It was still relatively popular but the olympics has been in decline due to being shackled behind paid cable channels. Everybody’s moved to streaming but apparently they didn’t get the memo. Just knowing where you can find the olympics is such a nightmare they have a giant table explaining which channel you should go to depending on where you live
No, they got the memo. At least in the US, the Peacock app had every single event broken out into live events, replays and highlights. Or you could watch the gold medal stream and just mainline finals. They did a pretty good job, IMO.
I haven’t watched the Olympics in a long time but I thought the experience was kinda shit, especially compared to ye olden days of it being on every channel. My experience was basically:
My wife: What’s the difference between “Women’s all around final” and “women’s all around final (TV)”?
Me: googling I think we want the “TV” one?
30 second ad
20 seconds of a commentator talking over a view of Paris
2 minutes of ads
15 minutes of the camera just looking at an empty apparatus while there’s clearly other stuff going on in the background
2 minutes ads
30 seconds commentators discussing the event
2 minutes ads
Ok they actually fucking start, finally
Someone does something, 2 second MICRO AD??? This is a thing now apparently? Randomly throughout there’s these insanely short ads that are super jarring
Zoom in on Simone Biles face
Watch someone do a warmup on vault
Simone itches her nose
We can clearly hear other competitors doing things in the background, but Simone is looking to the right, so let’s focus on that
2 minutes ads
Watch a competitor do uneven bars, neat
Back to Simone, she’s talking to Suni now, we can’t hear it, but it must be important
Literally can see people doing flips and shit in the background, but let’s watch Simone as she sits in this chair
2 minutes ads
BREAKING NEWS: Simone blinks
“What did that other girl get for a score? Did they show it?”
Attempt to rewind 30 seconds. Big mistake, 2 minutes ads
Simone does a vault
2 minutes ads
…
Like I love Simone Biles, I do. Obviously I want to see all of her events. But holy shit, I’m here to watch the Olympics, not the “Simone is waiting for her turn” show. Also it was like 90% ads, they didn’t even show some of the highest scoring performances (since they only showed like 3 other people besides Simone), and half the time didn’t even show the scores they received. It was just…pretty bleh.
Completely agree, and I have watched a ton. The quantity of ads is outrageous, and the “ongoing coverage” streams make you watch a pile of ads before you even find out what’s playing.
The video was always stuttering and just shy of unwatchable on the “live” streams, the ads were out of hand, commentary audio was super inconsistent, even the camera work was pretty shit overall. Like, missing critical moments when that was the only thing going on.
I thought NBC / Peacock did a pretty bad job.
My two complaints about Peacock were:
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Even taking the raw World feed there were often still segments cut out which I assume is where they ran ads. Watching replays with the “ad-free” plan there were no ads there, but the content was still gone.
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Even though the entirety of the events were produced in 4K/UHD, only HD content was available. I understand that they did this because none of their broadcast facilities run in UHD yet and I guess they don’t have their streaming apps supporting it yet, but it’s definitely time for that to be supported. Claiming they don’t need to go UHD because their affiliates aren’t using ATSC 3.0 yet is patently false; the signal is live in my market and dozens of others as well.
That definitely needs to be fixed by Los Angeles, and really should be by Milano Cortina.
In Europe HBO covered it, I think you could even get a free trial during the Olympics if you didn’t have an account from before. My partner has an account so I didn’t check.
It worked great, and it was nice to easily change the language of the commentary. Really couldn’t have asked for a better viewing experience, as I don’t want public broadcasters to support this corruption shit show.
That said, it bothers me that it’s impossible to find clips online.
