Watching the Olympics on your Android Device-Olympic app review

I love watching the Olympics. I even enjoy watching events that I really don't care about. I love the passion and determination of the athletes. I love reading and watching stories about how they got there; the physical and financial anguish that they endured; the support of friends, families and sponsors. It's all just some pretty inspirational shit. Especially the shotput guys who have to work three jobs to finance their training. Odds are you won't see any of them on the front of a Wheaties box.

But, mostly I love watching boxing and basketball. And for the first week and a half, you don't see too much of those sports unless you watch the secondary channels in non-primetime.

So, I decided that I'd download the NBC Olympic app which gives you the opportunity (allegedly) to watch live broadcasts of whatever the hell is happening at the very moment it's happening as well as giving you the ability to pick any day, click on the specific event and watch what happened when it happened, even if you happened to be sleeping when it happened. Sounds too cool to be true.

So, I went to the Google Play Store (formerly the Market) and searched for the NBC Olympic app. There it is.

The first thing you notice is the rating score for the app: 2 and a half stars. Uh oh. This is gonna suck.

Reading through the reviews I found a dozen or so bitter, hating comments out of the first twenty. Bitching about the developers, hating NBC for not hiring better developers, screen is black, app won't open, force closes and so on. Then, a review stating that they don't get why so many people are complaining, because it works perfect for them. Five stars.

Then, eight more crappy comments followed by a couple more four and five stars talking about how cool the app works.

Okay, maybe NBC should employ a better developer, OR perhaps the phone manufacturers need to produce phones that can handle the apps that are being developed. If I were in the market for an app that could deliver big-time, grown-up video content I would look into whoever made the apps for HBO Go and Crackle.


Anyhow, I download the app, load it on my HTC Thunderbolt 4G phone, and it works exactly as claimed. I found myself able to pick a day, pick an event and watch it. Or, I could click on a live event and immediately was taken to the live feed with almost no issues.

Today, after finding the USA vs. Australia basketball game, I needed to get some work done and took my laptop out on my deck. Not wanting to miss the rest of the game, I opened the NBC Olympic app, clicked on the live game and watched it on my phone as I worked.

So...bottom line is, download the app, give it a try and if it doesn't work very well for you then either get a new phone or suck it up and forget it. Maybe it will be better for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Note: this is an app that lets you watch the actual Olympics, not an  Olympics game that lets you play.

nbsp;