NBC will begin streaming 2,200 hours of live, streaming coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games this morning on NBCOlympics.com. This unprecedented coverage has been made possible by the cooperation of NBC, Microsoft and their new Silverlight technology and several other technology companies.

This ambitious goal, if sucessful, will harness the power of the internet to cater to niche interests profitabily. One goal of this coverage is to make rarely televised events like badminton, table tennis, and trampoline available to viewers at home.

Features unique to Silverlight will further enhance online viewers experience with picture-in-picture, community sharing, text commentary, one click fast forward, and more.

With demand for online video and broadband video access at an all time high in America, NBC's broadcast is expected to garner huge audiences. The time difference with Beijing will only further bolster the demand for online, on demand coverage. The content-delivery network is designed to handle 600,000 concurrent viewers with back-up networks in place should the demand exceed that. It will be interesting to see if their systems can stand up to the demand. The U.S. Open garnered 600,000 concurrent streams this year and Oprah's Book Club 525,000. Add to those figures the fact that MSN and Windows Live page nearly 107.3 million unique monthly visitors will all see a prominent ad for NBC's online coverage at the top of the page and the 2008 Summer Olympics could quite possibly double their 600,000 estimate.

NBCOlympics.com has even made viewing their streaming video as easy as possible by offering a Plug-ins Needed link at the bottom of their homepage. The Plug-ins Needed provide quick download links to Adobe Flash Play, Microsoft Silverlight and anything else you might need to enjoy all the content available on the site.