Manage your Summer Olympics viewing experience

NBC's multimedia streaming won't be limited to desktop PCs. NBC will have a dedicated live-streaming mobile channel, NBC-to-Go, that will carry feeds from NBC's television networks. However, the channel will be available only on AT&T cellular phones. Don't have an AT&T phone? Then you won't be able to watch live feeds--but you can access video highlights of various events via a WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) version of NBCOlympics.com on any WAP-enabled cellular phone.

Also in the works as of press time: NBC Olympics On-the-Go, which is designed to enable you to take prerecorded video content with you for viewing on your laptop when you travel.

Beefy Broadband Needed for Olympics Viewing

Want to enjoy the Olympics online? You'll need a broadband pipe that's big enough to meet the demands of NBC's Silverlight video player. According to Schematic, which designed the player for NBC, the Popup mode (a small pop-up screen that coexists with your spreadsheets and Word docs) will require a 512-kbps broadband connection plus either a PC with a 2.4-GHz Pentium 4 CPU and 512MB of RAM or an Intel-based Mac PC.

The player's Enhanced mode and Live Control Room mode--for viewing content and multiple video feeds, respectively--require a 768-kbps broadband connection, a spec that lies beyond the reach of many lower tiers of DSL and even some cable broadband services. To use these modes, you must also have a PC equipped with a 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 processor and 1GB of memory, or an Intel-based Mac.