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If you have cable TV, you can watch everything at nbcolympics.com/schedule so it’s actually quite accessible. I believe you can watch 30 minutes of content with

If you have cable TV, you can watch everything at nbcolympics.com/schedule so it’s actually quite accessible. I believe you can watch 30 minutes of content without signing in using your cable account. Also, the author is wrong. NBC broadcast the opening ceremonies at 7am [0]. The author must have seen a rebroadcast. [0] https://sports.nbcsports.com/2021/07/23/when-do-the-tokyo-olympics-start-opening-ceremony-schedule-date-time-tv/ https://sports.nbcsports.com/2021/07/23/when-do-the-tokyo-ol...

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Requiring the purchase of an unrelated product for no reason other than padding subscriber numbers for NBC’s benefit qualifies as “making it difficult”.
- totalZero 5y ago
  Several of the tv stations broadcasting the olympics are on cable (eg USA). I understand the desire to watch for free, but cable is certainly not an unrelated product here. If you have a raspberry pi you can probably set up a vpn at a house with cable and watch it that way. For my provider I think they simply match the IP to the ISP (the login was automatic).
  - quickthrowman 5y ago
    Comcast owns NBC and directly benefits from cable subscriptions. NBC also owns all the rights and doesn’t have to put stuff on the cable channels it owns. That’s why people are complaining.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Cable is unrelated if you have access to broadband internet and the digital video signals are being transmitted via the internet. Cable is only related if you own a cable company and want to continue making money for being an unnecessary middleman.
Brendinooo 5y ago
Came here to say this. They showed it live at 7 AM, on broadcast. No accounts or payment required. I know some people have issues getting a signal over the air (live in an apartment, too far from source), but usually when I talk to people about broadcast they just have some weird hangup about buying a $10 antenna and connecting it to their television.
- gricardo99 5y ago
  they just have some weird hangup about buying a $10 antenna and connecting it to their television. I think this hang up could be the installation. Where I live you need to mount the antenna at least on an exterior wall, if not the roof to get a clear signal. Then you have to run coax to your TV, through walls, perhaps multiple locations or you can only watch broadcast on that one TV. It’s easily hours of work, including trip to the hardware store, and having the tools. Still worth the one time effort from some, but the barrier is a lot higher than a one time $10 expense.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    So many homes these days had at one point been wired for cable or satellite. The antenna uses the same cabling and often has one or two big splitters to run to each room. Its pretty trivial to change the "source" side of that to the antenna and disconnect unused rooms.
  - gruez 5y ago
    > Where I live you need to mount the antenna at least on an exterior wall, if not the roof to get a clear signal Windows work too, depending on how your room is oriented relative to the nearest broadcast tower.
  - treesknees 5y ago
    It's really not that much work. I have a cheap $20 antenna hanging in a window (you could use a suction cup) and I can get almost 40 TV channels. As far as distribution, I connect my antenna to an HDHomeRun device. I can either stream directly from the device, use a DLNA client on my LAN, or I also have it hooked into Plex server for DVR and live remote viewing. A basic HDHomeRun device goes for around $100 but I'm sure you can pick up an older model on eBay for less. You could even bridge it into a raspberry pi or some other wifi device so that you don't need to run Ethernet cables around.
standardUser 5y ago
I do not know anybody with cable TV. It's like saying "If you have a rotary phone..."
- partiallypro 5y ago
  Everyone I know sans maybe one person has cable/satellite. So I don't know what future you're living in. The problem to me is they aren't showing replays that I feel a lot of people want to see on air, so you can't watch at a bar/restaurant. This to me is the major problem with sports on streaming. People like to watch at bars, but bars often don't have streaming devices on hand or a staff that wants to deal with it.
  - vernie 5y ago
    Maybe it's a generational thing? I don't know anybody with cable or satellite, not even my parents.
    - matwood 5y ago
      For me it's not generational, but cheaper. Adding the base TV package to my internet is cheaper than no-cap internet alone. I rarely watch live TV, but it helps that I can use my TV login to stream most of the channels on-demand.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      The only people I know with cable/satellite TV subscriptions are 50+ years old who grew up in the US. All my immigrant elders use IPTV boxes now to get their international channels.
    - rufus_foreman 5y ago
      I just turned 50 and I have cable TV for the first time now since I lived with my parents in the 80's. Maybe along with your eyesight and your hearing when you turn 50 you start to lose that part of your mental reasoning that tells you cable TV is a bad idea. Seriously though, I got tired of switching to different streaming providers when one of them suddenly lost access to some specific content that I was interested in. Cable now is just another streaming content provider.
kevinwang 5y ago
> If you have cable TV, you can watch everything at nbcolympics.com/schedule so it’s actually quite accessible. This is the site mentioned and linked to in the article as a "site where you can actually watch live. And they have replays… of preliminary matches" I've also found out to be quite good-- not sure why the author is so negative of it.
- asciimov 5y ago
  Because it is hard to find, not very well advertised, and isn't free unless you have a cable provider (youtube tv does work). For me, I had Youtube TV record everything, but NBC doesn't show everything, and its completely US centric coverage (I like watching the competition). On demand wasn't helpful either. I tried Peacock (NBC's app) thinking that's where they were hiding all of their coverage. And again not everything is there, and much of it is behind paywall. Fortunately, my wife clicked on the Olympics section of our Roku and it prompted us to install the NBC Olympics app. Then I had to sign into it, because it only provides 30 mins of viewing without a cable plan. On top of that they are injecting a lot of commercials into the programming, so I'm not sure why they couldn't air all of it for free (with commercials)
coopsmoss 5y ago
I don't know if it's available outside the country. But the CBC is streaming everything online, no login required. They have streams with commentary for the major events that they are televising but you can also watch the raw international streams with no commentary for everything else. The streams are recorded and available at any time too. If it's available in the US, or you have a VPN, I'd look into that.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

Requiring the purchase of an unrelated product for no reason other than padding subscriber numbers for NBC’s benefit qualifies as “making it difficult”.

totalZero 5y ago
Several of the tv stations broadcasting the olympics are on cable (eg USA). I understand the desire to watch for free, but cable is certainly not an unrelated product here. If you have a raspberry pi you can probably set up a vpn at a house with cable and watch it that way. For my provider I think they simply match the IP to the ISP (the login was automatic).
- quickthrowman 5y ago
  Comcast owns NBC and directly benefits from cable subscriptions. NBC also owns all the rights and doesn’t have to put stuff on the cable channels it owns. That’s why people are complaining.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Cable is unrelated if you have access to broadband internet and the digital video signals are being transmitted via the internet. Cable is only related if you own a cable company and want to continue making money for being an unnecessary middleman.

Brendinooo 5y ago

Came here to say this. They showed it live at 7 AM, on broadcast. No accounts or payment required. I know some people have issues getting a signal over the air (live in an apartment, too far from source), but usually when I talk to people about broadcast they just have some weird hangup about buying a $10 antenna and connecting it to their television.

gricardo99 5y ago
they just have some weird hangup about buying a $10 antenna and connecting it to their television. I think this hang up could be the installation. Where I live you need to mount the antenna at least on an exterior wall, if not the roof to get a clear signal. Then you have to run coax to your TV, through walls, perhaps multiple locations or you can only watch broadcast on that one TV. It’s easily hours of work, including trip to the hardware store, and having the tools. Still worth the one time effort from some, but the barrier is a lot higher than a one time $10 expense.
- vel0city 5y ago
  So many homes these days had at one point been wired for cable or satellite. The antenna uses the same cabling and often has one or two big splitters to run to each room. Its pretty trivial to change the "source" side of that to the antenna and disconnect unused rooms.
- gruez 5y ago
  > Where I live you need to mount the antenna at least on an exterior wall, if not the roof to get a clear signal Windows work too, depending on how your room is oriented relative to the nearest broadcast tower.
- treesknees 5y ago
  It's really not that much work. I have a cheap $20 antenna hanging in a window (you could use a suction cup) and I can get almost 40 TV channels. As far as distribution, I connect my antenna to an HDHomeRun device. I can either stream directly from the device, use a DLNA client on my LAN, or I also have it hooked into Plex server for DVR and live remote viewing. A basic HDHomeRun device goes for around $100 but I'm sure you can pick up an older model on eBay for less. You could even bridge it into a raspberry pi or some other wifi device so that you don't need to run Ethernet cables around.

standardUser 5y ago

I do not know anybody with cable TV. It's like saying "If you have a rotary phone..."

partiallypro 5y ago
Everyone I know sans maybe one person has cable/satellite. So I don't know what future you're living in. The problem to me is they aren't showing replays that I feel a lot of people want to see on air, so you can't watch at a bar/restaurant. This to me is the major problem with sports on streaming. People like to watch at bars, but bars often don't have streaming devices on hand or a staff that wants to deal with it.
- vernie 5y ago
  Maybe it's a generational thing? I don't know anybody with cable or satellite, not even my parents.
  - matwood 5y ago
    For me it's not generational, but cheaper. Adding the base TV package to my internet is cheaper than no-cap internet alone. I rarely watch live TV, but it helps that I can use my TV login to stream most of the channels on-demand.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The only people I know with cable/satellite TV subscriptions are 50+ years old who grew up in the US. All my immigrant elders use IPTV boxes now to get their international channels.
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    I just turned 50 and I have cable TV for the first time now since I lived with my parents in the 80's. Maybe along with your eyesight and your hearing when you turn 50 you start to lose that part of your mental reasoning that tells you cable TV is a bad idea. Seriously though, I got tired of switching to different streaming providers when one of them suddenly lost access to some specific content that I was interested in. Cable now is just another streaming content provider.

kevinwang 5y ago

> If you have cable TV, you can watch everything at nbcolympics.com/schedule so it’s actually quite accessible. This is the site mentioned and linked to in the article as a "site where you can actually watch live. And they have replays… of preliminary matches" I've also found out to be quite good-- not sure why the author is so negative of it.

asciimov 5y ago
Because it is hard to find, not very well advertised, and isn't free unless you have a cable provider (youtube tv does work). For me, I had Youtube TV record everything, but NBC doesn't show everything, and its completely US centric coverage (I like watching the competition). On demand wasn't helpful either. I tried Peacock (NBC's app) thinking that's where they were hiding all of their coverage. And again not everything is there, and much of it is behind paywall. Fortunately, my wife clicked on the Olympics section of our Roku and it prompted us to install the NBC Olympics app. Then I had to sign into it, because it only provides 30 mins of viewing without a cable plan. On top of that they are injecting a lot of commercials into the programming, so I'm not sure why they couldn't air all of it for free (with commercials)

coopsmoss 5y ago

I don't know if it's available outside the country. But the CBC is streaming everything online, no login required. They have streams with commentary for the major events that they are televising but you can also watch the raw international streams with no commentary for everything else. The streams are recorded and available at any time too. If it's available in the US, or you have a VPN, I'd look into that.