2008 Summer Olympics Begin Today

The Summer Olympics begin today from Beijing, China. NBC Universal will be airing the most Olympic coverage in history with 3,600 hours on NBC, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, Telemundo, Universal HD and NBCOlympics.com.

American television began to air the Olympic Games as early as August 1936. Variety described this early attempt, thusly: "Definition of 180 lines, 25 frames per second, was very unclear and unsatisfactory.... General feeling is that commercially practical television is still several years off." Seventy-two years later, the 2008 Summer Olympics will be the first Olympics to be covered entirely in high definition.