So you’ve visited the Winter Olympics in Google Earth, got your iPhone setup to follow the results but what about the most important thing of all – watching the events live! Well, if you don’t have a TV in the office or can’t get time off work to watch your favorite events, fortunately there are several ways to watch the 2010 Winter Olympics online.
Firstly, check out when your favorite events are scheduled. I like the BBC Winter Olympics Schedule for this.
You can of course also use the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics website for this too.
Now for viewing options. Most terrestrial broadcasters in your country are streaming much of the Winter Olympics online so all you need to do is visit the websites of the main terrestrial channels in your country. For example, the BBC is showing live coverage in the UK.
However, if you’re unsure which channel is showing it in your country, The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics website does provide live video coverage links to the right channels in your country although it’s not particularly easy to find. Scroll down the right hand side of the homepage and you will see the box below:
When you’ve used the drop-down menu to select which country you’re from, you will be linked directly to the terrestrial TV network (such as the BBC and Eurosport in the UK) appropriate for you.
For US viewers, your best bet is NBC’s dedicated Winter Olympics site which features live coverage of most major events. You can watch events live or watch highlights if you missed them:
However, those on the West Coast have complained that coverage is being broadcast on a time delay to them so if you live there, you might want to try some of the following options…
If you want to see how the Canadians are covering the event on home soil, then check-out the CTV website although I found the schedule and guide a little confusing and you need Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin to watch anything. This is a special website run by Microsoft for CTV’s Olympic coverage, hence the encouragement to use Internet Explorer 8 on the page! Again, this is only available to North American viewers.
If you’re unlucky enough not to be covered by any of the above options, then your best bet is watchvancouverolympics.com. I’m, not quite sure how this website is broadcasting events but the great thing is, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world as it works anywhere. However, since it is an unofficial site, it might not be very reliable.
If video streaming simply isn’t an option for some reason, then you can always use search engines instead. Google, Bing and Yahoo! have all put special preparation into covering the Winter Olympics and some of the great ways you can use them to follow it are described here. However, note that the Visual Search option in Bing is only available to North American users. Also, if you’re a big fan of iGoogle, you can add the Winter Olympics 2010 widget to your homepage.
Finally, mobile users will find all the result coverage they could possible want at http://m.yahoo.com/olympics and www.vancouver2010.com/mobile.
