The games are almost upon us. Paul McCartney is prepping his hair and getting ready to treat us to a track by wings (they're only the band the Beatles could have been). Beckham is getting ready to ride a horse and Daniel Craig is going to wow us with a soliloquy from Shakespeare's sonnets. All the while a hundred British Bulldogs are going to be playing British Bulldog in the middle of the Olympic stadium.
This is at least what we guess will happen. Should you not want to miss such a dog-filled extravaganza, or the chance to witness Brian May's hair catch fire, then viewing it online is definitely an option. But where to do it?
BBC Sport and BBC iPlayer
The government has already warned that ISPs and broadband speed might suffer a tad under the weight of the Olympic games. Expect plenty of spinning buffer wheels to be plaguing your laptop during the games.
Still if you have the connection, then the BBC has an incredible amount of content on offer. Head over the BBC Sport website or fire up iPlayer. The Live tab on the BBC Sport website is where most of the real excitement is going to happen, with coverage of absolutely everything going on during the games.
There is also a BBC Olympics app for smartphones and tablets as well as Smart TVs which we put through its paces back when it was announced in May. If you fancy reading about it then check that out here.
Alternatively you can simply download the apps for either Android here or the iPhone here. For things like TiVo and Smart TVs, you should find them added to the relevant app stores.
Go to TVCatchup
Another solution, should you be struggling to make headway with the BBC, is to use TVCatchup. The website is basically a way to stream various TV channels, pretty much all of FreeView, over the web and even 3G on your phone.
This does mean however that you are restricted to the standard BBC channels on offer over terrestrial TV and that you cannot use any of the clever services that the BBC Sport website manages. Still though if you are after a way to watch the 100 metre finals and iPlayer is just clogged up, then TVCatchup could be a good alternative
Viewing abroad
iPlayer doesn't work for everyone. What if you don't live in the UK? There are some alternatives, take NBC for example, which has pretty much the same setup as the BBC except for conversely it doesn't work in the UK, only in the US.
The other option is to Google specific events and of course look at things on YouTube. It might be that you don't get to see things live straight away, but there is no doubt anything exciting will get uploaded near instantly.
Sky Go
If you are a Sky subscriber then another way of doing things would be to watch the BBC's main coverage using the Sky Go app on tablets or your desktop. This way you can even get a multi-room setup going on should some other people fancy watching different events.
If you are a Sky subscriber but are yet to try Sky Go, then head over here.
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