Beijing's was, as I mentioned, a visual spectacular. However, the drums just by itself couldn't exactly give the depth that Sydney's entire performance made, which told an amazing story, and not to mention the best soundtrack ever for an opening ceremony.

I take it that being from Costa Rica, you watched the Sydney feed through NBC, where half of the ceremony was either cut down tremendously for ad breaks or the news, or breaking choreography to show irrelevant crap through the wrong cameras unlike the choreographed camera sequence used by the Seven Network.

Same thing happened with this opening ceremony. It's ridiculous. You would have thought they would have learnt by now!

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4698573

Beijing's was extra spectacular as it was in full HD with 5.1 surround sound which made the huge synchronized crowds look and sound amazing. The HD was a lot better as well then today with the London olympics. My cable company is using a lot more compression nowadays to get more 'HD' channels through the same pipe. Pixelation was pretty bad throughout the show. Rowing and swimming don't look all that great either. 1080i sure... when nothing is moving.

I can't remember much of the Sydney one, I remember Greece's from 2004 and the amazing flaming arrow shot from Barcelona, but Sydney draws a blank, maybe I missed it :/ I'll watch it later, YouTube has a 720p feed.

 I did watch it on a local channel and I dont recall any ads playing at all, at least I dont recall any ads for Beijing nor London, maybe some banners here and there but no cuts. Maybe the HD feed made some of the difference there, however I still stand that Beijing was at least from my point of view, more spectacular. The Fireworks and the light-drums were simply amazing.  I didnt know there were different feeds though, I thought there was only one international feed for everybody, thinking about it now that could make a huge difference.

I saw both Seven Network's and NBCs feeds. Basically each place gets the choice to follow the host country's camera switchng, or use their own. NBC focused on a lot of irrelevant shit, and missed out on key parts of the story. Not only that, but they also went to the news halfway, so the Tin Symphony segment was missed completely. That's like reading through a book and deciding to skip the middle 30 pages of the story.

It was pretty damn impressive. My favourite part was the industrial revolution. The rings coming together was awesome.

The crowd pixels creating a massive screen was excellently done and the industrial part was awesome.

My only issue, during the children's books part, no reference to the king Roald Dahl. the BFG should have saved the kids from Voldemort.

5+2
The 3ds added extra 2 pts.

not perfect (nothing is!) but it was excellent, it summed it what it was to be British and it made me very proud to be British, what with Mr. Bean, the industrial revolution, the green hills before it and the great music playing throughout and even seeing Charlie Chaplin. Great moments all round, i don't think Danny Boyle could of done it better
this opening ceremony will be in my memories, for the rest of my life. These Olympics, seemed to have been well worth the wait, can't wait for Rio 2016 already lol