I wanted to embed some videos of Olympic events on my blog, but unfortunately NBC has been shutting down videos all across the Internet for copyright infringement. Instead of making content embeddable everywhere, they choose to keep it in their silo. I should be able to easily share any piece of Olympic content to my friends on Facebook or on my blog. I should be able to find any Olympic video quickly on YouTube. Unfortunately that’s also not possible.
I couldn’t even find ways to share video off of NBColympics.com, which is the official Olympics website. I think they could’ve at least provided direct links I could send to people. Last night Phelps hit his 5th Olympic gold medal. So far I’ve seen each of his races and it’s unreal. He is a beast in the water. Unfortunately I can’t share any of his races here.
August 13, 2008 at 5:39 pm |
[...] not quite. Boris writes about the lack of Olympics video embedding: I wanted to embed some videos of Olympic events on my blog, but unfortunately NBC has been [...]
August 14, 2008 at 5:35 am |
You might worry that my one week of being a resident in LA has already indoctrinated me as a champion of big content companies, but I’m not certain I agree with you =) NBC has paid almost $1B for that silo (~$900M for broadcast right and ~$100M in production costs). I’m ok with their copyright being respected and with their efforts to protect the investment.
On the flip side, I do think that they should have had a far better strategy for monetizing online content. I think that the Silverlight implementation on the NBC site is streaming awesome video quality… having just moved into a new apartment I don’t have cable yet (but do have internet – what’s more important afterall!!) and I would be paying a subscription fee to watch the live feed online as we speak if one existed. Instead, I’m relegated to watching things a day late. They also could have allowed embeds, so long as the embeds had pre-rolls or inline ads in order to make them some money.
Did they get it completely right? Nope. But I think that they are generally taking too much flak considering the size of the investment risk they incur by being the official broadcast network.
At least that’s the view from your Hollywood-based mainstream media friend!
Oh, and they do offer direct links – there is a “share” button on the video player… here is the link to Phelp’s swim win the 200 fly:
http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/share.html?videoid=0813_HD_SWB_HL_L0370
August 14, 2008 at 5:28 pm |
Thanks for the thoughts Greg, the LA perspective always offers something different. I totally missed that share button!
That seems like a fair compromise to offer embed ability with prerolls or inline ads. And I agree that the Silverlight quality is exceptional — way way better than the quality you get with YouTube.
I’m thinking in 4 years maybe we’ll get the 2012 Olympic video streaming to our phones. Now that would be absolutely awesome.
August 18, 2008 at 9:19 pm |
I wouldn’t have a problem with them having some exclusive rights but the damn site doesn’t even work. I even installed the new player they said was not necessary and the thing still won’t play. This computer plays every other thing so it seems they couldn’t handle the traffic they scooped up. That really burns me up because I’m not trying to make any money, I just wanted to show a friend who missed Usain Bolt. I am surprised at how much this irritates me.
August 19, 2008 at 12:25 am |
[...] player called Silverlight. After you do that, you can watch the Olympics in mediocre quality, without being able to share what you watch with others (i.e. no embedding). [...]
August 30, 2008 at 2:02 am |
[...] download and install Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin. And of course they’ve gone out of their way to make embedding impossible, cutting off one of the most popular ways of expanding the reach of content. Not surprisingly, when [...]
August 30, 2008 at 2:04 am |
[...] download and install Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin. And of course they’ve gone out of their way to make embedding impossible, cutting off one of the most popular ways of expanding the reach of content. Not surprisingly, when [...]
August 30, 2008 at 12:01 pm |
[...] though on paper the numbers seem quite impressing). Alongside these actions, it (ab)used copyright in order to prevent others from watching the Olympics through video sharing sites. And still, dinosaurs limit technology (and the inherent use) because of [...]
August 30, 2008 at 12:25 pm |
[...] נראים מרשימים). במקביל, היא השתמשה בזכויות היוצרים על מנת למנוע מאנשים אחרים לאפשר לצפות בדבר הזה באמצעות …. והנה, דינוזאורים מגבילים את הטכנולוגיה עקב [...]