2010 Olympics Web Streaming

February 7, 2010 6:14 PM

Who's going to be streaming the 2010 Olympics?

I'd love to watch various in-depth coverage of the Olympics. Of course, living in the US I'm going to have a hard time finding any of that on television, especially for things like cross-country skiing. Where can I find live streaming of events? I've started looking around at various national sites (the Dutch will have fantastic coverage of speed skating, the Norwegians of cross-country), but so far haven't had any luck. For example, the German station ARD looks like they'll be covering things but I am blocked from viewing content as I am not located in Germany.

I took the same approach with the Tour de France this year and had some great luck with French and German coverage versus the ad-heavy Vs. broadcast.

I speak German, Dutch and Norwegian, so language is less than important. Then again, how much do you need to understand to watch the Olympics?

posted by misterpatrick to sports, hobbies, & recreation (10 answers total)

Local broadcast rights for the Olympics are very tightly ring-fenced, so you'll likely have to rely upon unauthorized re-streaming (liable to be taken down without notice) or proxies (where reliability costs money).
posted by holgate at 6:46 PM on February 7, 2010

Well the nbc site seems to suggest that there will be some streaming by them, and, at least by looking at my listings there seems to be 2-4 hours of cross-country skiing a day on my affiliate.
posted by thewalledcity at 6:55 PM on February 7, 2010

NBC's streaming access appears to be somewhat more restrictive than for Beijing, but if you're paying for the *NBC cable channels, you may be in luck. (The Beijing streams were really pretty good, even with text-based commentary for the sports that NBC doesn't really care about.)
posted by holgate at 7:07 PM on February 7, 2010

If you're a cable or satellite subscriber to the companies found on this page, you're in luck. They'll have a lot more streaming video and full replays, a lot more than you'll find on the site without authenticating.
posted by inturnaround at 7:56 PM on February 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Well, thanks for the tips. I'll have to keep an eye out for the unauthorized streams once the games start. NBC coverage has always sucked. I've lived abroad for a few past Olympics and coverage was much better/more interesting in skate-obsessed Holland and ski-obsessed Austria.
posted by misterpatrick at 7:59 PM on February 7, 2010

I'm living abroad at the moment and am planning to watch the Olympics on this site (en francais). this article indicates that the feeds will be available worldwide, but obviously I haven't been able to test this claim yet. I'm excited for curling, though!
posted by dropkick queen at 6:42 AM on February 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

As dropkick queen said, CTV is planning on streaming all of their Olympic coverage, and they plan on covering a lot of it. They own a few different networks and so virtually everything you want to watch should be available. TSN should have pretty heavy coverage streaming online, as should Sportsnet.ca

Obviously, the coverage will lean towards Canadian athletes where possible, but Canadian broadcasters tend to be pretty fair in their coverage and will showcase plenty of sports that do not feature favoured Canadian athletes, unlike most of NBC's coverage. Also, Canada and the US tend to be strong in the same sports (figure skating, hockey, long- and short-track speedskating) so one can always watch the American stars compete on Canadian TV.
posted by fso at 8:48 AM on February 8, 2010

Just an update - the FAQ for the CTVolympics.ca site says that its videos are only available to people with a Canadian IP, but the French site seems to work here in Europe.
posted by dropkick queen at 9:45 AM on February 12, 2010

Anyone still reading this? I'm having a dreadful time finding a good stream. At this point I'd even pay for some kind of good quality live stream. This sucks! I couldn't even get a proxy to work for CTV.
posted by barnone at 10:35 AM on February 13, 2010

I'm the same as barnone - trying to stream the Olympics from Seoul, South Korea just isn't working. Any help out there?
posted by chrisinseoul at 6:34 AM on February 14, 2010