actual time when 2008 Olympics opening ceremony starts

The world will be tuned in on the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the coming weeks, and the televised coverage will be a mix of tape-delayed and live video.

[update 8/9] NBC‘s exclusive videos for Opening Ceremony (52:03) + Parade of Nations (90 min) // Opening Ceremony fireworks and highlights (9:53)

Exclusive Summer Olympics news & widgets at NBC Olympics.com!

[update 8/8] 186 photos on Yahoo + 28 photos at LA Times’ Olympics blog [MSIE only] + 27 photos from the opening ceremony + Opening Ceremony video on YouTube (8:28 min) pt.2 (8:51) pt.3 (6:03) + Opening Ceremony video (9:08) from Dutch station via Huffingtonpost + 8-part video of entire Opening Ceremony (via German TV) + 1-minute highlight video of opening ceremony on YouTube + Olympic photos via digg + NBC photo galleries for Opening Ceremony: The Parade (41) + Opening Ceremony: The Pyrotechnics (12) + Opening Ceremony: The Pageantry (48) + Wired had Great wiki with many ways to watch Olympics online + there’s a country Djibouti [nb: YouTube has removed most Olympics videos due to copyright violation]

TV Coverage of the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony on NBC @ 7:30pm Eastern / 6:30pm Central / 6:30pm Mountain / 7:30pm Pacific; Canadians already saw Opening Ceremony live via CBC…

What I’d been trying to figure out is when does the opening ceremony start? In local time, the officials set it at a lucky time of August 8th, 2008, 8:08pm. But what does that convert into in different parts of the world? I couldn’t do it in my head.

Here’s when the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony actually starts at my home, Pacific time zone — 5:00 am! Ugh. [via the World Clock Time Zone Converter]

I’m not an Olympics fanatic, so I will not be watching it live via whatever streaming feed I could scramble to find. But, there is something about watching events live.

And, here’s the Olympics TV coverage schedule on NBC.

[update] great tips for watching Olympics in HD and online at engadget >>

The deal is that LIVE streaming of the Olympics is controlled-access. Only one specific website has the rights to live stream in each country. For the USA, that’s nbcolympics.com .

Full live coverage on the official english.cctv.com network is only viewable in China and Macau.

CCTV.com to broadcast live show of Olympic opening ceremony

Live Coverage:

Aug 8 at BJT 20:00 – CCTV.com will broadcast live show of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony *

* Due to IOC’s broadcasting regulations, a RHB can only broadcast video programs covering Olympic events in certain territories. Therefore, only viewers and netizens in China mainland and Macau can access videos related to Beijing 2008 Olympic Games via CCTV and CCTV.com.