How To Watch The Olympics With Silverlight OR Windows Media Player

Since a lot of viewers are querying Google on how to watch the Olympics without having to use the Silverlight player and instead use the Windows Media player, here are the instructions.

Go to www.NBCOlympics.com and click on the video tab. Then click any video to watch and you'll get a popup window with video in it. If you already have the Silverlight player installed it will automatically use that unless you click the "standard player" link. Doing that will put you into a single stream that uses the Windows Media player. If you do not have Silverlight installed, you will get the option to install it. If you don't, you will just get a Windows Media based stream

Still having problems? E-mail me and I'll try and help.

Comments

[kim]

This does NOT work on a non-intel based Mac!

[Alfy]

Where is this fabled "standard player" link? I'm running Firefox 3 on WinXP, but all I get when I click on any video link is a big, stupid, window-disabling pop-up that tells me to "go install Silverlight." Not happening on my company laptop, sorry.

[Kala]

This does not work in Firefox, only in Internet Explorer where there is an option to proceed without the plugin. Is there a way to do this within FF?

[Christopher Levy]

Dan,

Yeah I think the code on the site actually SNIFFS whether you have SL Player or not and hands you the appropriate link. I don't think you can select the "standard player link" and in fact I don't see it :)

yeah it won't work on a PowerPC Mac due the old spec of the CPU.

[Kiku]

Why should 'they' decide to exclude Mac OX10.4 users? There should be a workaround. It's truly infuriating to be cut out. Who do I complain to at NBC/MS?

[Keith Boston]

This whole streaming process is terrible. First the forced download of Silverlight which completely crashed my home computer and now fortunately my office computer is prohibited from getting. Then once you figure out that if you use IE, you can actually use the regular Windows Media Player, but it doesnt upload the file, its some sort of weird streaming that only runs in fits and starts? Has anyone at NBC been to Youtube? It works just fine. Why must Microsoft ALWAYS force yet another program on us??

[Christopher Levy]

Keith,

Why don't you provided this feedback to Ben Waggoner @ Microsoft?

You may not be aware Microsoft PAID to provide the video services for the Olympics so the choice to use Silverlight was a no brainer.

It's the first rollout of this massive new technology platform. I think the reviews have been quite positive and I personally like to ask you to send your feedback to Ben Directly at:

Ben.Waggoner@microsoft.com

Regards,

Christopher

[Ben Waggoner]

Hello all, Ben Waggoner from Microsoft here:

http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

@Alfy
Sorry, we weren't able to get the fallback player working in FireFox within our schedule. FireFox 3 is supported for the primary Silverlight experience; we're imagining that the WMP fallback will mainly be used by people in locked-down corporate environments who otherwise couldn't run Silverlight. The developers of the player (we didn't do that part of the project) didn't have time in their schedule to get to it.

@Kiku,
Mac OS X 10.4 is absolutly supported, as long as you've got at least 10.4.8 and an Intel Mac. My wife's been running it fine on her MacBook.

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx?v=2.0#sysreq

@Keith,
If you have a reproducible case of Silverlight crashing your system, we'd absolutely love to get details. Did you okay sending the bug report to Microsoft? We're not aware of crashing issues with the installer at all. Siverlight itself runs in a sandbox, and is only called from within the web browser, and so should have very little effect on your system.

@Christopher
You didn't just type my email address into a public web page did you :).

Is there a link somewhere claiming that there was a financial considertion in the use of Silverlight?

[John Smith]

The current total inability to view any NBC olympic content on Windows 2000, or Linux, really sucks.

There doesn't seem to be a version of Silverlight that doesn't require XP/Vista. Moonlight on Linux is apparently not quite all there.

I shouldn't have to install XP/Vista (or buy a Mac) just to watch the NBC olympics. For me, the NBC online content may as well not be there.

[Ben Waggoner]

@John Smith
The number of people running Windows 2000 or Linux is quite small at this point, and there simply wasn't an adequate alternative that would enable NBC to economically and scalably deliver that much ad-funded video content.

Also, bear in mind that Silverlight isn't the only aspect to NBCOlympics.com; there's also a huge web site in there that also needs to get tested and built against particular browsers. The Linux market is particularly challenging in that it's both small and quite heterogeneous with tons of different distributions and configuration options. It's not like you can test against "Linux 2.6 Service Pack 3"

Note that Silverlight 2 itself runs on Windows 2000 fine; lack of Win2K support wasn't due to that.

[JKent]

"there simply wasn't an adequate alternative that would enable NBC to economically and scalably deliver that much ad-funded video content."

uh, flash!!!??? At least give us PPc Mac users a choice when you detect our system stats.

[joseph]

It's true, not allowing PPC Mac users to view the video in *any* format really sucks, man. I mean, they DO make WMP for the Mac.... This whole silverlight thing has been terrible, I wish there was a way you could make it not to slow and horrible running.

[Larry Johnson]

here's my problem. I ask Silverlight to install when prompted, and it says it does. Then, when I click on "enhanced player", I just get the same prompt all over again, so I can either install again (which, I must say, is getting rather repetitious), or watch in plain old non-Silverlight way.
Why can't I get the player to recognize Sivlerlight has been installed?
I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition with SP1 installed. I have a Dell XPS720 box with 2.40GHz Quad Core processor and 4GB of RAM.

[Anonymous]

@Ben Waggoner
"The number of people running Windows 2000 or Linux is quite small at this point, and there simply wasn't an adequate alternative that would enable NBC to economically and scalably deliver that much ad-funded video content."

Really? Ever heard of the EMBED tag? Simple, effective, portable. All technologies that you already use to deliver video from NBC's site (ASX files, MMS streams, etc) are already well supported in Linux and the majority of the platforms that you're refusing to support at the moment.

In effect, you are refusing to give bread to some people, just because you don't have enough jam for them to go along with it. News flash: people will eat bread even without jam. Every time you throw up a "your platform is not supported" notice, you create an enemy for life. A simple alternative is simply to return a link to the MMS stream and say "you want it, you figure out how to play it". This will work, ads or no ads.

[Marcos]

PITIFUL!!!!!!!!!

You guys really disgust me! I see every stupid event except track and field in the highlights, ok I see (1). I know this is my my second comment but I am appauled at the unfareness you people have displayed. I am unable like many other like me to be allowed to enjoy the full grasp of the Olympics. This is no longer about RED, WHITE and BLUE it's now about BLACK and WHITE and the BLACK and BLUE EYE you have given these Olympics.

PITIFUL!!!!!!!!!!

[Ben Waggoner]

@joseph
Any chance you installed the Silverlight 2 beta SDK? If so, you need a different installer to fix that. Just go to Silverlight.net and install Silverlight 2 Beta 2 from there. It'll then direct you to get the SDK update.

@Larry Johnson
What Linux distributions actually ship with the ability to decode Windows Media streams with ASX support? How consistant is that support. In the end, any publisher has to weigh development and support costs for adding additional platforms versus the additional revenue those customers would provide. Adding support for Linux playback would add enormously to the expense of the project for a very marginal increase in revenue. And with your approach, there wouldn't be any advertising at all, so it'd be all cost and no revenue for NBC.

We're absolutely working on supporting Silverlight on Linux via the Moonlight project. If you're passionate about getting this kind of experience on Linux, your help would be appreciated:
http://alexzambelli.com/blog/2008/08/16/moonlight-20-help-wanted/

@Marcos
You're rather angry over something you're being given for free.

I see 283 track and field videos available at this point:
http://www.nbcolympics.com/trackandfield/video/all/index.html

[Anonymous]

@Ben Waggoner
The earliest support for MMS streams has been available on Linux since around 2000. Here's a (non-exclusive) list of software that supports MMS streams today and is available with any Linux distribution. Most of these also support the WMV9 codecs used to stream the Olympic videos (just google for "wmv9 linux").

http://www.intinor.se/mms/media_players

And here's the beauty of the situation. You have to do ZERO support yourself. There are already dozens of web pages out there explaining how to install all the right video players and libraries for any conceivable Linux distribution. All you have to do, instead of throwing a "your platform is not supported" error, is just provide a link the video stream or asx file and say "this is a WMV9 MMS stream; we haven't had enough time to make it work for your platform 100%, but WE CARE enough to give you a chance to figure it out on your own; ps please watch the ads".

People will pay for convenience, not extortion.

[Guy Mac]

A 17 megabyte download to watch online video? And it doesn't even work on Linux or non-Intel Mac? That is absolutely crazy, given that cross-platform web-based video has been established for years. This is the single point of massive failure on an otherwise excellent site (NBColympics.com).

[Marcos]

@Ben Waggoner
Mr. Brainiac I know it's for free, but that's not the point. The point is I also found over 200 track and field events but the fact that I have to search for it more extensively as oppose to seeing it on HIGHLIGHTS. Than swimming or baseball and fencing along with a sleuth of other sporting events makes it bias. And coincidently the sport I am refering to is heavily dominated by blacks. Please don't mentioned basketball as defense because we all know they would never pass up on lime lighting known name sport celebs like those. Bottom line is if your going to display our American Olympians just do evenly across the board, don't serve me a peanut butter, jelly sandwich and forget to put the jelly, is all I'm saying.

[David]

Hi Ben,
I have the strangest problem. I can view all the LIVE events but when I try the 'rewind' and hightlights I get this msg

"The video you selected is not loading properly. Please try loading again as this may be due to a temporary problem with you internet connection. Our staff has been notified of this error. ... etc. etc"

I've tried several of the rewind, highlights and encore links and get the same message. I know my internet connection is good, because the LIVE events work fine. Its really quite frustrating not to be able to watch the rewinds as most of the live events are in middle of the night!

I'm using Windows XP and Silverlight. Help!!!
Dave

[Mark Kazda]

I have tried unsuccessfully to watch any video through the NBC website.

I have a laptop Dell Inspiron 19300 with Intel 1.73 GHz processor.

OS is MS Windows XP "Media Center Edition" (you would think this is specifically configured for activities as this) version 2002 service pack 2

I go to the NBC website and follow the prompts to view without "Silverlight" and the split screen comes up with the "viewing" portion in the upper left (about 40% of the window) and the NBC Beijing symbol flashes 3 maybe 4 times and then nothing!

This is really frustrating, I don't want to be forced to download any other applications on my computer. I have downloaded a number things on my old computer and a few times it has had a significant negative effect on my computers performance. I am very leery of messing around/altering my current system set-up!

My intention is watch some of the "amateur athletes" in the sports I have the most interest in, Judo, Fencing, Wrestling and Tae Kwon Do.

Please help I really would like to watch some of these videos.

Thank you!

[Ben Waggoner]

@Guy Mac,
Due to some limitations in Apple's packaging technologies, the Silverlight 2 Mac installer is a lot better than the 5 MB Windows installer. Still, if you're watching a Encore stream, you'll use 17 Mb of bandwidth in about 96 seconds; the people who can't download Silverlight wouldn't have been able to stream the media anyway.

@Marcos,
Note that the navigation to the videos is good old HTML. That's NBC's work, and nothing to do with Silverlight or our work on the project. There may be cases where they hold some of the more popular events until after the TV broadcasts.

@David,
Are you still having problems? There were a few intermittant issues along those lines, but hopefully they'll have resolved themselves.

If you're still having trouble, email me directly and we'll see what we can figure out.

@Mark
Ditto; I've never heard of that problem before. If you're still having it, feel free to email me and we'll see what we can figure out.

[Greg Simsar]

I am having the same problem posted by Mark Kazda Wednesday. I've tried on two separate PCs. May not be a Windows XP issue - may be the bandwidth of my INternet provider (I've tried it in Phoenix on Qwest and now in San Diego with COX -s ame result).

The following happens (from Mark's post).

go to the NBC website and follow the prompts to view without "Silverlight" and the split screen comes up with the "viewing" portion in the upper left (about 40% of the window) and the NBC Beijing symbol flashes 3 maybe 4 times and then nothing!

Help.

[Greg Simsar]

FYI, I loaded Silverlight, without incident and everything started working fine. Guess it wasn't the internet provider/connection. Interesting. Greg

[peter]

I HAVE WINDOWS XP SP1, SILVERLIGHT WON'T INSTALL. DON'T KNOW WHY M$ NEED TO FORCE PEOPLE UPGRADE ANYTHING AND WHY NBC DOES NOT PROVIDE NORMAL STREAMING, LIKE ASF, WMV.