Jump to content

Recording The Olympics On Tv


Recommended Posts

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.

Thank you Quaker2001.

I do not understand sometimes why in one shop they say 310 hours (worst quality) and another shop 441 hours (worst quality). That's why I was realy confused.

I am going to put the most beautiful parts on dvd and I think the rest on a external hard disc. But I am in Beijing during the olympics. That's why all I want to record when I'm away have to be on the dvd recorder. My parents are home and my brother, maybe they can do something for me in meantime. I am going to find out, I have still 10 days to do that. First I am going to make a schedule with what I want to record. And I think after the Games you could also download videos at torrentz etc. Maybe others have some images. So I have to make a good plan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Durban,

You're doing this set on Blu-Ray? I don't have a Blu-Ray player. Do you think you could make a set for those who have standard players?

I actually do ultimately plan to do this on Blu-Ray for those who are interested in that. But I will take part for those who want the Games recorded on standard DVDs upon request. When I get some money in the near future, I will invest on Blu-Ray DVD technology (greater storage space and future expansion with loss of video and audio quality) and a couple of 1.5TB (likely a 2-3+) HDD. Right now, I have nothing, a PS3 will play Blu-Ray of course but can upgrade the video quality of standard DVDs. But that's next year of course at least for me. With Blu-Ray there will less discs in total, standard ones calls for more. What I can do soon is to send some stacks of standard discs to start you guys off with.

BTW Pacey, that Bracelona 1992 Opening Ceremony/NBC Barcelona prewview/IOC doc Guardians Of The Flame tape was sadly among those that was lost in the ransacking. :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I recorded vast amounts of the 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 Olympics (both winter and summer). For each games, I recorded on average about 10 VHS tapes worth of coverage. I will record as much of the 2008 Games, but I plan to use the magic that is my HD-DVR, and burn them onto DVD (for my own personal viewing pleasure, of course).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sent you a PM.

I recorded vast amounts of the 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 Olympics (both winter and summer). For each games, I recorded on average about 10 VHS tapes worth of coverage. I will record as much of the 2008 Games, but I plan to use the magic that is my HD-DVR, and burn them onto DVD (for my own personal viewing pleasure, of course).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have about 175 hours of coverage from the various networks for the Athens 2004 Games spread across 36 VHS videotapes.

I have nearly all (75-85%) of USA's and NBC's coverage from the Torino games, all recorded onto DVD.

I'm planning on recording available cable and NBC coverage as well as streaming coverage for Beijing onto DVD as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Something I'm probably going to test myself, but I'll ask in case anyone else has already done it.

When recording in the Video mode (with a DVD-RW disc), can u stop recording if a commercial is on (No, I don't have Tivo nor do I want to buy another piece of equipment), and then resume recording when it returns to program content?

Or any other tricks to record w/o commercials -- short of the editing mode?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Something I'm probably going to test myself, but I'll ask in case anyone else has already done it.

When recording in the Video mode (with a DVD-RW disc), can u stop recording if a commercial is on (No, I don't have Tivo nor do I want to buy another piece of equipment), and then resume recording when it returns to program content?

Or any other tricks to record w/o commercials -- short of the editing mode?

What I do while watching, is simply press pause when the commercials are on, and then pause again when programming resumes. That will allow it to be one continuous title, but commercial free.

If it is while you aren't watching, however, I'm not really sure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I do while watching, is simply press pause when the commercials are on, and then pause again when programming resumes. That will allow it to be one continuous title, but commercial free.

If it is while you aren't watching, however, I'm not really sure.

Does that work on the new digital transmission? I mean don't you get 'slurs' when replaying -- in the transitions into and out of Pause?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow! Everybody calls me crazy because I have ore than 100 VHS from the last 3 years in sports (including most of Torino 2006) tough I am just 16, so in some years I'll have a real lot!

BTW; if someone can upload something from Mexicans competing in the Winter Olympics (they competed from 1984 to 1994 and in 2002), I would be very thankful if it could be uploaded. I was just 2 years old in 1994 and I barely remember watching the 3 Mexicans that went to Salt Lake City (I was 9) so would like to see that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is it not too late to redit the title to add the subtitle to this thread "Calling All You Olympic Crackheads!"? :)

Shortly after the 2004 Athens Games, I won two separate DVD sets of both ceremonies from two different guys on eBay. The first one that I won came from a man in Pennsylvania who recorded the Games through satelitte on ERT (ET1's logo is shown on it). And another I got from a Melbournite of Greek lineage--Melbourne has the largest Greek population outside of Greece itself. In that it includes all of the Greek medalists montage and news about the Games from that same network. I haven't played them in a couple of years (they're buried in one of my tote crates) and look forward to do so. It hel;ped when I had my NBC telecasts of them stolen.

I also got the 2006 Torino Opening and Closing Ceremonies on separate discs also on Ebay taken from RAI Sport done by a guy in Italy. You could tell with the opening logos in the presentation. It also showed things that weren't aired on the NBC version like Eva Herzigova as Venus and Peter Gabriel performing "Imagine".

How do you make your Olympic DVD sets? Do you go by sports in their process or by day? With the ceremonies, I can make them separate as bookends to the competitions with bonus features like previews and ads or could make various versions of the ceremonies into them?

Calling all of our non-American posters! Don't be shy at all in particpating in this nice thread! We'd like to hear from you on this and how you get involved if at all. We're calling to the likes of (but certainly not limited to) Mo Rush, Nikolaij, Rogerio, Olympics08, Taichi, JieJie, Tanaka Ray, James, Rob, cfmJeremie, etc. ! :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I make my tapes according to tape space, but will transfer to DVD in order of broadcast. Hoping to finish transfering Barcelona before Beijing arrives, we'll just have to see.

And actually, I seem to recall NBC did broadcast Peter Gabriel and the Venus sections from Torino, but I'll double check my DVDs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I ultimately plan to do following Beijing is, unlike past Olympics where I'll organize by day except for the ceremonies, organize the discs by sport thanks to the safety net that is the NBC Olympics website with its on-demand footage after the Games are up. The Ceremonies will again act as the bookends on my personal disc set, and I'll put interviews and puff pieces on the discs where the athletes' sport is featured in as bonus features. More of my ultimate plans to come....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My plans are also to split by day and have two tiers of recording--TV coverage and online coverage. Of course, I start my senior year of college on the 13th, but on-demand/encore coverage from NBCOlympics.com and my DVR will probably keep me going through the Olympics beyond the actual enddate.

Now, since my quirky rural cable company only shows some of the Olympic coverage and just recently added Universal HD, I have to wonder exactly what TV stations of Olympic coverage I will get...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My plans are also to split by day and have two tiers of recording--TV coverage and online coverage. Of course, I start my senior year of college on the 13th, but on-demand/encore coverage from NBCOlympics.com and my DVR will probably keep me going through the Olympics beyond the actual enddate.

Now, since my quirky rural cable company only shows some of the Olympic coverage and just recently added Universal HD, I have to wonder exactly what TV stations of Olympic coverage I will get...

Pretty much the same for me as it was for Athens and Torino.. make my big spreadsheet of what to record where and when and hope that nothing screws up! And if it does, have a backup somewhere. My collection is more like Infinite... I break up stuff by day and network, I'm not going to go so far as what Durban is doing to re-organize everything by sport. Although like he said, it's great having nbcolympics.com to let us know where everything is. And I'm hoping and praying that the good folks at Time Warner have their VOD stuff like they did for Torino which should give me more to work with. Since my set-up includes multiple DVRs and more hard drive-based recorders than I've counted, I'll be working on this for a while after August 24th I'm sure.

To Infinite and anyone else who can answer this one.. I haven't given much thought to saving any of the online coverage, either live or the archived version on nbcolympics.com. I'm a pretty big techno geek but downloading and saving video off the Internet isn't one of my specialties. What's the best way of getting all of that stuff onto my computer and/or say, a DVD where I'd be able to keep it permanently?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I will be recording the entire coverage from TVNZ in New Zealand so coverage starts at 12:30pm and goes right through until abou 2-3am in the morning... I have lots of dvds on hand! Just fingers crossed nothing screws up!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What's the best way of getting all of that stuff onto my computer and/or say, a DVD where I'd be able to keep it permanently?

What I'm doing is simply recording from my TV-Out capable video card to my secondary DVD recorder. There are probably ways to record straight to hard drive or download streams, but I'm not familiar with those as far as NBCOlympics.com technology--Silverlight--is concerned.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Bumping up this thread...

How has everyone been doing so far? On my end, at least, it has been a very interesting experience, with some mishaps (mainly due to human and/or mechanical error). Aside from two small errors in recording the first two nights of primetime coverage on NBC (with the primetime show running over time and me missing the very end of it), there have been some notable errors for me. On the first Saturday of the Games, I set up a second VCR I hooked up to record the USA cable coverage (the first 8 hours on tape and the remaining 4 hours on DVD) but it did not get the last 4 hours because I mistimed the recorder. Then, that night, the men's volleyball match in late night runs long and I miss the end of it, and then to top it all off, on Sunday morning I miss the start of the US-China basketball game because my DIRECTV receiver would not switch over to the local NBC station on time. I have tried my best to not let it bother me, but it's been a challenge, and now until the end of the Games I guess for me at least the key is going to be flexible since a lot of the coverage is live. I am taping selected cable coverage (mostly on USA, on days when the US men's basketball team plays) and morning and primetime NBC coverage for the first week, then late night added to the morning and primetime from this Friday onward until the end of the Games. I am working with two VCRs and I am really having to pick and choose what I tape. Has anyone else here had any issues or problems with taping?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mine is working well so far! (touch wood). I am recording 16 hours a day of TVNZ coverage directly onto dvd using my brand new dvd recorder... I am really happy as I am getting the entire tvnz coverage of the games!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Figured I'd bump this up now that the games have been over for a few days now. How did everyone fare? I feel like I'm still going to be working on this for a couple of weeks for all the stuff I have saved on various DVRs and whatnot, but aside from a couple of blocks of missed coverage, I managed to record everything I was after.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well i managed to record the entire tvnz coverage of the olympics onto something like 40 dvds! My next job will be to go through the dvds and work out what is on each disk. Should be fun... But really happy to get all this coverage

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I'm still in recovery from all the late nights here stateside, but I think it went pretty well. The overruns just killed me, but figure... about 98% of the main NBC coverage. MSNBC seemed to go clean, but need to check on CNBC and Oxygen. USA I never bothered with as it was just too much, so I'll be trading for that in the months to come.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, for those of who watched the online coverage of the Olympics regardless where you are. How much of it did you record (or at least attempted) onto it or saved on your hard drives? I'm very curious as to exactly how you did that. Or are some of you waiting to do it with all of the coverage on-demand where applicable. Have you noticed anything different, like something censored, than what you saw live? How were the intermissions of events during the live streamings? Particularly in the case of Europe and Latin America, did you have the option of multiple languages for commentary? How were the graphic presentation because I may like to use them for the mega-DVD set compliation I would like to work on next year for menus. This is just a sampling of what's to come from me later.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, for those of who watched the online coverage of the Olympics regardless where you are. How much of it did you record (or at least attempted) onto it or saved on your hard drives? I'm very curious as to exactly how you did that. Or are some of you waiting to do it with all of the coverage on-demand where applicable. Have you noticed anything different, like something censored, than what you saw live? How were the intermissions of events during the live streaming? Particularly in the case of Europe and Latin America, did you have the option of multiple languages for commentary? How were the graphic presentation because I may like to use them for the mega-DVD set compilation I would like to work on next year for menus. This is just a sampling of what's to come from me later.

As I noted above, I recorded the video straight from my video card to a DVD recorder. I'm still enjoying the on-demand coverage on a daily basis, recording things that I missed (and I recorded lots of TV coverage!). It's fascinating world-feed coverage, with sometimes different angles than those seen where NBC had live crews (Basketball, for example), where others match exactly (like Archery), so you can tell what the networks of NBC Universal used for world feed and not. There was no commentary in the USA, which was actually cool. Archery, for example, had an awesome PA announcer you could hear. And, finally, I could hear all the music pieces in the background for Beach Volleyball, lol.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...