We bought a high definition television at the beginning of the year, and had cable installed for local and national HDTV broadcasts. The picture difference is remarkable: George W. Bush has hair in his ears (discovered during the State of the Union address) and that's a cityscape behind Jay Leno not a large number four. So we were looking forward to HDTV's coverage of the Olympic games, as sporting events really take on a new life with the sharpness of the picture.

Which is why we were quite surprised to discover that the opening ceremonies, which were taped earlier in the day, started at 8pm on the normal NBC station, but NBC on HD was showing footage from the 2002 Olympics. An hour later, they began showing the footage from Athens. The only thing we could figure is that NBC was trying not to compete with themselves?

Except, when we turned on NBC HD today, they were still showing the opening ceremonies. In fact, just as soon as the four hour coverage of the opening ceremonies ended, they began replaying it. No, I didn't watch it--I checked NBC's schedule, which has them repeating the opening ceremonies on their HD channel repeatedly for 24 hours. And, since I was on their site, I checked their "400 hours" of HD coverage, and was unsurprised to learn that it's only 120 hours, repeated three or four times (false advertising, methinks). And none of the equestrian coverage (what we were looking forward to seeing) is on HD, but relegated to CNBC, Bravo and the USA Network.

That's not to mention how bad the announcers are. At least during the Democratic Convention I had the choice to turn over to CSPAN to get away from the blatherings of supposed expert commentators. Bob Costas and Katie Couric spewed inane commentary through the opening ceremonies like they were in the high box during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Strangely, the HD opening ceremony coverage used different announcers, although their script was equally atrocious.