So. Let’s recap 2008’s Olympics coverage. NBC got Microsoft to front a good portion of the development costs for a video platform that didn’t meet expectations, and they forced those who wanted to watch in high quality on-demand to view on Television or on Vista.

That’s good for NBC, their TV ratings have been stellar. While a lot of people watched online, most chose to watch on the main screen most of the time because the digital experience left a lot to be desired.

And it’s great for Microsoft which got its Silverlight adoption event, had no major issues with the Silverlight 2.0 release and received exclusivity over high quality downloadable VOD delivered by TVTonic to Vista machines only.

While some (or many) will whine about the fact that they could have done better, TV has penetration in 98.2% of U.S. homes, it’s still about making money and the Olympics is about selling ads. NBC Universal is part of a publicly traded company and unlike the BBC they’re in business for their shareholders.

We may be less than impressed with what was offered versus what might have been, but when it comes down to it NBC offered more HD television and online video coverage of a live event than anyone ever. They maximized their audience and their profit by using both mediums to their advantage, and if they can do that, why would they do anything else?

NBC has soft launched their Silverlight powered Olympics portal and it’s pretty cool. There should be more to play with as we get closer to the games so it’s not entirely fair to judge it at this point but overall the interface is clean and user friendly, and for the moment at least it seems to work well.

Noticably missing is a full-screen mode, varying quality options, and the picture-in-picture and three small video windows in the 4-screen live video control room are so small that they don’t add much.

Some screenshots are below, check it out for yourself at NBCOlympics.com.

Above: Opening Video Page

Above: Live Video Control Room

Above: Large Screen w/ PIP

The question is whether it will scale, the video quality in the player leaves something to be desired, and it doesn’t appear at least from what I’ve seen that the player is using the adaptive bitrate streaming capability of the Silverlight 2.0 plugin. When there are thousands of concurrent viewers, there may be a completely different viewing experience.