Watch Olympics opening ceremony online?

[renzhe]

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who found the German commentating awful. When they replayed the opening ceremony the next day, they replaced the commentators. Lots of negative comments, apparently.

[Yuchi]

They were replaced? What did they say?

[renzhe]

They weren't fired or anything, but apparently, they replaced the original commentators' tone track with new commentators for the replay.

Read posts #300 and #312.

It's not that I think that some criticism and mention of the controversies shouldn't be present, but the tone of many comments was below any level of decency, especially for a public TV station. And completely out of place.

[Meng Lelan]

That high diving kid of the UK team is cute.

Skylee, that should be Tom Blakey (sp?), he is only 14 years old is what NBC said.

[Quest]

I watched both the NBC and BBC versions. I think NBC has much better commentaries than BBC, but they cut out a lot of scenes due to commercials and broadcast time I suppose. The NBC HD version is available for download if you have Vista Windows Media Center. I think this is one event that video quality makes a huge difference. I watched the BBC version in somewhat high quality (+1000kbps) but still, it doesn't compare to the HD version available from nbcolympics.com. I have not been able to find a Chinese version for download yet... and I'd like to see HK's version as well.

With HD from NBC, and for the first time, I was very impressed by these ceremonies, I think they have done a spectacular job putting these shows together. Props to NBC's commentators still, I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much with BBC's version, whose cameras (probably not theirs but still, their choice of footage) failed quite a few times to capture the scene at the right angles and distances. Not sure if it was because of video quality and that I saw BBC's after NBC's that I came to these conclusions.

[cdn_in_bj]

I watched the Opening Ceremonies from my friend's place on HD (CCTV) broadcast. I was blown away by the opening countdown that was done by the drummers. At first, I didn't realize it was drummers that was doing that. Also, Li Ning's torch lighting didn't disappoint - I'm glad the rumours of the giant panda turned out to be false! Anyways, these two segments made the biggest impression on me. Oh, and the fireworks were awesome! Though the aerial shot of the "footprints" appeared to be computer generated, though it could've been because they were using a non-HD feed for that shot. Overall, very impressive and moving.

I heard on the radio that they're going to be releasing a DVD of this next week. I'll post details once I find them.

[gougou]

Though the aerial shot of the "footprints" appeared to be computer generated

Apparently they were. See CDT's translation here. (Seems they are still blocked; Chinese source is here)

[imron]

Is there any online footage of the footprints anywhere? A quick search on Youtube for beijing olympic fireworks footprints doesn't seem to turn up anything.

[liuzhou]

Youtube etc are taking stuff down quicker than it can be put up. They're going all out to protect copyright - somewhat ironic.

[Quest]

mininova has quite a few versions up already. The TVB version is a massive 42GB file....

[liuzhou]

The TVB version is a massive 42GB file....

I'd like to watch it before the London Olympics. China Telecom's transfer rate may make that impossible!

[Outofin]

The NBC HD version is available for download if you have Vista Windows Media Center.

I do, but how?

[Shadowdh]

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who found the German commentating awful. When they replayed the opening ceremony the next day, they replaced the commentators. Lots of negative comments, apparently.

Too right too... what a terrible shame on them..

[Shadowdh]

I'd like to watch it before the London Olympics. China Telecom's transfer rate may make that impossible!

Yeah but not the UK's BT... slow, intermittent and customer service always places the blame on our phones and not their line...

Been watching the olympics with interest and they seem to have nailed this event... the venues look awesome, the athletes seem happy with things so far and most things run quite well... contrast that with the UKs effort... they might have an agreement in place to do the building work by the end of the year... thats not the work started mind, just an agreement to start the work... sheesh...

[Quest]

I watched the korean and cctv versions. The cctv narrators annoyed me. I wonder when they will speak like a normal person. This goes for the politicians too. It's always like they are giving a passionate declamation.

[cdn_in_bj]

I watched both the NBC and BBC versions. I think NBC has much better commentaries than BBC, but they cut out a lot of scenes due to commercials and broadcast time I suppose. The NBC HD version is available for download if you have Vista Windows Media Center. I think this is one event that video quality makes a huge difference. I watched the BBC version in somewhat high quality (+1000kbps) but still, it doesn't compare to the HD version available from nbcolympics.com. I have not been able to find a Chinese version for download yet... and I'd like to see HK's version as well.

That's interesting. All of my coworkers (locals) are saying that NBC's version is better than the Chinese (CCTV) version. Something about the Chinese version having too many shots of gov't officials, and in the process missing out on some important scenes. I'm not sure how they'd know this, but looking at photos on the opening ceremonies there are details that I don't remember seeing in the CCTV broadcast. If NBC's HD broadcast is indeed available for download, I'd be very interested in that.

[skylee]

I find this editorial amusing -> 京 奧 開 幕 式 有 違 傳 統 先 哲 理 念

[imron]

I heard that apparently the NBC footage was rearranged, so that the US team came out later in the order that what they actually did (presumably to keep people watching their TVs), and so in some shots in the footage you can see the US team standing in the center of the stadium before they had shown the footage of the US team coming onto the ground.

[Quest]

All HD versions are available for download now. The NBC version is good, but they cut out a lot of stuff. I can't stand the cctv version with those North Korean style narrators. I enjoyed the mbc Korean version too, they very detailed onscreen explanations of events and their commentators are the least distracting, and it almost seemed like their had their own cameras.

[cdn_in_bj]

First the digitally-created footage of the "footsteps", and now this:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/12/olympic.ceremony.lip.synche.ap/index.html

"The national interest requires that the girl should have good looks and a good grasp of the song and look good on screen," Chen said. "Lin Miaoke was the best in this. And Yang Peiyi's voice was the most outstanding."

So Peiyi's voice was matched with Miaoke's face.

"We had to make that choice. It was fair both for Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi," Chen told Beijing Radio. "We combined the perfect voice and the perfect performance."

It was pretty obvious that all of the singing performances were pre-recorded, but I'd expected that the voice I heard belonged to the little girl on stage. Does anyone remember Milli Vanilli?