How to Watch the Sochi Olympics Coverage with the BBC iPlayer

NBC received lots of criticisms for its coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics. In fact, it was so bad that there was a twitter hashtash for people to vent their frustrations, #NBCFAIL.

The main complaints included:

No live streaming of the opening ceremony.
Annoying commentary from hosts Matt Lauer & Meredith Viera
Constant interruptions of events to show commercials
NBC were obviously more concerned with maximizing ad revenue rather than providing quality coverage.

Watch the Sochi Olympics with the BBC iPlayer

Opening ceremony for the Sochi Winter Olympics starts Friday morning at 11 a.m. Eastern Time, but it won’t be broadcasted in the U.S. until more than eight hours later because of NBC’s tape-delay. Unfortunately, NBC will not stream it live online either.

With NBC covering the rest of the Winter Olympics in Sochi (NBC has the exclusive rights to cover the Olympics through 2020, will the quality be better this time? As long as corporate advertisers are involved, don’t bet your money on it!

The good news is that there’s an alternative. You can watch the BBC’s (British Broadcasting Corporation) coverage of the Olympics instead with the BBC iPlayer. BBC will stream the opening ceremoney live. Also, BBC’s coverage should be far more superior than NBC because BBC is supported by viewers’ fees and not by the corporate advertisers. You can expect less commercial interruptions with BBC’s coverage for sure!

The iPlayer is the internet media streaming service for BBC. But only those with a UK IP address can access the television service.

Luckily, there’s a workaround. You can use a VPN service and connect to a VPN server in the U.K. The VPN service will then assign you a U.K. IP address and you can access the BBC iPlayer  as if you are residing in the U.K.

Among VPN service providers, AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield Elite is one of the most popular that offers U.K. IP address and fast connection.

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