BitTorrent Downloads Reveal Huge Unmet Demand For Olympics Coverage
Aug 14th, 2008 | By James Lewin | Category: Internet TV, Video 
NBC says that as much as 8% of its Olympic audience is viewing the event online, but it’s becoming clear that there’s a huge number of people that that are turning to unofficial channels because of restrictions and limitations of official Olympics coverage.
In fact, the number of people turning to unofficial Olympic offerings appears to be in the millions. According to TorrentFreak, a blog that covers BitTorrent news, “The broadcast of the Olympics opening ceremony has been downloaded more than a million times already, and the download counters go up every day.”
“The most popular version of the opening ceremony is the HD release, a massive 5GB file,” notes TorrentFreak’s Ernesto. “At the time of publication more than 60,000 people are downloading the torrent, while over a million people have already downloaded the opening ceremony via BitTorrent.”
Cute…
People would rather get an unofficial version from somebody with a HD camera, somebody who’s right there with the story, than the “ideal” boring ol’ coverage from officious, uh, official sources…
What next?
Sponsors NOT lining up heart-to-heart, checkbook-to-checkbook, forming ranks to pay the official “broadcast media”?
You sir clearly do not know what you’re talking about – it’s not a version that someone used a camcorder for, it’s a direct high definition stream rip from the national broadcasters that are showing the content over the airwaves.