BBC gives itself a gold in 700Gbit-a-second Olympic vid sprint
Almost three million people watched the Olympics on a mobile phone while half a million ogled and fondled their slabs on Sunday, 5 August - the day Andrew Murray won gold, Usain Bolt ran 100m in 9.63 seconds and the BBC recorded peak video streaming to handheld gadgets. Overall, 51.9 million people watched Olympic broadcasts …
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Re: Freeview
Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/olympics - they have all the footage available until Jan 13 2013.
Re: Freeview
"Being that they turned off all analog (sic) channels to free up space"
I could have sworn that when I accidentally switched my TV to analogue before hitting hdmi, that it was still broadcasting in the UTV region. Can anyone from Tyne Tees confirm this too?
Re: Re: Freeview
Tyne Tees is, I think, the last region to go entirely digital, which will happen September 12.
http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/when_do_i_switch/tyne_tees
...but after London switched the media lost interest and while we'll probably note the last analogue signal in these pages most people are under the impression its a done deal.
On the plus side you should get an improved Freeview signal after the switch, but you'll need to retune your TV unless it can do that itself.
Bill.
I should have gone for the VPN option...
...but I figured many others around the world would do the same and cripple the servers. From comments I've seen in various places the service held up well.
The biggest bonus from non-Brits using VPNs to access the BBC is that a lot more people around the world now know what a decent TV service is like. Even the BBC's 80 minute nightly roundup programme seemed to squeeze in more events than our local broadcaster's 12 hour overnight marathon.
No adverts and quality output is the polar opposite of what many countries get.
And some Tory trolls people still have the nerve to complain about the world's best broadcaster.
The London 2012 Olympics actually made me be proud to be British for the first time in a very long time and I was most proud to see the applause given to the 70,000 chosen volunteers (240,000 volunteered). Truly amazing.
I find myself increasingly proud of the BBC too, putting politics to one side, since doing the iPlayer, they have just continued to exceed my expectations. Some of their mainstream programming may not be to my taste, but I'm fast becoming an old git!
I only wish I could be as proud of British Telecom, however I'm not. During the Olympics, it was often a frustrating experience trying to use the broadband network (particularly for gaming) and I can only imagine this is due to said network being unable to handle the additional traffic. I strongly feel that were there to be a 'license fee' and strong management and technical direction (as at the Beeb) for our telecommunications infrastructure, it might be in much better shape.
The BBC's Olympic coverage couldn't have been bettered, both on Freeview and online. Every sport shown. Every sport with a catchup online. Commentators that know when to shut up and seem knowledgeable about the sports they are covering.
Hope F1 bosses take note!
Shame they haven't got the Paralympics, but C4 is better than nowt, and it can all be watched online on the streams provided by the Paralymic organisers.
As I understand it, no one has taken on the rights for the Paralympics in the USA so it will not be shown. Shame on all the broadcasters on the other side of the Atlantic.
Philip
"The BBC is justifiably proud of its coverage... but opposition to the licence fee seems ever increasing and, by the time of the next Olympics, the end of the BBC's royal charter will be in sight."
I'd rather stick with the BBC. I follow cycling, and in the ITV coverage of the Tour de France they manage to break in for adverts exactly when the crucial moments of the race occur. Unlike stadium sports, road racing is unpredictable.
It was really nice to watch on the BBC without such interruptions.
"in the ITV coverage of the Tour de France they manage to break in for adverts exactly when the crucial moments of the race occur. Unlike stadium sports, road racing is unpredictable."
You are an ungrateful wretch!
ITV have spent a huge amount of R&D cash on their patented ED-AID technology. It's not just co-incidence that they manage to cut to adverts only during interesting passages of racing, it's down to Excitement Detector Advert Interruption Device. Market research has shown that people's attention tends to wander during long races, and advertisers do not wish to waste their precious budgets at times when the audience aren't concentrating. Hence adverts are screened only after some event has brought the viewers' attention back to the screen.
This is world leading technology, and you should be thankful for it!
> This is world leading technology,
Well, it's not that difficult to miss the action when 25% of ITV4 output is adverts. It was good to see the cycling without adverts, in HD and without whatever punditry was coming from BBC1's fishtank. And when I missed the live coverage on the extra 24 channels it was all available online.
IPTV options were excellent
I have a Panasonic plasma that's getting a bit long in the tooth by modern consumer electronics standards. Nonetheless, a few days before the Olympics kicked off it got a software update and there, in the app collection, was "BBC Sport". All Olympic sports - every single event - streamed live in SD and HD over the wired network connection on the TV. Lots of catchup options, little 1-3 minute news snippets to summarise key moments, a medal table, the works.
Basically, a very nicely realised TV version of bbc.co.uk/olympics. Extremely impressive, along with the performance of streaming on iOS devices too. It's not often I get to say this - but from my perspective as a viewer, the technology not only worked, but excelled and exceeded my expectations in almost every respect. That's before we even consider some of the remarkable camera angles, types, speeds and tricks throughout the whole event, though this aspect wasn't down to the BBC.
I note the presence of bbc.co.uk/paralympics which implies similar live streaming over the web; the BBC Olympics iOS app is also showing signs that Paralympics live coverage will be streamed. I'm thus hopeful of just as good coverage over the 'net, whether or not C4's broadcast coverage on its main channels is up to scratch.
Red button
Isn't that just a shortcut to "turning over to the other side to see what's on"?
Hats off to Auntie
The Beeb did a fantastic job of the Olympics. Absolutely brilliant!
I had no intention of watching the Olymics but found myself sucked in. At several points we were catching up with something on the laptop and on TV at the same time.
Another thing it highlighted was how necessary the Flash Player still is. Their online coverage couldn't have been done without it and the alternatives are still a long way off that sort of capability and reach.
Um, BBC have recently (within the last 2 months) moved away from Flash. They trialed this for the "Hackney Weekend" festival - for the first time you can watch live stuff on iPad, etc. It seemed to 'just work' but I don't know what tech is utilized... Flash is still in there somewhere because on my Windows Phone it wanted Flash... I guess they maybe fall back to HTML5 on iOS specifically or something.
Good job Beeb
They really did well with the online video coverage - women's round of 32 archery? no problem, BMX seeding round? no problem. The bookmarks on the video player worked very well too.
I did find myself going round in circles a few times elsewhere in their Olympics site though.Sometimes it seemed like you could either find out who was competing or when an event was taking place but not both at the same time. At one point I tried to quickly find a table of the current standings in the hockey groups but couldn't manage it. Maybe I was just being crap though.
The live text pages were great though - just the right balance of information and entertainment.
the wonderful thing about iPlayer,..
is you can skip through avoiding all the crap bits,.. watched the 3hr 20m closing ceremony, in 15 mins - sweet
US viewer here. Please, can I pay the license fee?
I watched the olympics while on holiday in Ireland.
We have the very basic Sky box (no HD, no DVR, no sport package) and we used the Red Button like mad.
The coverage was absolutely wonderful, even when it was just pictures and no commentary.*
I simply *do not* understand the apparent reluctance around the license fee. The BBC does so much for so many people and does such a great job that I would be happy to pay for it from the US.
If the UK viewing public could see the way the olympic events were/are aired in the US, cut short, mangled or overlooked, they would flock to the BBC as the gold standard.
*But we do have to admit that some of the commentary was, however impossible it is to believe, even more home-team-biased than the US commentary ever is. It sometimes had political overtones of the Braed and Circuses variety.
Re: US viewer here. Please, can I pay the license fee?
If the BBC can ever get cross national licensing sorted out they'd make a fortune in other countries, I currently pay about a third of the TV license every month for shit channels that have 16 minutes of commercials for every hour broadcast.
Re: US viewer here. Please, can I pay the license fee?
I was of the understanding that the BBC were working on subscription for foreign countries, if not actually available, it's certainly being talked about.
Brilliant job
I pumped the Volleyball (proper not beach) out via my cheap tablet to my TV resulting in several advantages.
1. I could watch the Volleyball
2. It was much better quality than my built in SD, despite my 3mb max speed.
3. Most had no commentary.
Downsides:
1. unfortunately when they did have commentary it was painful. As it's a bit of a minority sport I understand they have to explain some of the (simple) rules, but did they have point out every ruddy move? At least get the technical terms right, it's a spike not a smash (don't even get me started on calling tips, spikes)
2. The catch-up kept telling me to update my software and sending me to Apple for help. It's a ruddy andriod tab. Yet iPlayer directly works fine.
But overall, brilliant job.
2.8 petabytes
2 petabytes of presenters an 0.8 petabytes of sport - assuming it was on another channel from the one I was watching.
I wonder what is Andrew Orlowski's take on the BBC's Olympic coverage?
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