Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

Re:Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible? by jerich on Sunday February 06, 2022 @01:20PM (#30235284)

The best Olympic coverage I’ve seen was the NBC HD broadcast of the 2002 Salt Lake City winter games. HD was still pretty new in the US. They didn’t have many HD cameras and they didn’t have an HD workflow integrated with the SD broadcast, so it was completely separate from the “overcoming adversity USA athlete” coverage.

For example, they set up the HD cameras and trailer at the ski jumping venue. They showed ski jumping start to finish—all the competitors real-time without editing. The commentators were ski jumping experts, since the professional commentators were all off on the SD feeds. Almost no breaks because they only had one HD commercial.

I learned so much about the sport and cheered for competitors from random countries. It was miles beyond the standard NBC coverage and probably even better than watching it in person.

20 years later and it’s the most memorable Olympics-watching experience of my life, going back my earliest memory of the jetpack in ‘84.

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Re:Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible? by fatnoah on Monday February 07, 2022 @04:45PM (#30251730)

So much this! It was amazing. I remember just hooking up an antenna to get the broadcast and just keeping my TV tuned to the Olympics.

Unfortunately, the networks have gotten "smarter". I can watch things in 4k this year, but it's the traditional coverage, so it's crap content with 4k and HDR. :(

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Re:Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible? by abenga on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @02:03AM (#30269806)

The best coverage I've experienced was the 2012 London Summer Olympics on Youtube. Continuous multiple live streams, could select any event going on to watch it live. I don't think there were ads in the stream (don't remember though).

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