Downloading Olympics programming in HD from NBC involves using a private P2P network, some DRM, and a little bit of luck. After a few mishaps, I’m finally subscribed for some automatic Olympic programming updates.
I had to use Explorer to do this, as Firefox 3 isn’t supported by the DRM plugin NBC uses, and neither is any form of Linux or any version of Windows older than XP SP2. But that’s OK as my current home setup runs Ubuntu in a virtual machine alongside Windows Vista. So we have no more dual-booting or any of that nonsense. The ease with which we can switch operating systems these days is sick.
I’m downloading with TVTonic and NBCOlympics.com and neither is using any form of P2P. I’ve not seen a single instance where I’m uploading data to other peers.
NBC claims that some of their HD downloads use a private P2P network, but they could be lying, And it may also be the case that the download you’re doing isn’t one of the happy ones.
It’s possible they use P2P somewhere within their network for internal distribution. However, I’ve never seen any upload activity for the medium-resolution content on NBCOlympics.com nor have I seen any upload activity on the TVTonic high-resolution content. The distribution of Olympics content appear to be CDN but that’s not hard to believe since YouTube traffic is still orders of magnitude bigger than Olympics coverage.