In advance of the Beijing summer games, which open a week from today, NBC has made its Olympics online video player available for download and installation. Those who access the player will be treated to much more content than ever before.

Whereas just two hours of coverage from the last Olympics (Torino, winter 2006) were streamed live online, this time, NBC plans to offer 2,200 hours of live coverage and 3,000 hours of total on-demand content. The player will reportedly offer viewers the choice from among as many as 20 live streams at once, with the capability of displaying four at a time or showing picture in picture.

On top of that — literally — will be a set of “unique metadata overlays,” according to the initial press release, that will provide material such as statistics, results, rules, athlete bios and analysis. Further, the “Inside This Sport” feature promises to guide interested viewers through unfamiliar rules, scoring systems and competition formats.

Beyond the crowd that just thinks accessing this extra content will be cool, I see it appealing to two particular groups. Those who will be stuck in the office when their favorite rhythmic gymnast is set to hit the floor and anyone competing in an Olympics fantasy contest.

Whether you’re playing NBC’s Olympic Quick Pick fantasy game – which automatically assigns you five athletes a day, and NBC Sports general manager of fantasy sports Rick Cordella concedes is really more of a sweepstakes – or you’re trying your hand with these guys in a truer fantasy-sports pursuit, you’re bound to want to keep up with your athletes.

The main complaint that has met the news and offering of extra Olympic content online is that some events deemed to carry mass appeal will not be streamed live before they have been shown on TV. An earlier Associated Press report said that no such events would be streamed live online first, but NBC has since corrected that publicly, and the AP story seems to at least have been pulled from Yahoo!, where several online news stories had once linked to it.

Really, though, it seems to be a bit nitpicky to grab onto something like that when so much more content will be made available than before. After all, NBC is paying billions of dollars for these broadcast rights for a reason, and it’s mainly to direct American eyes toward its network. Besides, we’ll all come out way ahead of the 2000 summer games, when so many events from Australia couldn’t be viewed live in any format.

Just in case anyone is worried about missing out on the added online perks by not being stationary on a typical workday, NBC is rolling out a host of features for select mobile service carriers as well. These include mobile alerts that can track specific athletes and a 24-hour-a-day mobile-only Olympic network. All of this can reportedly be accessed via NBC’s mobile Olympics website.

NBC and the NFL will make the network’s 2008 slate of games available online, beginning with the Sept. 4 season opener.

No mention is made about the cost of accessing these webcasts, which are only planned for the coming season right now.

“We are taking a big leap here,” NFL Network chief executive Steve Bornstein told the Los Angeles Times. “We are looking at this as a learning opportunity to see what applications work online. We are trying to be innovative and creative to make the viewing experience better for our fans.”

The fact that no mention is made of the cost to viewers – in addition to the extra features that will be included – makes it appear as though the webcasts will not be free. In addition to the game itself, the online broadcasts will reportedly include alternate camera angles, the ability to view multiple video streams simultaneously, on-demand highlights and a blog that allows fans to interact with the cast of Football Night in America as well as personalities from NFL Network.

After the Thursday night opener, the schedule will be made up of NBC’s weekly Sunday night broadcasts. Although the large majority of American football fans will likely keep watching the game on their TV sets, this move could be of particular interest to two specific audiences: international viewers and fantasy players.

I honestly have no idea what the availability is for the Sunday night games overseas or how reliable the carriage might be. As the league continues to try to push global expansion, though, this could be a clear way to cater to any interested viewer anywhere with a high-speed internet connection. Fantasy players, on the other hand, can take advantage of live stat feeds to keep abreast of player scores in what will almost always be the second-to-last game of the week.

NBC will reportedly sell advertising for the webcasts and share the revenue with the league. Both sides refused to share the financial terms of the deal, though, according to the Los Angeles Times.

It was really only a matter of time before something like this came about. DirecTV already made game broadcasts available via the Internet to some Sunday Ticket subscribers last season, and networks regularly post whole episodes online now for free. What will determine the future of this pursuit, however, will be its ability to generate revenue. That has been the concern among network executives and basically entertainment-industry executives as global culture constantly migrates toward the Web.

We’ll see how the experiment goes.