz

Comcast added UHD specifically for the Olympics (and will taketh it away when they're over) so I figured it would have round the clock coverage. Instead it's like 20 hours of Knight Rider and the Equalizer with a little ice skating in the afternoon. Weird.

tommyp007

In a somewhat related story, the women curlers all seem pretty hot......

Bandoman

They are, you really have to wait until they cool down before handling them.






Oh wait....you meant....never mind.

Flave

If you can get it, watch the CBC coverage. As usual, vastly superior coverage to the American networks.

brainee

UHD is gone after the Olympics!?! I thought it was just moving to the HD channel pay group (along with inHD, HDNet, etc) after a free February for the Olympics.

Gil Jawetz

I guess that's possible but it's not staying as it is. I heard that it's going bye bye but that's just the word on the street. Pass it on.

Y2K Falcon

No, Dave. I would say that the Olympics suck equally as much as you do...

Iron_Giant

Every year people dog the Olympic coverage. I like seeing what the USA is doing, so the coverage is good for me.

kvrdave

I like seeing what they are doing as well, but I wouldn't mind watching sports in which we suck as well. I'd sure rather watch that than the other stuff on at that time on NBC. The actual coverage of what they show has been fine, but they don't show much.

kitkat

Comcast in my area, for the last two or three Olympics, used to give us MSNBC for the duration of the games and then take it away again. I thought it was pretty cool that they let us see all the coverage.

I completely agree that they should be showing more, and they should be using some of their cable channels to let us see stuff live. I think it's a travesty that we have to watch almost everything canned. During the Athens games I was able to find a couple of live internet streams, and even though they weren't in english it was so much fun to watch events unfold in real time. Sadly, I haven't found any such streams for these games.

That said, I do think the canned coverage has improved for the last few games, although I was it weren't so broken up and condensed. They now do a good job highlighting both American athletes, even when they aren't contenders, and athletes from other countries. I think the games should feel international, after all, but we still want to know how our hometown boys and girls are doing.

aktick

Yeah, I can't figure out why they don't put some more coverage on NBC during the day. Three hours of the today show followed by five hours of soaps, or Olympic coverage? Hmmm...

However, if you are a hockey fan, the live coverage on UHD and MSNBC is great - 12 or 13 combined hours per day for the next week or so. Only problem is it starts at 4am each day. Quite amazing, actually, that they must be showing as much hockey as Canada is.

kitkat

Yeah, that sounds awesome - I wish I could get cable/sat. for two weeks only. I'm a hockey fan every four years.

bboisvert

lol... I was going to say the same thing. I'm kinda confused at how little coverage is actually on UHD.

(And, yes, I'm seeing compression issues as well. I'm consistently amazed at how far we still have to go in terms of high definition. Why any "average joe" would bother upgrading to HD is beyond me.)

raven56706

wow.... i completely forgot the olympics were on

Red Dog

Like past Olympics, I think the cable coverage is excellent. The prime-time packaged coverage sucks. At the least, they could stick with one event and show it all at once. However, NBC won't do this because they want fans of each sport to stick around through the sports they don't care for.

Brent_MN

agreed. Instead of just watching the snowboarding and then going and doing something else, they force me to sit their all night!

As far as compressing goes, how can you tell? I just bought an HD STB and antenna just for the Olympics (I used to have HD thru Charter before I moved to the dorms across the country ) and well, at times, I do see some screen door action. Is that what shows how compressed it is?

mikehunt

the NBC coverage usually blows
I watch CBC and have for every olympics since I moved to Buffalo

cerulean

I totally agree. Though even in the primetime NBC shows, they've been packing in about as much competition as they can and minimizing the number of dippy "up close and personal" profiles that they used to do.

Look at how much they're covering for today according to my dvr schedule(Thursday 2/16). Times are Central.

4:00am-3:30pm(!) MSNBC - Men's hockey: Finland vs. Italy; Czech Republic vs. Switzerland, Russia vs. Sweden
5:00-10:00am USA - Women's biathlon: 7.5km sprint gold; Men's snowboarding; Men's curling: Sweden vs. USA
2:00-5:00pm USA - Men's hockey: Kazakhstan vs. USA
4:00-5:00pm NBC - Women's cross country skiing 10km; Speed skating: men's and women's team pursuit semifinals
4:00-7:00pm CNBC - Women's curling: Sweden vs. USA
7:00-11:00pm NBC - Men's Figure skating; Men's snowboarding; Speed skating: team pursuit finals; Skeleton
12:20-1:00am NBC - coverage includes figure skating and medals ceremonies

That's over 28 hours! And there is an hour post-show after the hockey on MSNBC, and an hour of the daily figure skating show "Olympic Ice" on USA, and the "Olympic Ozone" fluff-piece show on local NBC stations the half hour before primetime coverage starts.

grunter

You think the Olympics coverage sucks?

Try getting any information on Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans.

Seeing a city try to get back on its feet amid destruction of that scale and put on a happy face for the world would seem a helluva lot more dramatic than watching the same ol' figure skaters do the same ol' routines (to the same ol' Android Lloyd Webber showtunes) they've done again and again and again.

big whoppa

Focus will shift to Mardi Gras day coverage in a couple of weeks.

As for the winter Olympics, dull overall. Not just in coverage.