The more technologically advanced the Olympics become, the more cutting-edge the equipment, the more precise the scoring (when it doesn't involve figure skating), the more frustrating it is to know that the potential of the Internet remains almost totally untapped.

Yes, the 2002 Winter Olympics online landscape is littered with instant polls and increasingly sophisticated interactive graphics. Often stunning photography is available at every turn. I can check the medal count any time day or night on dozens of sites, read bios of every athlete, follow the BBC on a tour of Salt Lake City with Donny Osmond or see just how to do a '1080' on the halfpipe. A quick click on a variety of news sites provides a front-page update. Figure skating fans who always knew they could do better than the real judges can keep score in real-time. More than a million e-mail postcards have already been sent to athletes.

And yet ... sometimes all I can think about is what isn't there.

Take NBC's chokehold on the video version of the Games; and the utter intransigence of believing that using the full capacity of the Internet to cover the Olympics online would somehow cause the world as we know it to come to an end. Surely, people who can figure out how to project a fake fire as the focal point of a TV set can find a way to make video available online without diluting the value of their prime-time package.

The Mountain time zone doesn't remove that increasingly thick layer of frustration over knowing that events are going on that would draw interest and knowing the technology is there to make it happen, but that those of us who can't be there in person still can't see them. There's plenty of room on cable to show wall-to-wall or slope-to-slope coverage and, yes, I was one of the few subscribers of NBC's 1992 failed pay-per-view TripleCast experiment. Granted, the quality of most video online isn't as high as broadcast, while the video that is usually requires broadband access. Given the option between 'not great but getting better' and 'not at all,' well, I have to vote for the former. That and I really have to find a way to get broadband.

Add in the possibilities of video on demand delivered via the Internet, cable or satellite that would let me watch linear versions of the events that most interest me for a price, of course, and after they've been broadcast by the rights holder when I want to see them. Underscore 'possibilities' because the Olympics as TV is not about personal choices or flexibility; it's about herd viewing, thanks to the core economic model that relies on television rights supported by advertising. Prime time rules.

Still fearful of putting the golden goose on a guillotine, the International Olympics Committee has started to unbend ever so slightly when it comes to the Internet. NBC was allowed to do a broadband experiment during the Sydney games using a technology that protected the signal from piracy. For the first time Internet-only journalists have been credentialed for Salt Lake City, although their activities are restricted (no video or audio interviews with athletes at venues) and their number is less than 40 -- not the best solution but far better than being outside looking in. The IOC's own site was redesigned and relaunched just before the Winter Olympics as 'an outgrowth of the IOC's desire to improve its communication with Olympic enthusiasts.'

It's not just that the IOC frets that unfettered Internet access and coverage might damage its television rights fees. The commercially savvy corporation-like organization that runs the games also knows that Internet rights have value and it wants to protect that as well. Chairman Jacques Rogge himself heads the IOC's TV and Internet Rights Commission.

The very international nature of the Internet causes part of the quandary. The rights holder in Finland might be totally OK with the idea of streaming its Olympic coverage online, but if someone in Finland can watch the men's downhill prelims live online, chances are I can, too, over here in University City, Mo. The Olympics may be about tearing down borders but not when it comes to TV territories.

The NBC broadband experiment permitted by the IOC involved highly controlled delivery via broadband through gateways accessible only to subscribers and possibly to a very ingenious hacker or two. Even so, it was severely limited in scope, including restrictions on the number of minutes that could be streamed. That might eventually be a solution in areas with wide broadband distribution.

Don't expect much to be different by the 2004 Summer Games in Athens. Technology usually advances faster than mindsets. Maybe frustration should be a demonstration sport.