US Cord Cutters Getting Snubbed From NBC's Olympic Coverage Online 578
Monoman writes "The Washington Post reports, 'The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics start tonight. But if you're among the 9 percent of U.S. households who have broadband but don't subscribe to paid television, it will be nearly impossible to (legally) watch the games online this year. ... That's because while NBC is streaming all of the events live online, full access to the livestream will only be available to paying cable subscribers. And thanks to a $4.38 billion exclusive deal NBC struck with the International Olympics Committee (IOC) in 2011 for the privilege of broadcasting the Olympic games in the U.S. through 2020, cord-cutters don't have a lot of options.' Is this a money play by Comcast/NBC to get some subscribers back? Should the FCC step in and require NBC to at least provide a stream of their OTA content?"
Fuck Beta, go Usenet! (Score:0, Informative)
Face it, Slashdot has jumped the shark. As others have said, the way forward is Usenet. Time to go back to the only censorship-free, non commercial Internet forum. Nobody will ever be able to buy Usenet, it will ever go 'beta' and it is the wave of the future.
Comp.misc seems to be the new Slashdot replacement. See you there!
Use an antenna. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
It's silly since it's still available over-the-air for free anyway. Do these "cord cutter" people not have antennas?
Move to Canada! (Score:5, Informative)
If you're Usian or from the UK i'd recommend getting an unblock [unblock-us.com] subscription and setting your country to Canada.
Re:Use an antenna. (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty much all HDTVs support receiving over-the-air TV stations using an antenna, and considering NBC is one of the largest broadcast networks in the US, it shouldn't be that hard to get NBC if you don't have cable.
Do you really think that all the content is on the OTA NBC station? In my case NBC is broadcasting on 5 different channels in my Comcast region. Only one of these is OTA.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
They're not restricting their broadcast - since they're still broadcasting it from the top of the hills their antennas are on.
Plug in your antenna and watch it for free.
The Olympics are a big business run by a big company, and they sold the rights to NBC.
Re:Why? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Some people can't receive OTA because of obstacles or because they're too far from the station. But they're being greedy, pure & simple.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Except they generally are. At any given time, only about 30% of our Navy is doing something, with another 15% in transit or training.
More than half of our fleet is just hanging out in port waiting:
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/n... [navy.mil]
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a 118 year old tradition that happens to have copied the name from a 2790 year old tradition that ceased to exist about 1600 years ago. The ancient olympics have been gone 16 times longer than the modern olympics have been going.
It's a tradition. It's just a bit of a stretch to say it's a 4000 year old tradition.