What exactly is being broadcast live for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver?

It depends on where you live and the relationship to your cable or satellite provider.

First, these tips only apply to U.S. digital Internet broadcast, which NBC has the rights to. Other countries, your mileage may vary since they are negotiated separately with the governing body, the IOC.

A list of all the live events for the US can be found here: NBC Live Full Replays

I can save you some trouble: only hockey and curling are live. That’s about half the competition in terms of hours, but it’s a lot. You will need to navigate the through the “entitlement” process in order to see it. For Comcast, you need your username@comcast.net and password to authenticate. It's a one-time deal, per browser. I know it's a pain, but the live content is worth it.

NBC announced the planned, live digital coverage in a press release on Feb. 8. http://bit.ly/NBCOlyLive. Essentially, 400 hours live, with more than 1000 hours of full-event replays, all in Silverlight.

If you live in the US and you don’t pass the crazy satellite/cable checks, you can still enjoy Olympic content, just not full-replay and live. You can watch all the highlights you want, shortly after the live event.

My favorite highlight so far is the red mitten shortage. Seriously though, this goal shot by US Women's hockey is amazing: http://bit.ly/lamoureuxs.

I hear that Canadian IP addresses will enjoy all the events live, courtesy of CTV at http://www.ctvolympics.ca/. They are using a simliar version of the player Vertigo built for NBC. I think the same goes for Norway: http://www.nrkol.no/index.html.