Review: Online Olympics ambitious, but not TV

Besides the quad screens, NBC is offering “picture-in-picture” viewing. You could watch Michael Phelps’ medal-winning swim, for instance, while following the Angola-Germany men’s basketball game on the bigger screen. That is, if you can figure out what “PIP” means and know to click on it.

That gets to one of my main complaints. I had to figure out a lot by trial and error. For instance, if I switch to a full player from the quad-screen mode, I lose my other three feeds. I couldn’t find a way to toggle back and forth, and I’d have to choose the other feeds again, and for on-demand clips, watch them all the way from the beginning.

Furthermore, the video isn’t always labeled well. How am I to know that “Preliminary-Round Coverage” refers to beach volleyball or that “WATCH: Germany vs. Great Britain” means women’s field hockey?

I can search video by sport or country but not both. So there’s no easy way to know, for instance, which boxing segment has that competitor from Sweden — nor is there a consistent way to jump directly to that bout. At most, if the event had text commentary, I can scan it and jump to a particular segment.

Most importantly, the video lacks the basic functions of digital video recorders like TiVo. You can’t pause or rewind live feeds, or watch a key play in slow motion. With on-demand clips, you can slide a bar to move forward or back, but you merely jump to that point rather than see video speedily as you would with DVRs and VCRs.

Still, NBC should be commended for going this far with video.

Although it isn’t shown live, I can get multiple on-demand feeds of gymnastics, where up to six different events are going on simultaneously. I imagine I’d get the same with track and field when that starts next weekend.

I recall that during the Sydney Games in 2000, the closest NBC had to video were still shots grabbed from its television footage. While Europeans began showing live online footage from Athens, Greece, in 2004, NBC offered only delayed video. At the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy, NBC’s live video was limited to one hockey game.

This time, more than 2,200 of the 3,600 hours of total coverage is online, the bulk live — up to 20 feeds simultaneously.

Beyond video, NBC’s Olympics Web site has profiles of athletes, medal standings and complete results, even for events that have yet to air in prime time. I inadvertently learned that the United States beat China in basketball as I was still watching the first quarter on my TiVo.

I also signed up for various e-mail and cell phone alerts. Be forewarned: Because many of the medal events take place in the middle of the night, you’ll get continually interrupted if you choose the gold medal text-messaging alerts. I learned the hard way.

NBC is certainly on the right track. I can’t wait to see what we’ll get with video and other online features in 2010, when the Winter Games go to Vancouver.

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