NBC is lame. I’m sorry. They are making it really hard to watch videos of the Olympics anywhere but on their site. That would be fine with me, but as a user with an older Mac, I’m shut out. Their video only works on Windows machines and Intel-powered Macs that support Silverlight 2.0. Yes, I am bitter. And yes, I need to upgrade my computer. (Admitted lameness on my part). But I’m sure NBC could have made some backup video available in a more common format such as Flash or Quicktime. Microsoft, however, sees this as a unique opportunity to showcase Silverlight and got the exclusive.

The mobile version of the site is a little bit better. At least there I can see video highlights of the games, even on my iPhone. (And why can’t I see this on my regular computer again?). But these are only select highlights. I don’t want the commentary, I just want to see the full footage.

But top marks goes to Skyfire, whose mobile browser renders not only Flash videos, but Silverlight ones as well. (It also handles Ajax quite nicely, but that is a different story). You can go to the regular NBCOlympics video site on your phone and watch all 2,000-plus hours of video footage.

Skyfire is available only on Windows Mobile (natch) and on Nokia S60 phones in private beta. (We have 100 beta invites for the first readers to sign up here with the code “Crunch”).

So in order to watch the Olympics full-throttle on the Web, I need to do it with a mobile browser that is still in private beta. Here’s a video of what an NBC Olympics video looks like on a Nokia phone running Skyfire: