The Olympics: about to take over your life

The BBC has unveiled its digital plans for the London 2012 Olympics and it's certainly not doing things by halves, with web, mobile, tablet, desktop, connected TV and regular TV all getting a look in.

Auntie has developed a seriously impressive new website which will be live on the bbc.co.uk/sport website that will give you the option of live streaming one of 24 events in HD at the height of the Games.

You'll also be able to pause, rewind, catch up on previous bouts or races or whatever, switch between live events and check out nifty facts and figures among a multitude of other things.

No escape

The nifty new website is just the beginning though – if you don't happen to be in front of a desktop or laptop computer, there's a new mobile website that will also be streaming live HD video (over Wi-Fi and 3G) for your phone or tablet, and mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Now that it's the future, the BBC has also built an HTML5 connected TV app that will be available on Sony smart TVs and the Sony PlayStation 3 which will provide the 24 live HD video streams as well.

No word on Xbox getting a similar app though – you'll have to rely on the catch up services provided by iPlayer.

And, of course, if you're old school then you can just turn on the television and check out BBC One which will be running Olympics coverage with breaks only for the news (when the Games action will switch to BBC Two) and BBC Three, as well as the alternative red button services and two specially-created Freeview channels.

That's not to mention the BBC One HD coverage which will include some events broadcast in 3D. A dedicated digital radio station, Radio 5 Live Olympics Extra, rounds off the options nicely.

What this amounts to is 2,500 hours of content being broadcast across the platforms - that's 1,000 more hours than we saw coming out of Beijing 2008.

And if you don't like the Olympics then there is a bit of stuff for you on BBC 2 but, to be honest, you're best off getting a movie streaming account or emigrating.