HD Olympic Games Opening Ceremony/Ongoing Coverage: What's Going On??? (1 Viewer)

[Dan Rudolph]

Bob and Katie didn't seem to understand that they didn't need to talk the whole time. A lot of the ceremony spoke for itself. Talkign over Bjork was particularly irritating. I typically kick people out of my living room when they do stuff like that.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Mary Carillo and Al wouldn't shut up either during Bjork's performance, Mary just had to explain what Bjork was singing about... Just let the girl sing, Mary!

 

[LewB]

I watched bits and pieces of the opening ceremonies and have 2 comments/questions:

1 - About that expectant mother with the glowing belly, who is the father, E.T. ? :alien:

2 - I think Costas is about as good as there is. I loved his dig at Saudi Arabia and the fact that there are no women on their olympic team.

 

[Michael Harris]

While I can't say anything about the HD feed per se since I don't have HD I was disappointed by NBC's coverage. Let the pictures speak from themselves! That's what TV is all about. I understand the need to make money from the broadcast but NBC should have used the opening ceremonies as a "loss leader" to lure viewers to want to see more. One question, whats up with using the theme for "Jurassic Park"? Doesn't NBC have some specially written John Williams Olympic music or can't they tell the difference.

Right now I am watching USA v Brazil women's soccer on CNBC and I will tip the hat to the coverage. No interuptions during the game, no ads crawling or popping up, a fairly clean screen with only the score and an MSNBC bug in the upper right corner that does not seem to interfere with the view, and intermittent schedule updates at the bottom. The commentary seems expert and focused. I'll be curious as to how this will compare with NBC's primetime coverage.

 

[Michael Preyer]

There is so little coverage! NBC so proudly advertised their HD coverage of the Olympics, yet there is very little in comparison to the SD channel. All day today they are just repeating the Opening Ceremonies. Even tonight during prime time there's no HD Olympic coverage. NBC is really pissing me off. At least they are scheduled to show some of the sports on Sunday.

 

[ThomasC]

I thought the music was just fine. William's Olympic Fanfare and Theme would've been too pompous, and "Summon the Heroes," written for the Atlanta Olympics, has been overused by NBC, and may not have fit the tone of the video as well. Although, they've just overused the theme of the song, and I haven't heard the entire song for a long time until just now.

 

[Brook K]

The HD feed was great. Other than the Braves, this is the first time I'm getting to see something I actually want to watch in HDef. But I agree on the commentators. Costas thought he was doing a comedy routine. Mary and what's his name wouldn't shut up either, but at least they took it seriously most of the time. Also the 30m time shift is inexcusable but since I was flipping back and forth with a movie I didn't care that much.

Watching on CNBC is much more enjoyable. Fewer commercials. I was trying to check out what they're showing on Telemundo but everytime I flip over it's a commercial.

 

[Michael Harris]

My point was not that the music wasn't good, heck "Jurassic Park" is one of my favorite Williams scores, I was just pointing out that NBC was just being lazy by using it. Given their past relationship with Williams (music for the Olympics, the "Nightly News" theme, etc.) maybe they could have commissioned something appropriate to freshen things up.

One thing that did bother me during the ceremony itself is was the lack of music or, if it was there, it was inaudible. A complaint echoed by my parents who are in Greece and watched it on Greek TV.

 

[Doug Miller]

Back to last nights staggering of the HD and SD Opening Cerimonies. My biggest disappointment, beyond waiting an hour for the HD broadcast, was missing the chance to split screen the HD/SD to compare camera work and overall look.

Doug

 

[Joshua_W]

The coverage of the opening ceremonies did indeed suck.

I watched it standard NBC, and I found the whole thing extremely disrespectful to all involved. Nothing is more irritating than having someone sitting next to you prattling through a live event like this and telling you what you're seeing. I don't need to hear Katie Couric making fun of the names of the countries, or telling me what Bjork's singing about, or telling me that her dress will cover the athletes with a big map of the world. Jeez -- maybe I'm smart enough to watch the program and FIGURE IT OUT FOR MYSELF! I swear, I'm surprised they didn't plug NBC's fall line-up every thirty seconds as well. "And don't forget, the 'Friends' spin-off 'Joey' starring Matt LeBlanc will be premiering in a few weeks."

And I also thought cutting away to commercials every five minutes showed a lot of disrespect to the people who organized and participated in the parade.

 

[Michael Preyer]

I decided to send NBC an e-mail with my feedback on their lack of HD Olympics coverage. I used the e-mail address they provided for doing that ([email protected]) and it was returned as undeliverable. That gives me a nice warm feeling!

 

[Glenn Overholt]

What I'm having trouble with are the times. I just finished watching some 'live' swimming event, and it was just shy of midnight there - in broad daylight, of course.

Unfortunately, it was the war that made me more awae of time zones, so I'd think that NBC would know better than to try and pull that stuff off.

Hopefully, the US Olympic Commitee will ride their ass and set them straight.

Glenn

 

[Michael St. Clair]

I'll be watching the HDTV replay around 10pm tonite (the final repeat), if I make it home in time. About what time should Bjork be on, I especially don't want to miss her.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

She's on after the Parade of Nations. It's somewhere between hours 30-40.

I think it was after the 3-hour point, I don't remember, I was so numb at the time from watching it...

- Steve

 

[Mike_J_Potter]

I have a feeling their mailbox is full and its bouncing e-mails. By the sound of it the majority of people who have HD are pretty upset with NBC's broadcast. I was ready to watch some HD events tonight, but am now pretty ticked that to find out that they are just rerunning the Opening Ceremonies. Oh well the only good thing was that my local NBC affiliate finially got their transmitter working so they actually broadcast in HD or SD on seperate channels.

 

[David Judah]

NBC is at the mercy of the Athens company that is supplying HD equipment for broadcast. There are a limited number of venues that are wired for HD, but at least, they appear to be the ones that are the most popular.

Because of that, they will offer limited coverage of the previous day in HD(that's why the Opening Ceremonies are being shown today). Of course, there will be alot of SD coverage on regular NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Bravo, and Telemundo.

I read an article stating that future Olympic broadcasts, including the Winter Games in 2006, will be set-up by NBC with their own equipment so they won't be dependent on another company that may not have alot of HD equipment available. IOW, whatever the SD feed will be showing, it will also be availabe in HD.

It's kind of a drag it's not like that now, but it is an equipment issue and NBC is depending on a Greek company for its HD feed. I'm sure they could have worked around it and been more prepared, so I'm not defending them, but it probably boiled down to money they didn't want to spend for what they considered a small audience that are HD capable.

DJ

 

[Michael Preyer]

Hey DJ, thanks for the great answer! I had no idea that NBC was having to rely on another company. That explains a lot. I look forward to the future of HD as it becomes cheaper and more popular.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

The decision on the part of NBC to do these olympics in HD was not made in time for NBC to be able to do the HD coverage on thier own.

At this time there is not enough HD production equipment existing in the entire US to be able to do the olympics in HD in the same depth as it is done in SD, even if it could be pulled away from doing sports events in this country and all of it were shipped to Greece for the Olympics.

The 02 HD coverage of the winter Olympics on NBC was very limited, even more so than the Athens coverage, and that was only possible due to Mark Cuban of HDNet providing all the production equipment. For those games we got one 4 hour loop of HD coverage per day, with coverage limited to only a couple of venues.

NBC's press releases regarding HD coverage of the Athens games clearly stated that HD coverage would be an 8 hour loop, repeated 3 times a day and that there would be a 24 hour delay between the SD and HD presentations.

The HD presentation of the opening ceremony was very well done, the commentators much less annoying and commercials far fewer than on the SD feed. I do wish Sony had popped for several commercials and run them in rotation rather than repeating the same one--I don't think I'll be able to eat chips and salsa for a month--but they did sign the check that made the HD possible in the first place.

The "travel channel" stuff is designed to be filler--local stations have the option of presenting locally produced commercials during these intervals. NBC's regular HD programming has similar intervals but they are usually covered by local commercials so you don't see them. In the case of the regular primetime NBC HD feed these intervals consist of a black screen with a little peacock bouncing around like an old Pong game, I've seen it during Law and Order when my local affilliate fails to flip the switch for local content during HD programming.

 

[Citizen87645]

So is there a more specific schedule for what events will have the HD equipment? I'm figuring things like gymnastics on Tuesday will (or should). I have yet to see anything in HD (just the standard def pillarboxed), though I haven't been sitting on the station or anything either.

I did only catch a little of the opening ceremonies, but found it strange Costas and Couric were treating the thing like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

 

[Alex-C]

The opening ceremonies would have been so much better without the commentary.

They were mostly pointing out obvious things or reciting info from an Almanac.

during the beginning with the floats and the beautiful visual history of Greece, it was like watching a great movie with an asine director commentary that you couldnt turn off.

And I like Bob Costas ! I dont think Katie (a.k.a. The Ego) added anything of interest whatsoever.

oh well. there is always a mute button. I sure wish they could have utilized the secondary audio and played the entire sound without the commentary.