NBCSports.com's first live stream of the Super Bowl performed capably for much of the game, particularly the feed for tablet devices. The site saw what was believed to be higher-than-normal traffic compared to a normal feed of "Sunday Night Football." However, using a Safari browser on a New Jersey-based Comcast Internet connection, the PC-based stream showed significant buffering, delays and dropouts during the early portion of the game. The online feed comparatively showed much more stability and reliability within the Firefox browser. As expected, both the tablet and online feeds lagged behind the live TV feed by about 20-30 seconds, and contained a variety of alternate camera angles, statistics, highlights and links to the commercials airing on TV. NBC and parent company Comcast were actively evaluating the online feed, with monitors stationed around the country. NBCSports.com finished the first-ever live stream of the Super Bowl with a quintet of advertisers: GM, Anheuser-Busch supporting several of its beer brands, Samsung, General Electric and Relativity Media for the upcoming film, "Act of Valor." The GM ads for its Chevrolet brand included online-only spots featuring actor Rainn Wilson of "The Office," with links to Chevrolet's YouTube channel (Eric Fisher, SportsBusiness Journal). STREAMINGMEDIA.com's Tim Siglin noted the NFL's first attempt to stream the Super Bowl "is to be commended," but it "wasn't ready for its prime time debut, on either the single mobile platform or the Silverlight-based desktop streaming." Viewers "might have expected quality on par with" clips from earlier playoff games, but "even that sub-standard quality ranks higher" than last night's effort (STREAMINGMEDIA.com, 2/5).
