[Ebby]

Many of you have known me for quite some time and I can keep my cool with everything except the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and all things associated with it. Even then, I jest at our "lack of control" and poke fun at it. But I am utterly disgusted at this new coup. Now, on a completly different subject, a fuse has been lit and I AM PISSED! I am so goddam pissed off! These smilies don't do me justice. Why am I pissed you may ask? Simple:

I CAN'T GET THE OLYMPICS

But I used to. That's the kicker. Channel 3, 11, and 48 all show it and, ta-da! they don't broadcast here. Last time it also ran on channel 4 in all it's glory but now, through the magic of conglomerations, alliances, rights, restrictions, and greed, 4 was severed from the whole, (tether cut from NBC and left to die), and now NO CHANNEL in my area can show the olympics. That's right, I am cut off from watching the olympics entirely and those stations that wanted to broadcast it, can't. What is even worse, it is being streamed on the web for everyone EXCEPT THOSE IN THE US!!! Damn these media giants to HELL! (If you haven't guessed now, I'm seriously FPO)

The Olympics are a world-wide event. Where all of mankind gets together in a final proving ground to win the title "Best in the World" and the associated bragging rights. It is supposed to be a neutral-party for the betterment of mankind. Hell, that's one of the reasons the Olympics moves around from place to place, so it doesn't show favoritism to one country over another. NBC, BBC, and others: what is so fucking hard to understand? Yes, there is huge market value in advertising but WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUR MORALS! Your first priority is to BROADCAST THE GAMES TO THE WORLD! If you can't, you NEED to let someone ELSE do it! Enough is enough. Use the web; stream it to the world!

:SoUnbelivably,Freaking,CraptasticallyMadWordsCan' tExplainSmily:

I am so sick and tired of this monolopistic crap. It's everywhere! If you accept the responsibility of covering an event as important as the Olympic games you must ensure that everyone has access to it. These days, via TV or WEB. If not, LET SOMEONE ELSE DO IT! If you big-shot CEO's can't stop behaving like greedy little children, get the hell outta here! Seriously, bite me and GET OUT! I am ashamed of your pissy-fits, greed, commercialism, and mockery NBC and broadcasting companies have. For once, (just this once pretty-please), can you work together, cooperativly, and broadcast something for the betterment of mankind?

[Ebby]

You know what, have-at guys. I am just so sad and tired right now, I'm going to bed. See you tomorrow...

Rant out

*Click*

[psmith2.0]

I peered into this thread, expecting to find a like-minded soul kinda fed up at the hype, the breathless drama attributed to every butt-scratch, the sappy backstories and build-up and the PC, feel-good "We Are The World" smarm that permeates the whole wretched affair.

Oops, guess I was wrong.

Umm, carry on...

[scratt]

I'm with you Ebby!

Not that fussed about the Olympics itself but I do sypathise believe me.

Not so long ago we moved to Thailand....

I am an avid F1 fan. In the good old days the good old BBC used to broadcast this every Sunday without adverts for the entire 2.5 hours of lead up, race, and post race drivers discussions.

Being a child of the UK we are accustomed to freedom. Probably more freedom than the US is supposed to have, even though we don't actually have a constitution or any rights... Bear with me this is not a political rant..

Now recently in the UK the BBC couldn't afford to broadcast F1.. I mean 20 million odd Brit households all paying on average �50 a year because we HAVE TO BY LAW even if WE DON"T WANT THE BBC, even if the tv is just a computer monitor and is not connected to an ariel was not enough money for them to broadcast it. Had to buy too many American and Australian Soaps and of course fund our own!! F1 Bernie and his cronies charged too much and there was a lot more money to be made from advertising revenues so it moved to ITV... So we had this crazy situation where you could still watch FOOTBALL LIVE!!!! on BBC (which is really cheap to buy the feed for - Right!) and SNOOKER (I ask you!!) and any other old crap... but F1 live had to be riddled with adverts right in the middle of Shuueey on a tight corner with Kimi right up his arse racing for the World Chmpionship in the last 10 minutes of the last race of the year... OOOPPS!! Sorry have to advertise Kellogs cornflakes now!! Hang on a minute... Oh sorry guys while you were away the whole world exploded and Jaguar won the world championship and world peace is declared everywhere and the Queen died... anyway have some more FRIGGIN ADVERTS NOW!!!

You get the gist!

Well we moved to Thailand... Not because of this at all... but because it is warmer and nicer that England.. Totally unrelated reasons, honest.

Anyway we got here and I decided OK buy a tv and watch F1 - That was the only reason.. Ireally didn't want a tv at all. Anyway, I presumed it would be on here... Always was when I was in Japan and everywhere else in the world... But that was a few years ago and it is fast becoming apparent that F1 has already gone the same route as all sports.. Not enough people turn up to the events in the flesh to make the millions and millions that all the bread heads need from ticket sales... so lets make people at home buy tickets too!! Wicked Idea!

So in Thailand it is tied up by yet another monoploy... So with two minutes to go and realising I am going to miss the first race of the season I start frantically searching for feeds on the internet...

It's going well. I have found the F1 page and got live stats. No pictures.... just whirling numbers... but thats a start... Off to find a radio feed... This will do we will buy cable next week... Just for F1 mind not for crap movies or sitcoms or soaps!!

Radio 5 in the UK has a live web cast of sports... Wicked here we go..
Radio and some numbers flashing on the screen will do... For this week.

15 seconds to go..

Radio 5 announcement... "F1 Live coming up next..."

Excellent!!!

3.2.1.....

RECORDED MESSAGE... "We are sorry Radio 5 does not have a license to broadcast F1 live on the internet.. please tune in later....This can be heard on our terrestial broadcast on FMblahdy blahdy blahh" REPEATS

FUCK!

So we watched the little numbers on the screen and I got UBC cable the following day. �500 for the year! Not bad... A decent ticket at an F1 race will cost you that... not including travelling and beer at inflated prices etc..

Now we have the dubious pleasure of two presenters sat in an office in Hong Kong and two has been racers who are really bitter bitches sniping at F1 drivers while they whistle round the track.

It is live, when the feed works... And there are more adverts than you could shake a cat at... every five minutes on UBC...

But wait it gets better.. UBC in Thailand won't show adverts for free and there is no incentive because people are poor here for advertisers to pay anyway!!! SO WE DON"T EVEN GET THE ADVERTS!! WE GET A RED SCREEN FOR FOUR MINUTES EVERY FIVE MINUTES WITH A CRAPPY TUNE AND A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

I have no hair left!

[Maciej]

I completely agree. However I am not faced with the difficulties you are. My rant is more about what is shown on the Olympics. I feel it is completely unrepresentative of sport. All I see is things the United States is good at, I'm pissed because everything is rebroadcast, as in its recorded. I would even go as far as paying the 100$ subscription fee to watch them on pay-per-view like Time Warner does with the NFL and NBA and MLB, if I could watch things live, and watch the things I wanna watch. I Am PISSED off as well.

[Ebby]

Sleep is good. I'm much calmer now.

It looks like I'm not the only one up a creek here.

"Bandwidth has gotten a lot cheaper over the years, so it is not so far-fetched to think that someone will set up proxy servers in Britain that would do this."

Hahaha. That's exactly what I was looking for! But the one I found was bogged down. Anyone here at AN live in the UK and care to set up a proxy server?

Maybe this is to force everyone to watch TV so NBC can win an award from The Guinness World Records.
More advertising publicity. Hint hint hint...

[iLikeMyiMacG4]

If you try to watch the streams how do they know you're in the US. If its through IP you could just use a proxy but you shouldn't have to do this just to watch the olympics.

[Ebby]

NBCOlympics.com requires you to type in your Visa credit card number for verification that you are a US citizen. (Interesting that Visa has a lot of advertising with NBC) Does that mean that non-visa cardholders can't watch? Where's my magic 8-ball?

It may be easier since from what I know, the BBC also sells high speed internet, so they get first priority, but you can also filter access by IP address ranges. I got a bunch of those messages. The important thing is that blocking works and I want a way around it!

EDIT: MODS: Thanks.

[spiff]

People actually watch the olympics?

[Maciej]

LoL, I love watching the Olympics. Its so.. suspenseful. I think its better than all of our local sports because you don't know quite as much about all of the athletes and teams attending to know who is going to win.