Olympics for the Media Center, IP Style (think “DVR Without TV Card”)

Matt Hester's WebLog - Watch the Olympic Games on Media Center - NO TUNER CARD NEEDED!

“I just caught wind of an extremely cool FREE service for Windows Media Center:

NBC Olympics On the Go

This will be an Internet-delivered catch-up TV service from NBC Universal powered by Wavexpress’ TVTonic platform. This free download-and-play service will highest-quality Internet-delivered Olympics experience in the USA.

…

With NBC Olympics On the Go in Windows Media Center, you will get:

• NBC Sports’ complete on-air HDTV coverage of the Beijing Olympics on the NBC, USA and Universal networks
• 225 hrs of long-form Olympics video over 17 days
• 24 sports, full opening ceremony, and a closing ceremony montage
• Up to HD quality, with the vast majority of the video delivered in 840x480 progressive scan resolution at 1.5 Mbps bit rate, plus several events per day delivered in 1080i resolution

Unfortunately, this is only supported in the US and even more unfortunately, it is not supported on 64 bit.  …”

It’s 8/8/08 so I guess it’s time an Olympics post. This sounds pretty cool, I guess I CAN have my IP and watch it too (okay, that was a very weak play on having my cake and eating it too, I know, I know… ;)

Since I don’t already have enough stuff running on my “Vista Compatible” notebook, I’ve added this as well. Installed easily, activated quickly.

Something to note though… Free is never really free. Looks like by installing this you auto-subscribe to some channels, which you cannot unsubscribe too (without turning off all downloading, which kills the purpose). Not that much of a biggie for me, as I understand it’s got to be paid for some way. It’s just something to be aware of.

I’ve subscribed to one channel, the rest are “just there”