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Quaker2001

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Everything posted by Quaker2001

  1. Why in the heck are all the times listed in Central Time? That's odd. Also of note, the breakdown of the game times on the soccer and basketball channels is here... http://nbcumv.com/assets/press_kits/2008_s...ympic_games.pdf
  2. Torchbearer.. I have the same thing, a DVD recorder with a 250 GB hard drive. Calculating how much fits on 1 disc, the HDD holds the equivalent to 53 discs. Assuming your unit is approximately the same, figure that's a little over 100 hours at good quality (2 hours per disc) or about 210 ours at okay quality (4 hours per disc). If you do eventually transfer your recordings to DVDs (and remember, a hard drive is NOT designed for permanent storage of recordings), you can buy your blank DVDs in bulk and they're dirt cheap then, as little as 25 to 30 cents per disc.
  3. For a while I thought I was the only person crazy enough to make such an effort to record the Olympics. I know of a few people (online, no one I know personally) who have big collections of other sports, but it's good to see there are people on this forum who have the same passion that I do. Here is what's in my collection. If you're interested in making a trade, please let me know, although I'm probably going to hold off on any trades until at least after Beijing. 1992 Albertville - Pretty much everything but late night, including almost all of the TNT coverage. I've gotten some of the late night coverage through a trade, but otherwise this Olympics is virtually complete. 1992 Barcelona - Most of the NBC coverage, although nothing from the Triplecast. I'm missing a few nights of primetime (including the opening ceremony), plus some of the morning and most of 1 of the weekend days. 1994 Lillehammer - Again, almost everything, this time including late night. 1996 Atlanta - Needed help to record these since I was away from home the whole Olympics. I'm missing a lot of the weekend coverage, especially the middle weekend, and lost some of the Primetime and Late Night coverage due to NBC's coverage running long every night. 1998 Nagano - Good on about 90% of the CBS coverage and most of the TNT coverage. In addition, that's to a wonderful quirk of my university's cable system, I have about 80% of CBC's coverage as well. 2000 Sydney - 100% of the NBC coverage, virtually all of the cable coverage, and about 90% of CBC's coverage 2002 Salt Lake - About 95% of the NBC coverage, but I'm pretty spotty on the cable coverage. And thanks to a source in Salt Lake for the games, I even have some of the world feed coverage as produced by ISB. 2004 Athens - It's like NBC was challenging me to record everything.. which I did, save for missing a grand total of about 20 hours worth of coverage (excluding Telemundo, I only recorded a soccer game here and there from them). With very few exceptions, if NBC broadcast it from Athens in English, I recorded it. 2006 Turin - Again, tried to record everything and did. Might have a thing or 2 that's not good, but for all intents and purposes, I have everything. Once again, for Beijing, I'm trying to record as much as possible and have an arsenal of electronics that will allow me to do so. I'm gonna do my best to record everything on NBC and the cable networks and I'm trying to work in recording some of the basketball and soccer games as well. I haven't thought about working on any of the online coverage, but as Durban mentioned, it should be up online for a while, so hopefully there's a way to keep some of that permanently. For reference, I live in New York and have Time Warner (which gives me access to what I hope will be the full slate of NBC's Video On-Demand offerings) and intend to record the other Olympics-related and local programming such as the Today Show and MSNBC's Olympic Update show, which I read will air weekdays at 5pm during the games. In my planning efforts, I made an Excel spreadsheet showing when all the coverage is which I'd be happy to share with anyone who's interested.
  4. Interesting. I have a few of NBC's past viewer guides (including some I purchased off of eBay). This one says it's only 12 pages, the ones they've had in the past are full magazine size, upwards of 100 pages. That said, if there's coupons involved, maybe it's not such a bad thing after all.
  5. In an effort to keep this nice long thread going, here's the latest from the good folks at NBC... NBC Beijing Media Guide Would have been nicer if this wasn't a bad copy job, but lots of good info in here including the latest broadcast schedule and bios on all of NBC's talent and main executives.
  6. NBC ANNOUNCES TALENT ROSTER FOR BEIJING OLYMPICS – 106 COMMENTATORS IN ALL I'll leave you to read the full text of the article if you want, but here's the summary list of commentators NBC is deploying for Beijing... HOSTS • Bob Costas (NBC Primetime) • Jim Lampley (NBC Afternoon) • Mary Carillo (NBC Late-Night) • Alex Flanagan (CNBC/USA) • Matt Vasgersian (Baseball and Softball) • Melissa Stark (MSNBC) • Bill Patrick (MSNBC) • Fred Roggin (CNBC Boxing) • Lindsay Czarniak (Oxygen) CORRESPONDENTS • Cris Collinsworth • Mary Carillo • Jimmy Roberts GYMNASTICS • Al Trautwig, Play-by-play • Elfi Schlegel, Analyst • Tim Daggett, Analyst • Andrea Joyce, Reporter TRAMPOLINE GYMNASTICS • Al Trautwig, Play-by-play • Elfi Schlegel, Analyst • Tim Daggett, Analyst RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS • Andrea Joyce, Play-by-play • Elfi Schlegel, Analyst TRACK & FIELD • Tom Hammond, Play-by-play • Lewis Johnson, Analyst • Carol Lewis, Analyst • Dwight Stones, Analyst • Ato Boldin, Analyst • Craig Masback, Analyst • Ed Eyestone, Analyst • Bob Neumeier, Reporter RACE WALKING • Ron Vaccaro, Play-by-play • Ed Eyestone, Analyst • Carol Lewis, Analyst SWIMMING • Dan Hicks, Play-by-play • Rowdy Gaines, Analyst • Andera Kremer, Reporter OPEN WATER SWIMMING • Craig Hummer, Play-by-play • Rowdy Gaines, Analyst DIVING • Ted Robinson, Play-by-play • Cynthia Potter, Analyst • Bob Neumeier, Reporter • Andrea Kremer, Reporter BEACH VOLLEYBALL • Chris Marlowe, Play-by-play • Karch Kiraly, Analyst • Heather Cox, Reporter INDOOR VOLLEYBALL • Paul Sunderland, Play-by-play • Kevin Barnett, Analyst CYCLING (Road/BMX/Mountain Bike) • Pat Parnell, Play-by-play • Craig Hummer, Play-by-play • Kenan Harkin, Analyst • Paul Sherwin, Analyst • Marty Snider, Reporter TRIATHLON • Craig Hummer, Play-by-play • Siri Lindley, Analyst • Marty Snider, Reporter BASKETBALL • Mike Breen, Play-by-play • Chris Carrino, Play-by-play • Mike Crispino, Play-by-play • Pete Pranica, Play-by-play • Eric Collins, Play-by-play • Teresa Edwards, Analyst • Doug Collins, Analyst • Ann Meyers, Analyst • Bob Salmi, Analyst • Craig Sager, Reporter ROWING • Tim Ryan, Play-by-play • Yaz Farooq, Analyst CANOEING (Flat Water) • Tim Ryan, Play-by-play • Joe Jacobi, Analyst CANOEING (White Water) • Craig Hummer, Play-by-play • Pat Parnell, Play-by-play • Joe Jacobi, Analyst SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING • Craig Hummer, Play-by-play • Heather Olson, Analyst WRESTLING • Matt Devlin, Play-by-play • Rulon Gardner, Analyst WATER POLO • Bob Fitzgerald, Play-by-play • Wolf Wigo, Analyst BOXING • Bob Papa, Play-by-play • Teddy Atlas, Analyst • Jim Gray, Reporter MODERN PENTATHLON • Ron Vaccaro, Play-by-play • Rob Stull, Analyst WEIGHTLIFTING • Pete Pranica, Play-by-play • Shane Hamman, Analyst EQUESTRIAN • Kenny Rice, Play-by-play • Melanie Smith-Taylor, Analyst SOFTBALL • Joe Castellano, Play-by-play • Michele Smith, Analyst SOCCER • JP Dellacamera, Play-by-play • Glenn Davis, Play-by-play • Adrian Healey, Play-by-play • Steve Cangialosi, Play-by-play • Marcelo Balboa, Analyst • Brandi Chastain, Analyst • Shep Messing, Analyst • Lori Walker, Analyst TENNIS • Barry MacKay, Play-by-play • Jimmy Arias, Analyst BASEBALL • Eric Collins, Play-by-play • Joe Magrane, Analyst HANDBALL • Andrew Catalon, Play-by-play • Dawn Lewis, Analyst TABLE TENNIS • Bill Clement, Play-by-play • Sean O'Neill, Analyst BADMINTON • Jim Kozimor, Play-by-play • Steve Kearney, Analyst • Bill Clement, Analyst FENCING • Joe Castellano, Play-by-play • Pete Pranica, Play-by-play • Andrew Catalon, Play-by-play • Mika'il Sankofa, Analyst ARCHERY • Joe Castellano, Play-by-play • Denise Parker, Analyst SHOOTING • Bill Clement, Play-by-play • Shari LeGate, Analyst FIELD HOCKEY • Mike Corey, Play-by-play • Nick Conway, Analyst SPORTSDESK REPORTERS • Lester Holt • Peter Alexander • Eyee Hsu • Julie Foudy • Lindsay Czarniak • Alan Abrahamson • Lindsay Soto • Nancy Snyderman
  7. First off, here's the link to the CNN article Durban and Infinite mentioned, it's an interview with Perkins Miller, NBC's senior VP of digital media for sports and Olympics... Network opens its online Olympic coverage Second.. Durban, I think you're still a little confused with the numbers NBC is throwing out at you. The 3,600 hours of coverage they're providing (and according to NBC's release, that doesn't even include the 4 Olympic specialty channels) is not a subset of the 4,000 BOB is providing. That 3,600 is the sum of the 1,400 hours of television coverage plus the 2,200 of online coverage. The online coverage can be considered a subset of BOB's since it's assumed that will be mostly, if not entirely, video provided by BOB. The 1,400 TV hours doesn't come directly from BOB, especially since NBC will likely be producing, at least in part, many events on their own. And of course, that number isn't 1,400 hours of event coverage, although that would have been tremendously cool. So the notion that NBC is taking all but 400 hours from BOB's total is simply not correct. Here's my question though.. now that we know that NBC will have 4,000 hours worth of archived video, I'm curious as to where that's coming from. Obviously anything they show live online (with or without commentary) is easy enough to put back online. The remaining hours can't all come from TV since that wouldn't reach the total of 4,000. And then what happens with sports like swimming or gymnastics which NBC will cover extensively (but certainly not in their entirety) on TV but not online. Clearly many questions remain about NBC's online coverage. We know pretty much all the details about NBC's TV schedules save for an exact breakdown of the hour-by-hour programming (which we know will certainly come in time). But the online information remains very spotty. Durban.. you've been a great source of information thus far. If you see anything else, be sure to keep us posted. Likewise, I'll do the same.
  8. Been waiting for that headline for a while now. Just like I called it.. exactly 1 month out from the games, here it is.. NBC UNIVERSAL ANNOUNCES UNPRECEDENTED COVERAGE OF THE 2008 BEIJING OLYMPICS And for those who want to brave the full 65-page release, here that is... http://nbcumv.com/special/C__Documents_and_Settings_206070849_Desktop_24_Hour_Li stings_Doc_PDF.pdf ://http://nbcumv.com/special/C__Docume...gs_Doc_PDF.pdf ://http://nbcumv.com/special/C__Docume...gs_Doc_PDF.pdf ://http://nbcumv.com/special/C__Docume...gs_Doc_PDF.pdf
  9. Some news from the NBC front although we're still waiting for the big mega-announcement (which I'd like to think is coming today since we're exactly 1 month out from the Opening Ceremony)... CNBC Olympic Programming Schedule Not exactly brand new information for those who have been following this thread, but at least it's maybe a pre-cursor to the big announcement.
  10. From today's Michael Hiestand column in the USA Today... NBC to air more Games games Like 19th-century Native American hunters who famously used all parts of the buffalo they hunted — unlike wasteful European hunters who just made off with the prime pelts — NBC doesn't plan to let anything go to waste at the Summer Olympics. The latest wrinkle, to be formally announced Thursday: two sport-specific, ad-free channels — basketball and soccer — carrying every game in those sports in Beijing. Games slated to air live on NBC or its cable channel will be shown later on the specialized channels. NBC also will roll out what it believes will the first U.S. Olympic channels in languages other than English or Spanish: a channel using Mandarin and one using Korean. NBC's Olympics deal gives it a monopoly on all video showing competition — whether it goes to TV, online or on cellphones — except for brief video snippets that can show up on other networks' news coverage. And NBC, which will make the new channels available to about 80 million households getting cable or satellite TV, can tap the Olympic world TV feed — which shoots every second of competition and is available to networks with Olympic TV rights. NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel says the new channels are part of NBC's effort to "cast the widest possible net." Thanks to the world TV feed, the announcers on the Mandarin and Korean channels won't have to actually be in China — they'll be in New York.
  11. I made this point in another forum.. I don't think it's so much about the "secondary sports" moreso than it is about non-USA centric events. I think there will be a lot of emphasis on the team sports, including ones like basketball and soccer which you'd expect to get a lot of coverage. Take the first day of the men's basketball tournament, August 10th. It's all but a foregone conclusion that NBC will air that live. Then perhaps 1 other game makes it onto television, let's say it's the Lithuania-Argentina game. After that, any game that's not televised will more than likely be shown online. So think of your sports like basketball or soccer or baseball, etc. It stands to reason that every game in all of those sports will be covered, either on TV or online. Here's where the contradiction comes in, though.. We now know that nothing that gets televised will also get live streamed online. No surprise there, almost seems redundant anyway. But we're also expecting 'full event replays' of the big events, which I'm sure involves a lot of the USA games in the team sports. So if they weren't online in the first place, do they appear online later? There's a lot of questions left and considering that we're probably less than a week away from the full official announcement, it's almost not worth speculating anymore. We'll see what happens, but I'm definitely getting more and more excited by the day.
  12. Here's the link to Wikipedia's page for Athletics, it has the dates and times for each of the events. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see links to pages for other sports, many of which contain a breakdown of dates and times for those events. Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics
  13. There is a detailed schedule. On the second link that you have there (the official Beijing website), scroll down to the bottom where it says Download the Competition Schedule. Or click the link below. This doesn't have an exact breakdown of each session, but it does give all of the times for everything, so that should be a start. Competition Schedule (by session) Version 2.09
  14. That won't happen. NBC in particular, who paid almost $900 million for the rights to cover these games, is not suddenly going to come to the realization that it's worth losing all that money, especially after what I'm sure is millions of dollars worth of ad inventory sold. The only way NBC or any other network would ever pull the plug is if they feared for their safety being in China in the first place (aside from being a cost-cutting measure, remember a lot of NBC's crew will be working from studios in the US as opposed to being on site in China). I think in the end, the IOC will pressure the Chinese organizers to make sure everything runs smoothly or else they'll never have anything to do with China ever again. Can you imagine the reprecussions of any major coverage pulling their media coverage from the games? I can guarantee 3 things that will happen this August... the Olympic Games will go on as scheduled, media outlets from around the world will cover them, and be it good or bad the world will have a much updated view on the country of China.
  15. According to the official competition schedule from the Beijing website.. no classification games for men's or women's. The women's side is explainable, probably to give more of the players extra time to get back to their WNBA teams where necessary. As for the NBC scheduling aspect, I'm still convinced they got the schedule they wanted, save for the final not being available to them in primetime. Like you said.. it's no longer a foregone conclusion that the US Men will dominate (or even win) all of their preliminary round games, let alone make it to the gold medal game. At the very least, NBC probably would have been better off with the medal games late in the evening in Beijing and early in the morning in the US like the women's finals, and not buried in the middle of the night.
  16. I can proudly say... I was there!! 3rd straight year I've got to the track meet at Icahn Stadium, I'm still in disbelief he set the record, even after last year when Tyson Gay ran a wind-aided 9.75. It's gonna be some event in Beijing that not only are there several runners capable of winning the 100m, but many of them will probably be looking at Olympic or even World Record times.
  17. Here's something to keep in mind from the standpoint of an American viewer... You look at sports like swimming or gymnastics or track & field, this is the biggest stage they get, so it's easier to advertise an athlete like Michael Phelps than it is, say, Kevin Garnett or Kobe Bryant who are about to play in the NBA Finals. Olympic basketball is a big deal, but I'm sure most players in the NBA (especially the American-born plays) would probably rather win an NBA title than an Olympic Gold Medal. That all said.. it will be a big deal if the United States is playing for the gold medal, but preliminary round basketball games are better served during other timeslots, where they can be shown in full and not have to contend with needed commercial space. As for NBC's power.. this isn't like Seoul where it seemed the entire Olympic schedule was built around American television, most notably the opening ceremony. NBC fought for a lot and got a little, and you can be sure they won't make light of it in Beijing, especially the swimming events where I'm sure at the very least, the Australians will have their negative commentary on the switch. Here is 1 thing that surprised me though, especially following the games in Athens where basketball is an immensely popular sport... all 5 of the Greece men's team's preliminary round games (plus their quarterfinal as well) were played in the same 10:15pm time slot, the last game of the day. Different story in Beijing where more of the games are in the afternoon. I hope that all those fans you speak with tickets to China's games don't turn into empty seats for games later in the day. Just because a ticket is sold doesn't mean there's gonna be a person in the seat, especially in the case of corporate sponsors. I hope that doesn't make FIBA and the organizers bad for making those scheduling decisions.
  18. this isn't the Dream Team days in Barcelona and Atlanta where preliminary round basketball games were worthy of getting shown in primetime. NBC has made it clear over the past couple of Olympics that team sports are best served for the cable networks and then the weekday afternoon coverage on the main network (which is why NBC is starting weekend afternoon coverage at 10am almost every weekend day). If a game was shown in the morning Beijing time and was made available for NBC primetime, do you think they'd show it over, say, live swimming or live gymnastics? Not a chance. NBC pushed to get the gold medal game for basketball to be played in the morning so that they could show it in primetime here, but that didn't happen (as such, NBC will still show it live at 3am ET). But they certainly didn't ask for that kind of treatment for the rest of the games. For Athens, the majority of the US games were shown in the same slot (7:30am.. which made for live broadcasts on USA Network). I'm sure that wasn't a coincidence. Similarly for Beijing, again all of the US games (men's and women's) are in pretty consistent time slots, and it's probably no coincidence that it's around the same time slot in the US that the games were in Athens. So jiejie... you can argue where NBC is likely to get themselves the most viewers, but I think it seems pretty clear that NBC asked to get games in certain timeslots and got what they wanted.
  19. Keep in mind that those numbers are preliminary, but they also represent minimums. i.e. It's going to be 150+ hours on MSNBC and 175+ on USA. So the rest of differences on the cable networks from 2004 are pretty neglible. If the NBC schedule I saw is correct, that's 169.5 hours of coverage. If you subtract the primetime encores from Athens, the numbers are almost identical. The only real differences for NBC are a 3-hour weekday afternoon show (instead of 3.5), and slightly more coverage on the weekend afternoons, in addition to an extra few hours of late night for live coverage.
  20. Men's Schedule Women's Schedule As expected, the U.S. gets their wishes... every men's and women's game is either at 8pm or 10pm Beijing time to accomodate NBC (similar to in Athens where the regular start time for U.S. Games was 7:30am Eastern Time).
  21. NBC tried with the basketball, but to no avail. Their goal was to get diving, track&field, and the basketball finals all in primetime as well as swimming and gymnastics, but couldn't get it all. But you're right.. the official Beijing competition schedule has the bronze and gold medal games being played from Noon to 5pm Beijing time, so the 5am off time for NBC makes perfect sense. I'm a little surprised that NBC is staying on until 5am ET to show the basketball final. With the exception of the 2002 World Cup final which ABC showed at 6am ET, I can't think of another event that got live network coverage in the middle of the night like that. As for the odd late night times, there's an easy explanation for that... gymnastics. Unlike the swimming finals which should all be done by Midnight ET each night, the gymnastics ends at somewhat odd times, including 1 night that goes until 2am. I fear we could be seeing some 'plausibly live' coverage that NBC invented for us in Atlanta. A couple of other time notes... the 7:30pm start times on 8/16 and 8/23 coincide with the running of the marathons, so those will both be shown live. And the 10am start times on the weekends will afford some live basketball coverage, including what I assume will be USA-China on 8/10 and USA-Spain on 8/16, as well as the Women's final on 8/23
  22. And here's another big piece of the puzzle... http://www.wtap.com/sports/misc/7296006.html Scroll down to August. I'm sure that schedule is still somewhat tentative, but here's the info. Possibly the most interesting of all of these.. look at NBC's last block on August 23rd. Fri., Aug 8 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies 8pm-12am (NBC) Sat., Aug 9 Olympics (NBC) 10am-6pm 8pm-12am 12:30am-2am Sun., Aug 10 Olympics (NBC) 10am-6pm 7pm-12am 12:35am-2am Mon. Aug. 11 Olympics (NBC) 10am-1pm 8pm-12am 1:05am-2:30am Tues., Aug. 12 Olympics (NBC) 10am-1pm 8pm-12am 12:35am-2am Wed., Aug. 13 Olympics (NBC) 10am-1pm 8pm-12am 1:35am-2:30am Thur., Aug. 14 Olympics (NBC) 10am-1pm 8pm-12am 1:35am-2:30am Fri., Aug. 15 Olympics (NBC) 10am-1pm 8pm-12am 12:35am-2am Sat., Aug 16 Olympics (NBC) 10am-6pm 7:30pm-12am 12:30am-2am Sun., Aug 17 Olympics (NBC) 10am-6pm 7pm-12am 12:35am-2am M-F. Aug. 18-22 Olympics (NBC) 10am-1pm 8pm-12am 12:35am-2am Sat., Aug 23 Olympics (NBC) 10am-6pm 7:30pm-12am 12:30am-5am Sun., Aug. 24 Olympics (NBC) 12pm-4pm CLOSING CEREMONIES 7pm-11pm
  23. Olympic Baseball Tournament Field includes 4 teams from Asia, 3 from the America, and 1 from Europe. For those in the US, here's the preliminary round schedule for team USA (times are ET)... Wednesday, August 13 - 6:00am - United States vs Korea Wednesday, August 13 - 10:30pm - United States vs Netherlands Thursday, August 14 - 11:30pm - Cuba vs United States (first Olympic meeting since the 2000 Gold Medal game) Friday, August 15 - 10:30pm - Canada vs United States Monday, August 18 - 7:00am - China vs United States Tuesday, August 19 - 7:00am - Chinese Taipei vs United States Wednesday, August 20 - 7:00am - United States vs Japan
  24. NBC showed everything from Athens. That was part of their advertising, that for the first time in history, all 28 sports would get at least some exposure in NBC's coverage. Obviously for a lot of sports, that only meant small amounts of coverage on cable, but compared to NBC's coverage in Sydney (the original Games boasted as "The Complete Olympics") which didn't hit every single sport. In Beijing, it goes without saying that this is the first time we'll see large amounts of coverage from every sport, including preliminary rounds of events that would never see the light of day on television, even with 1200 hours of coverage.
  25. NBC's 3,600 hours of coverage doesn't come straight from the 4,000 that BOB is producing. If you take just their 1,400 hours of broadcast coverage, that includes studio segments, highlights, replays, etc. Plus what will probably amount to around 300+ hours of commercials. And don't forget, that 1,400 hours is probably going to double-count a lot of the coverage that is broadcast in both HD and SD, as opposed to in Athens where the 399 hours of HD coverage was completely separate from the SD coverage. Now for the broadband coverage, there you might see some of the BOB logo. It seems likely that NBC will be very reliant on the world feed video and, as opposed to the usual broadcast coverage where almost any event is part of a larger show, here they can just show straight world feed video from the very start of the event to the finish (I certainly hope they broadcast their Internet coverage like that).
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