The first ever Youth Olympic Games starts today. I have not posted about it a lot lately because I wasn’t sure how people were going to watch it. You can watch about any sport that you want on television today… you can even watch the Visa Gymnastics Championships… but you can’t watch the Youth Olympics on television. I’m not sure why NBC isn’t playing even the opening ceremonies on any of its stations, but evidently infomercials are going to attract more interest.

If you live in the US, it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to Tivo the Youth Olympics. Or watch it on your television. Which is a shame; I like to use my exercise bike while watching sports. However, you can watch it on the Internet. You don’t even have to catch it live (which is good, because the opening ceremonies were on at 2 AM Arizona time/5 AM Eastern time). Head on over to the Youth Olympics Broadcasting page and you can watch them on demand. The opening ceremonies are already on.

Now, it’s nice that you can watch these on your computer… maybe by the 2012 Innsbruck games, we can get some of the events on the television too.

The Youth Olympics will be streamed live over the Internet. I like to watch my television via Tivo, so that’s not going to work well for me. If they podcasted the YOG, that would work well too. Then I could just download the events to my iPod. That’s doubtful, as the Olympic organizers (at least in the past) haven’t been hot on letting their stuff be electronically distributed like that.

I know that Universal Sports is going to be streaming it. There should be some television coverage according to recent reports, but how much, I don’t know yet.

Olympians tend to do well on Dancing with the Stars. Just ask Apolo Anton Ohno. Or Shawn Johnson. Or Kristi Yamaguchi. They all have won on this television show, which makes Olympians 1/3 of the Stars’ winners. Evan Lysacek is expected to do well this season. Las Vegas bookmakers expect him to win, and give him a 1.25:1 shot.

Many of the skills that you need for skating transfer over to dancing. On the ice, Lysacek needs strength, flexibility, and timing. All of these will help with his budding dancing career.

On Monday Night’s Dancing with the Stars premiere, Lysacek and his partner scored the second-highest score of the evening.

Sales and viewership of the Paralympics have been stronger than was originally expected. The Paralympics will have a total of 60 hours of broadcast coverage in Canada.

United States viewers will still have to watch the Paralympics on the Internet.

I personally never thought much about the Paralympics until 2008, when Natalie du Toit entered the Open Water Swim, becoming one of the few people to participate in both the Olympics and Paralympics. I’m not even sure that I had heard about them prior to that. I was impressed by her story, and I’m sure that there are a couple hundred other great stories like hers in the Paralympics. With a potential treasure-trove of human interest stories in the Paralympics, I wonder why they are not more popular. Here are some of my ideas:

• The Paralympics, which are competitive, are confused with the Special Olympics, which encourage trying and feeling good about participation
• People are uncomfortable with seeing disabled people because they are reminded of their own fragility
• Most disabled people that the average person comes in contact with is old and perhaps a little slow. Perhaps they get the impression that the events will not be that exciting.
• The most popular events, like short track speed skating, figure skating, and snowboarding, are not Paralympic events (yet).
• The Paralympics do not have the same kind of advertisement
• The Paralympics are not broadcast on television.

What are your thoughts?

His body was found in Vancouver’s Stanley Park yesterday. His parents believe that he committed suicide. He was depressed prior to his death. Prior to leaving his Venice, California apartment, he had been giving away some of his things. He left for Vancouver to visit friends, and then never returned on his flight home.

Growing Pains was one of the most popular television shows in the 1980s, back in a time when many people used to watch the same shows in the evening. His death is a sad event for many.

Be aware that NBC has long blocks of time, so you may need to set up a manual recording, or record the whole thing, even if you only want to watch a small part. Also, you can watch some events online.

If you’re itching to watch Olympic programming now, and don’t want to wait another two weeks, Audi’s Truth in Motion will be something you want to watch. Follow the US Ski team as they get ready for the big day; see what it takes to reach the highest form of competition.

The video airs tomorrow at 8 PM Eastern and Pacific. If you can’t catch it then or forget to DVR it, you can watch it again on USA Network on February 6th, at 5 PM.

For more information and to see the trailer, you can visit the Truth In Motion Movie web site.

As an Olympics fan, I like to catch as much of the Olympics as I can. Unfortunately, real life intrudes, and I sometimes can’t be at the television at the same time as it is airing. Fortunately, as of the 2006 Torino Olympics, I don’t have to worry about that.

We got our Tivo in early 2006. The main reason that I can remember that is that I had a dinner to go to on the night of the opening ceremonies. I Tivo’ed the Opening Ceremonies, and many other events that year, and was able to see just about as much of the Olympics that I wanted.

One of the things that I like best about Tivo’ing the Olympics is that I can skip through the commercials. Now, some of the commercials are pretty cool, but how many times do you have to watch them? Also, you can fast-forward through events that aren’t your favorites; NBC likes to combine several differend events in one four-hour block. I personally am not as big of a fan of the team sports, so I tend to fast-forward through a lot of them.

I bought my Tivo with a lifetime subscription, which is nice, because I don’t have to worry about monthly fees. It was quite a bit to pay for up front, but we still have our first Tivo, four years later, and our initial $300 subscription fee has averaged $6.25 per month, if we stopped using our Tivo today (it’s still working fine, although we have talked about upgrading to a Tivo with more storage).

Unfortunately, the new HD Tivos don’t work with satellite. I’m not sure why, but I have tried the DirecTV DVR, and it pales in comparison to Tivo. In fact, when we owned the DirecTV DVR, we had a Tivo at the same time, and we almost never used it. The only time we used it was if we had to record two different shows that were on at the same time.

It’s not too late to get a Tivo for the Olympics; I won’t even be able to start telling Tivo to start recording the Olympics until 3 or so days from now. If you can’t actually make it to the games, I would recommend getting a Tivo (if you don’t already have one) so that you don’t miss a minute.

Another feature that helps to watch the Olympics is the Tivo Desktop. My Tivo is really old and only has 40 hours of storage space; during the Olympics, I often have to shuffle some of the Olympic videos off to my computer hard drive in order to make more room on my Tivo. Tivo Desktop is free, although there is a Desktop Plus model that you can buy that allows you to transfer the recordings to your iPod or other mobile device.