You may recall my post a few weeks ago regarding the online viewing options for the Olympics this year.

There will also be an online option. NBCOlympics.com will feature approximately 2,200 total hours of live streaming Olympic broadband video coverage, the first live online Olympic coverage in the United States. No indication of special requirements although this site notes Vista and Microsoft Silverlight. I think the only part they got right is probably the Silverlight piece. I’ve downloaded it (a cross-browser cross-platform plug-in according to Microsoft’s site) and I’ll do some testing on my Mac and PC. It’s optimized for HD and streaming it appears but it’s also in Beta so we’ll see what’s ready on August 6th.

I watched the US Women’s game today (spoiler alert) on the website and I was very impressed. The experience was smooth and has very good quality. The delayed viewing is pretty cool as well. Once the video loads, you can scroll to any point in the game and start and stop as if it was your own DVR. No commentary except for text scrolling below the screen so it’s as pure an experience as you can get after the initial 30 second advertisement.

I’m using Silverlight inside Firefox v3 which is even better in the sense that Microsoft has come up with a cross-browser solution. Something Yahoo has yet to accomplish with their Launchcast music service which has been, until recently, my proffered music streaming choice. Go download them both and enjoy!