Beyond Binary

Monday night offered me the first chance to really test NBCOlympics.com's live video. It was the first time I was home to watch the events and there was something live that I wanted to see more than what was on one of the television channels.

I stayed up late to watch USA Softball in its first match against Venezuela. The video quality was mixed--from a bit pixelated to quite excellent--but overall acceptable.

At first I found the online commentary helpful, right up to the point at which it told me that a particular player flied out a good 30 seconds before it appeared on video. NBC officials assured me that wouldn't happen. Moments ago, they told me Crystl Bustos would hit a home run just before she did. To avoid a repeat, I turned off the commentary.

It's one of several issues I have with the coverage. Unlike others, I'm not dinging NBC for saving a few events for the TV coverage. To me the real benefit of online video is to be able to see the events that are not and would not be on TV.

But considering it is more likely to be die-hard fans that tune into full games online, the least they could do is respect the sports fan audience. And that gets to my biggest beef, which has to do with the on-demand video, in which the score is shown constantly above the video. It's one of the main reasons I am staying up to watch the game, as opposed to watching it on-demand tomorrow. Live is the only way I can watch the game without also seeing the outcome first.

Still, I'm a glass half full kind of person, and I can't help but appreciate how much more is possible now than was just two years ago. And I am counting on things to be even better (read full HD) by the next games.

Disclosure: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive.

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Updated 1:00 p.m. PDT, with initial impressions of video experience on NBCOlympics.com.

Although NBC is holding back online video of the opening ceremonies until its TV broadcast Friday night, some other sites have started posting unofficial videos.

As many had predicted, the Internet refuses to adhere to a schedule. I did a quick peek this morning and found a radio station news site with video from the opening ceremonies, even though the official NBCOlympics.com site has only photos.

NBC is showing 2,200 hours of live video but is holding back certain marquee events, such as opening ceremonies, track and field, and women's gymnastics, until after they air on TV.

Although it's a big step from the 2006 Winter Games, when only a single game was shown online, critics like Henry Blodget have been griping that it's not enough.

What do you think?

Update: Well, I wasn't able to watch the ceremonies via NBC's site, but I did check out several of the highlights packages from men's soccer. There was also the full U.S. women's soccer game. Again--as a sports fan--I wish there was an option not to see the scores as I navigate to the games.

Even worse, if I'd managed to somehow navigate there without getting the score, they display the end result at the top of the screen throughout the video. I sincerely hope they halt that.

Tops on my list for 2012 would be something like NBCOlympics.com/noscores where you could choose on-demand video without having to see the result.

Disclosure: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive.

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

Although it talks about the battle with Google as a marathon rather than a sprint, Microsoft is hoping that the Olympics will help give its Internet properties a tail wind.

As Google and Yahoo are also doing, Microsoft is tailoring its search results to feature Olympics content. Its news, video, and celebrity search results will all highlight Olympics content.

Still, when it comes to search, Microsoft is probably going to have to be happy with the Bronze medal, in terms of overall traffic.

In other events, though, Microsoft is going for the gold (OK, I'm done with Olympic metaphors). Most notable is its deal with NBC, which is using Microsoft's Silverlight to power the video on NBCOlympics.com, which is being produced in conjunction with MSN.

While much of the attention is focused on the thousands of hours of live and on-demand video streams for the PC, more limited options also exist for content to be downloaded to an Xbox, Zune, or Windows-running laptop.

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

Stage 8H is best known as the place where Saturday Night Live is filmed. This week, though, it's been turned into an ad-hoc data center as part of NBC's efforts to stream thousands of hours of live Olympic coverage over the Internet.

Instead of the usual crop of comedians, NBC will have dozens of people watching every hour of the games, looking for highlights that it can chop up and make available on-demand. It's just one piece of an elaborate arrangement that shuttles the events in Beijing back to the U.S.

From each of the dozens of Olympic venues, a high-definition video feed is delivered over fiber-optic cables to the International Broadcast Center that has been set up in Beijing. A bunch of encoders and Windows Media servers get the video into an Internet-ready format. From there, it travels via satellite to NBC's headquarters in New York.

There, NBC actually adds a one-minute delay, allowing its cadre of live bloggers in Stamford, Conn., and elsewhere to write their text and have the video and commentary synchronized. Once ready, it goes from NBC to Limelight Networks, a content delivery network, which has 1,000 servers just for the live events sending the content to various Internet service providers, who then shuttle the content directly to their customers. (See chart below)

(Credit: Susan Dove/CNET News)

Making it play
Limelight Chief Strategy Officer Mike Gordon said his company is prepared for this to be the biggest live event the Internet has ever seen. "I would not be surprised at all to get 1 million viewers," he said. "We're certainly prepared for whatever the audience turns out to be."

Mike Gordon, chief strategy officer, Limelight Networks

(Credit: Limelight Networks)

That said, there is clearly an element of risk in all this, considering NBC's history of live Olympic streaming has been limited to broadcasting a single game, the gold medal ice hockey match in Torino, Italy, two years ago.

"NBC has always taken risks and is always trying to do more than it has in the past," said Perkins Miller, the NBC senior vice president in charge of the Internet push. "It does keep me up at night when I think about streaming 2,200 hours (of live coverage)."

The massive effort has come together in a remarkably short amount of time. Microsoft's deal to power NBCOlympics.com dates back only to January.

NBC had a pretty good idea what they wanted to do and had built some mock-ups of the player prior to deciding to partner with Microsoft.

Initially, they expected to use Adobe's Flash, given that is the standard for video delivered over the Internet these days. But, as they began to hash things out with Microsoft during a series of all-day meetings at NBC's 30 Rockefeller Plaza headquarters, Microsoft was able to show NBC some ways it could do more using its homegrown Silverlight technology.

Silverlight, Microsoft said, would be key to enabling NBC's vision of a "control room" in which a viewer could watch multiple live streams at once.

Perkins Miller, senior vice president, NBC Universal

(Credit: NBC)

Even within Microsoft's team, though, there was some apprehension of whether it was doable.

"Can we actually pull this off?" Senior Technical Evangelist Jason Suess recalled thinking. "Is the user's machine going to be able to maintain four connections at one time?"

The key, Suess said in an interview at Microsoft headquarters last week, is using an approach known as adaptive streaming in which the player has the ability to customize the bit rate of the video stream based on a computer's connection and processing power.

By Valentine's Day, they were ready for a test. It was pretty important that the test work out, given that NBC was getting ready to crate up the gear to ship it off to Beijing.

"That was the first time the player came to life," Suess said. "Obviously the player was extremely crude."

Making it pay
One of the last pieces to fall into place was the advertising. Initially, NBC and Microsoft were hoping to be able to insert full video ads into the live streams, but doing so is tough work.

"You don't have any way to pause a live stream," Suess said. "Trying to deliver a video ad on top of that, you hit the limits of a user's bandwidth."

As of mid-April, they were still struggling with what to do and began considering that perhaps they would have to just rely on companion advertising around the video stream. Then they came up with an idea. Rather than insert full videos into the live streams, what if they stuck a display ad into the video, particularly during dead times in the action.

Jason Suess, senior technical evangelist, Microsoft

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)

That, approach, which is ultimately what's being done, solved several issues. It was less bandwidth-intensive than video ads, but still got the advertiser directly in front of the viewer, all without interrupting any of the coverage. The amount of advertising will vary, Suess said; "It depends what is happening in the sports. We just wait for a dead space."

By early May, NBC made the basic player available on the Internet, using a variety of prerecorded Olympic video, and by early June the enhanced Silverlight player was made public as well. The Olympic Trials, at the end of June, offered the companies and the public a chance for a test drive.

At this point, it's come down to a triage of the few remaining known bugs. Each day, the bar is being raised in terms of what is a big enough deal to warrant such a late change. Suess, meanwhile, sent his wife and kids to visit family in New York so he could work 18-hour days.

In an interview last week, Suess said he had been at work until 1 a.m. the night before and gets in every morning by 8 a.m., so he can chat with the folks in Beijing before they sign off for the night.

"If I am not online and pushing things along, then I am introducing delay," Suess said.

An admitted type-A personality, Suess is a stickler for organization--the kind of guy whose desk is always clean. (His wife would probably use the word "compulsive," Suess said.)

Suess said he hopes things will be enough under control that he can actually watch some of the games, particularly sailing, of which he is a big fan. "I sure hope so," he said. "When I got involved in this project, that was one of the reasons."

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

Two years ago, watching the Olympics live via the Internet was limited to a single gold medal game of a popular sport. This year, everything from preliminary table tennis matches to team handball will be available both live and on-demand directly to the PC.

In all, more than 2,000 hours of live content and 3,000 hours of on-demand video will be available from the PC via NBCOlympics.com.

While a huge opportunity for Olympics fans, it is also a big test for both Web video and for the companies behind the site, in particular for NBC Universal and Microsoft, whose Silverlight technology is being used in the video player, and for Limelight Networks, whose network is being used to route all of those streams to Internet service providers.

To be sure, the Web has seen some big live events in recent years, including CBS Sports' streaming of March Madness games, but this could be the biggest test yet.

"It does keep me up at night," said NBC Universal Senior Vice President Perkins Miller, who is heading up the network's Internet efforts.

That this much content will be available over the Internet is a testament to just how much progress has been made in everything from video streaming to online advertising in just the past two years, as well as a change in attitude among consumers, who now slurp up 3.5 billion videos a month from YouTube.

Microsoft's latest legal headache is a suit from a little-known company called Gotuit Media, which charges elements of Silverlight infringe on the video metadata company's patented technology.

In a suit filed July 2 in San Francisco Federal Court, Gotuit charges Silverlight infringes on several of its patents and seeks an injunction against the software maker as well as damages and attorney's fees.

Microsoft plans to use Silverlight to allow visitors to NBCOlympics.com to watch multiple events at the same time, as well as view streaming commentary. Gotuit cited these plans as part of its patent infringement suit.

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com )

Gotuit may be a relative unknown, but Microsoft is facing an opponent it knows quite well. Gotuit is represented by San Francisco-based lawyer Spencer Hosie, the same Hosie that successfully represented Burst.com in its .

Hosie declined to comment on the Gotuit case.

Of note, Gotuit, in its complaint, mentions specifically Microsoft's plans to use Silverlight in conjunction with video metadata as part of its powering of the NBCOlympics.com Web site. Silverlight is Microsoft's rival to Adobe's Flash for Web video, among other uses.

Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster said the company had yet to be served in the case, "so we're not in a position to comment."

Gotuit has a range of products used by customers like Lifetime television to make it easier to search and navigate through online video.