TV review: Beijing, a tough act to follow

Great olympics, only barely passable coverage. TVNZ clearly does not want the olympics that badly so I'm glad it's going to sky next time. We will be able to watch all of the road race, the swimming, the track and field and the team sports as sky will have three of four channels going at once.

Brendon Telfer made some gaffes too..most notably in the mens triathlon when he kept on saying both the leaders on the bike were from belgium...they weren't one was from luxemborg.

In response to Mark

Yes it was a lot of money. Yes it could've been spent on "more important" things.

But the Olympics is the closest thing to world peace we are ever going to get.

You should be ashamed of YOURself for posting such a one eyed comment

The greatest Spectacle on earth Top show my fellow little Chinese friends, from start to finish this is what a billion people all working to one goal can achieve. Such an epic two weeks, i believe we will never witness anything that will top this in our life time. Sure their human wrights is poor perhaps shocking, but you have to give it to them, China are now the world power and what a way to announce it. I cant say Im to excited about London, there is no way a bunch of fat useless poms are going to be able to put on half a show like Beijing.

The games were great but I missed most of the stupendousness given it was screening in the wee hours of the morning. Noone can put down the fact that the Chinese did a fantastic job and human rights abuses aside they did it their way and it worked because they re still one of the remaining large countries that can exercise a good degree of control over their people to do the right thing. Overall the venues were fantastic and we were able to absorb ourselves in the competition without thinking of the host venue which is how any Olympics should be England will never be able to replicate this and it really cannot as it represents the now rag tag but relatively free-thinking West. It will give to the games a flavour of its own and you can bet there will be some controversies and some interesting features. The biggest concern in my view will be the security and the threat of terrorist attacks. I would think that no two-bit terrorist would dare act up in China in the main core of the Olympic festivities because of the fearsome consequences that would arise if they did. This may not be the case in the more chaotic GB but you can bet they will be pragmatic in their approach given their wide experience of terrorist activities.

Yes I agree with what they say about the verbal commentary given by the TVNZ presenters. They act as though as they were at some private BBQ spouting their arrogant opinions (are they products of the 70's??). Give us a change and with some more intelligently oriented people who report on the sports more than the personal appearances of athletes. At least with the pommy games we can expect to see these in either the evening or the morning given the 12 hour time difference and by that time

TVNZ Sports Extra (channel 20 on Freeview) was excellent. No advertising and no cutting away at inappropriate times to cover another event. As has been mentioned, it was a shame that Freeview didn't use this as a marketing tool. The sad thing is that Sports Extra has now gone back to "test card" mode. If TVNZ held the rights, I would more than happy if they filled up the next couple of months showing full unedited footage of the games - especially everything that wasn't shown the first-time around which when you consider the number of sports at the Olympics, would have been a hell of a lot. Glad to see that the commentators took on board the criticism which had been directed at them and mostly kept their mouths shut during the closing ceremony. Not so happy to hear that Sky have the rights for London 2012 and the era of live free-to-air Olympics coverage is probably over.

Murray Mexted should do all the commentary for the Olympics, that'd be brilliant.

I cannot accept that it was worth the 80 million or so dollars that it cost over the last four years for 9 pieces of metal, Or the 40 something billion dollars that China payed out to make it all happen. Not when China's situation is like it is now and even here in New Zealand.. 80 million dollars here would be alot of operations, or alot to a charity group etc.. Disgusting.. We should be ashamed.

I loved the Olympics, I now have to find a new after work hobbie now that its finished.

Great to see top sports on tele but not so good that to catch the majority of it you had to have freeview, this was not good PR by an SOE.

The roving reporters next time need to be ex games athletes that have tact when asking questions to athletes. How was one of our reporters asking Bolt - "How does it feel to be the fastest man on earth?" or Toni Street antagonising athletes with her silly comments. Surely someone like Sarah Ulmer or Alison Fitch could have done a better job.

The Games were fantastic, and overall our commentators were entertaining but our roaming reporter was a shocker! I dont think I've heard anything more amateur than when she interviewed the Irish competitor after the quarter-finals in the mens 200m sprint what it was like racing against so many black men, and how all our white men back home in New Zealand would really be looking up to him at that moment - it was definitely cringy to say the least. He responded well, commenting that he has been racing against these competitors over the recent years, and tends not to look at them as "black" but as fellow competitors! Shame on you Toni Street!

One aspect of the games that I thoroughly enjoyed was the High Definition TV coverage that was provided by TV1.

And also credit should be given to the games 'source broadcaster' for some of the amazing slow motion sequences that were seen in the swimming and archery coverage.