so my god damn station just switched to the standard feed. Also sucks that the local station doesn't broadcast in 5.1 sound either.

I'm not into sports (except my local baseball team)...

But that was the most awesome opening ceremony, and probably the most visually stunning program I have ever seen. The sound you hear is me kicking something for not having HDTV yet. Kudos to NBC for some incredible photography and editing, and even the casters for intelligent reporting. Knockout.

well tomorrow night, we get live womens volleyball in hd

Did anyone else think the last torch carrier was about to fall to his death? The transition to his running position didn't go too smoothly and it made it look like one of his cables snapped. I almost crapped myself.

We need to kneel before our new Chinese overlords. No wonder they are taking over the world's economy. That was a pretty spectacular show of man-power.

Did they ban the athletes from having camcorders during the parade of nations? I remember the last Olympics thinking how silly they all looked taping the event as they marched. It was much better this time.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/new...yhoo&type=lgns

. Kobe Bryant
This was the oddity of the night. Behind the Chinese president and the entire national team, the one athlete who appeared to get the loudest ovation was none other than Kobe Bean Bryant. The moment was so odd that even U.S. journalists were looking at each other in puzzlement. The Russian, Chinese and American presidents were here, but Kobe was the head of state tonight.

no doubt kobe is the most popular athlete in the world!

Yeah I was like "OH SHI-. Whew, that was close." Really cool though how they did the cauldron lighting.

for those of you with universal hd, they have the msnbc and the cnbc telecasts in hd. watching boxing now, on usahd is fencing, on obask, China vs Spain women's basketball.

Holy Shit that was amazing.

the Fencing? i saw the last few points, and now i want to watch the finals later. i wish there was a way to dvr just the event you want, since i don't know if i'll be up then.

Just finished watching it on the West Coast. Wow!! That was probably the most stunning opening ceremonies ever.

Huge Huge Kudos to Zhang Yimou for his direction of the earlier show. The guy is an amazing director.

I'm looking forward to watching as much as humanly possible for the next 16 days.

what part did he direct? they're reairing the opening ceromonies now on the east coast?

Pretty much the entire on field show from the 1st 2+ hours was directed and chererographed by Zhang. That included the drummer opening, the Tai Chi martial artists.

Costas and Lauer mentioned Zhang's name several times during those segments.

ok, watching that now. I love having hd. big fan of his too.

Just finished watching the women's fencing match, and the shooting. Good stuff. I dig the hell out of this shit...I love watching sports I'd never watch otherwise.

Women's badminton now!

Initially I wasn't crazy about David Cook's song "Time of your life" when he sang it on Idol, but I thought the song worked really nicely with the closing montage/credits. I actually kind of like it now and may download it off Itunes.

That it was, London is going to have a very hard time trying to compete with that, as a matter of fact they are all scrambling today saying "How in the hell are we going to top that?"

Yeah, we watched the cctv feed w/ no commercials and Kobe's closest competitor was actually Dirk just a few moments later. China LOVES the NBA

I saw a good number of athletes with camcorders. They've just gotten a lot smaller so maybe it's not so noticeable.

Nope, Salt Lake 2002,Athens in 2004, and Turin 2006 were all broadcast in HD as well. I'm not sure if Sydney was in 2000 or not though.

Might be the first time for some people seeing them in HD though as prices on HD tv's have dropped a lot in the past couple of years so HD viewership is way up.

I caught some of Salt Lake at a Circuit City in HD it looked incredible. By the time Athens rolled around I had an HD set and HD DVR all setup for myself

i think this is the first time where every event is in hd though. Winter olympics and the figure skating is the best in hd.

I posted that before I got to the end. I later saw a lot of camcorders among the German, Australian, and Chinese teams among others.

I hadn't noticed any among the earlier teams or the US team. Maybe just certain countries told their athletes not to use them. It definitely seemed a lot less than last time.

That opening ceremony was a masterpiece. So many jaw dropping moments
Bravo! I usually get bored at opening ceremonies but I couldnt look away for one moment. Cant wait to see what they have planned for the closing ceremonies.

Watching USA/Japans Women Volleyball. Pretty damn exciting. USA jost won the match.

Watching fencing. What a different kind of sport! That getup is pretty bizarre.

HD men's swimming today at 3:30.

damn, they're not airing it till then? Oh and its on delay as it happened at around 7:30 this morning.