NBC complaint: Chaos trying to stream the olympics

We have tried to stream the olympics through SlingTV, nbcolympics.com, and the Peacock app. Each has its own issues.

I paid for a premium Peacock subscription just to stream the olympics. We we’re so bummed when it became clear that we couldn’t stream live and only certain sporting events’ replays would be available through the app. We paid extra to not have commercials, but we still had to fast forward through a static image that served as a placeholder for the duration of commercials – a nuisance that turned infuriating when we couldn’t see a preview while fast forwarding, leading us to guess and check if we had fast forwarded enough. There have also been several times that replays are incomplete (for example the second half of a volleyball match is missing) or fast forwarding has caused the replay to start over completely.

We subscribed to SlingTV so that we could stream the Olympics through that app – hopefully with a better user-experience and more content options. Not so. Video quality is often poor and only limited content is available.

At no time in subscribing to either service was I warned that only limited Olympic content would be available.

Finally, we’ve tried streaming the olympics through nbcolympics.com. This is where we have found the most content – that is, access to all sports, not just the typical popular ones. However, we still had to face ads even with our premium SlingTV subscription AND have run into multiple and regular glitches during playback. There’s also no clean way to watch through the website on my smart TV – I technically can do it, but it’s cumbersome and lags.

We’re so frustrated that access to content has been ridiculously cumbersome, that interfaces and user-experience have not been at all user-friendly, and that even when we find something to watch we run into numerous glitches.

We’ve also inadvertently encountered several spoilers while navigating the interfaces because of titles like “Great Britain Ends America’s Hopes in Rugby…” (paraphrased).

What an absolute user nightmare.