The most surprising win at the Olympics: Peacock streaming

Right before the pandemic hit, I moved into a new house that was just outside of cable TV coverage. And while I'd dabbled in streaming apps for years, this was the first time I was forced to become a full-time cord-cutter.

(note: I briefly considered getting DirecTV but every rep I talked to tried to give me a hard sell on a long contract which was a huge red flag)

Once I got a stable broadband connection at the new place, I went all-in on streaming services and that's how I've watched TV and movies ever since. I subscribe to so many now that it probably eclipses my pre-internet cable TV bill.

Off the top of my head we pay for:

• YouTubeTV (super expensive around $75/mo)
• Netflix
• Amazon Video
• AppleTV+
• ESPN+
• YouTube Premium
• Hulu
• Max

A couple years ago I got Peacock to enjoy a bunch of TV comedies, then I realized I could see Top Chef on it as well as live motocross, so that stuck around too.

Sports is a huge draw for streaming services, since they know you can find almost any shows they have elsewhere, except for exclusive live sports deals. To watch every women's pro soccer game this season, I use one of four different apps to catch them, due to licensing deals.

My thoughts leading into Paris

I planned to use YouTubeTV for watching Olympics coverage in Paris, since they do a great job with live TV. And since they offer a virtually limitless "DVR" in the cloud and Paris is 9 hours ahead, I figured I'd wake up to events saved in my library every morning. But that wasn't the case, as most NBC stuff was time-shifted for American audiences and heavily edited before broadcast.

I watched a few Paris nightly shows from my local NBC affiliate and they'd frequently only show a couple rounds from a high jump or a shot put while jumping between swimming or half a volleyball game. Super annoying when you get into an event and want to see absolutely everything that takes place as it builds to the medal rounds.

Tell me what you want what you really really want

The few times I've been in Europe, I distinctly remember turning on a hotel TV and seeing sports feeds that last for many hours. If there was a major tennis tournament and you're sitting in Belgium, you could watch each and every match and it played for what seemed like 12 hours a day live on a few channels, and usually without much commentary or commercials.

What you get from Peacock that TV can't duplicate

Before the opening ceremonies took place, a few sports began with early qualifiers. I quickly realized only the events the US was doing well in would end up on YouTubeTV, but I could catch the rest on Peacock's app in their Olympics area.

Then I realized the Olympics area of the Peacock app was much more comprehensive than my tracked olympics sports in YouTubeTV, because I wasn't seeing a four hour highly edited variety show that might barely include what I want—instead with Peacock, it was exactly the full event I wanted, mostly uncut and ad-free.

I quickly fell in love with this and tracked BMX, Skateboarding, track and field, soccer, beach volleyball, indoor volleyball, rock climbing, rugby sevens, gymnastics, and surfing events.

Surfing events were especially good since due to the high variability found in nature, surfing heats last around a half hour and the surfers might be floating in the water bobbing around for ten minutes between wave sets. Each morning I could get up, load up the latest surfing qualifier, then fast forward like mad until a heat started and someone caught an actual wave.

Each day's typical surf session was four hours on Peacock, but there was really only about ten great waves to see, and the fast forward controls were a godsend.

I'm not a huge sports nut, but I found myself tracking almost a dozen sports and following them from the initial qualifiers all the way to the final medal matches. It was exactly how I wanted to access the olympics and I had no idea Peacock could deliver it so well.

Also? It worked!

The other big surprise with Peacock is it never went down, and I never saw a delay from buffering that lasted more than a few milliseconds. I don't know how many people signed up for it, and I don't know what their cloud hosting bills are like, but I got flawless high definition streams with no delays consistently for three weeks, despite possibly millions of other subscribers doing the same as me.

I believe I'm on a Premiere Plus plan and it not only was it reliable, but it was almost entirely ad-free. Commercial breaks were auto-cut from replays (occasionally annoying when you miss a minute or two of play action) and during live events a generic photo of the Eiffel Tower would sit where ads would normally play.

Peacock's painstakingly comprehensive Olympics coverage was quite good this year. It let me experience the games in a way I've never been able to before and I really enjoyed every minute of it. I hope all future Olympics both Winter and Summer are like this and I'll remain a happy subscriber as long as they do.