NBC plans to stream Olympics online

from variety

Microsoft, NBC team on Olympics
Duo to offer games on demand
By BEN FRITZ

Microsoft kicked off the Consumer Electronics Show on Sunday night by
announcing a major partnership with NBC to webcast the Olympic games
on demand.

Tech giant?s MSN unit is teaming with the Pea*** to run
NBCOlympics.com for the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. Virtually every
event will be available both as a live stream and on demand. Companies
will split revenue from online ads.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, assisted by top execs including
entertainment and devices prexy Robbie Bach, also unveiled major
partnerships with media players including MGM, CNN, ABC-Disney TV and
Showtime as part of his annual CES opening keynote.

Speech kicked off a confab that?s expected to be more crowded with
showbizzers than ever before. Though no Hollywood execs are giving
major addresses, as Bob Iger and Leslie Moonves did last year, every
studio has a major presence.

Sony, in particular, will not only be showing off its vast array of
hardware but also putting on a separate event today featuring Sony
Pictures TV, which has been driving digital distribution deals for the
studio.

As adoption rates pick up rapidly, high definition is expected to be a
major topic of discussion at the event. High-def DVDs have taken a
different spin going into CES, however, as Warner Bros.? decision to
switch to Blu-ray caused the HD DVD consortium to cancel a press event
planned for Sunday night.

The other major topic will likely be mobile technology. Driven in part
by the success of Apple?s iPhone, tech companies are eager to up the
capabilities of their devices, and content providers are eager to get
music and video onto them.

In a direct challenge to the iPhone, Sony was expected to announce at
its press event Sunday night that it is adding the Internet telephone
service Skype to its PSP handheld gaming system. PSP already plays
music and video, like the iPhone. With communications capabilities
added, it will have most of the features of the Apple device, along
with the ability to play games. One major drawback, however: It?s not
compatible with the ultra-popular iTunes.

Gates? speech was the biggest CES event on Sunday, however, and the
Olympics partnership the biggest news Gates shared with the tens of
thousands of attendees. Though the Pea*** has provided video before
on its NBCOlympics.com site, it has never come close to webcasting
every event, as Microsoft is hoping to.

?By making the Olympics personalizable and delivering it on demand, we
think we can have a sports event similar to Live Earth,? Bach said in
a pre-show interview, referring to last summer?s concert that was
streamed more than 9 million times on MSN.

Though the videogame biz doesn?t traditionally have a big presence at
CES, both Microsoft and Sony were expected to use their Sunday night
events to tout their respective consoles.

Microsoft announced that it has sold 17.7 million Xbox 360s worldwide
as of the end of the year and bragged that it generated $3.5 billion
in total consumer spending on hardware, games and accessories in North
America, compared to about $2.5 billion for Nintendo?s Wii and $1.5
billion on Sony?s PlayStation 3.

Microsoft sold 7.3 million Xbox 360s in 2007, a slowdown from 2006 and
significantly less that Nintendo?s Wii, which hasn?t released final
figures but likely sold more than twice as many. Xbox 360 owners are
spending substantially more on games and accessories than Wii owners,
however, which makes the competition much tighter on overall revenue.

?The data is showing that we have a much richer environment, while the
range of what the Wii offers is relatively narrow,? Bach said.

Sony, meanwhile, released only holiday sales figures, noting that from
Thanksgiving through the end of the year, it sold 1.2 million PS3s,
1.4 million PSPs and 1.2 million PlayStation 2s in North America. For
the PS3, the numbers are an improvement on previously sluggish sales
but still well behind the competition.

Microsoft also announced that ABC-Disney TV is adding TV shows and MGM
pics to the Xbox Live Video Marketplace, which lets gamers download
movies and TV shows to a 360 console. They join Paramount, Warner
Bros., CBS, Fox, New Line and Disney on the service, the only video
download store with high- definition content. Sony is working on a
similar video download service for PS3 that?s expected to launch later
this year.

Bach also discussed Microsoft?s Internet TV software, recently renamed
Media Room, which, after years of little progress, broke the 1 million
subscriber mark globally as telcos start to roll it out worldwide. CNN
and Showtime are both designing special interactive services intended
to work with Media Room.
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