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No. There is literally no way to pay for an ad-free experience from NBC. The best you can do is subscribe to Fubo or YouTube TV and record everything using thei
by js2 5y ago
No. There is literally no way to pay for an ad-free experience from NBC. The best you can do is subscribe to Fubo or YouTube TV and record everything using their cloud DVR feature, then forward through the ads.
But some events aren't on any of NBC's channels and can only be found at nbcolympics.com (which is the same as what's in the NBC Sports app) which feels like about 50% ad content.
To be clear: you have to pay to even access the content locked away in the NBC Sports App / nbcolympics.com by having a subscription via an NBC partner (YouTube TV, Fubo, traditional cable) for the privilege of watching an infuriating number of ads.
Worse, there's not even any ad variety. It's the same 3 or 4 ads, and the rest of the ad-space is filled with NBC self-promotional content. In some cases, NBC even shrinks down the live coverage to about 50% of the screen so that they can promote their peacock channel to you.
- jessaustin 5y agoI suspect one could delete the ads shown on NBC Sports app with a pi-hole, but it hasn't seemed important enough to try.
- tshaddox 5y agoAt least on the Apple TV app, I don't think that would be easy. It seems to have ads embedded into the video stream, or at least triggered at specific fixed timestamps in the video stream, and they disable seeking during ad playback, and when you seek across an ad timestamp, they skip you back to the previous ad timestamp, then after the ad finishes they skip you back to the timestamp you seeked to.
- jessaustin 5y agoSeveral years ago in the NHL app, poor connectivity with the ad server caused the ads to be skipped. It's possible that this somewhat different app could work the same way...
- tshaddox 5y agoIt's possible, but it really appears to me that these ads are not videos that are loaded separately, but are simply portions of the video stream that the app has tagged with timestamps indicating that they are ads. Perhaps pi-holing the ad server could prevent it from loading metadata about these ad timestamps, but I would guess that it's simply shipped as part of the request that loads all the necessary metadata about the video stream. This really feels more like a system to prevent skipping commercials that are already in the video stream, and less like an integration with a third-party ads SDK that loads its own ads and shows them over the real video.
- colinmhayes 5y agoI haven't seen any commercials on the nbcolympics.com streams. They just go to a blank stream during breaks so you can keep the volume on and watch a different stream until it's back.
- criddell 5y agoThat's what MLB does and in some ways it's almost more annoying. I wish they would just pull back to their widest shot and pipe in the venue sounds.
- colinmhayes 5y agoI enjoy having it silent so I can keep the volume on while I watch something else. That way I know when to switch back.
- js2 5y agoThat's better than the NBC AppleTV app then which forces ads even into obscure events like Women's Weight Lifting 49kg Group B.
- asciimov 5y agoYesterday while watching some random replay it was pausing the stream every 4 minutes to show 1 minute of commercials. (nbc olympics roku app).
- tshaddox 5y agoYouTube TV only lets you see what is broadcast live on a handful of television networks. There is a huge amount of Olympics action that is only available directly from NBC. (You can sign into NBC using YouTube TV as your “cable” provider.)
- js2 5y agoThat's what I meant by: > But some events aren't on any of NBC's channels and can only be found at nbcolympics.com