Stream live sports (especially tennis) online

[shmokes]

I've given up cable/satellite and I'm not going back. It's not even close to worth the cost. But I do miss tennis. I can always find illegal streams, but they're like VHS quality. Does anyone know how to stream sports, especially Tennis, but I'd like others too, in the U.S. without buying a cable package? I'm not opposed to paying for it, I just don't want to also pay for TBS and USA and TNT and TLC, etc. i just want to be able to stream sports in HD quality or something close to it.

[Samstag]

You're not going to find HD quality streaming anytime soon, but if you can wait a couple hours after the broadcast you can get a lot of that stuff in HD on usenet or torrents.

[whammoed]

You can often watch the network directly online who happens to be broadcasting.  That would be the bigger events only for the most part.
I watch a lot on: http://espn.go.com/watchespn/index when away from the TV.  I recently watched one of the French Open semi-finals on NBC Sports online.  Of course if its on NBC you can just watch NBC TV and so forth.
Not sure what to do for something more consistent.  Google brings up some options but don't know if they are any good.

[shmokes]

It sucks waiting for this to happen. It's not happened yet cos if ESPN offers a package online it makes their product less valuable to the cable companies. But it's obviously gonna happen. It's what consumers want. More and more of them every year.

[ark_ader]

I hear Xbox 360 will get the full ESPN line in HD.

You should be able to catch a match at a sports book or bar.

We get it on Eurosport, and SKY in HD.  Queens next then Wimbledon.

The French Open is over and Rafael Nadal just won it, so I'm off to the bookies to collect my winnings. 

[shmokes]

Wow . . . you bet on the world Number 2, current defending French Open champion who had won six of the previous seven French Opens. Insightful!

What did that pay out, 30 pence to the pound?

[ChadTower]

Best bet is still either the illegal streams or usenet the following day.  I've been looking around for the NFL the same way and it's just not available.

[shmokes]

The problem there is willpower and news reports. Once the game has happened it's hard not to seek out the result. And even if I don't seek out the result it's hard not to come upon it by accident. And once I know the result of the game, my desire to see the game and my enjoyment of the game is diminished considerably.

Sigh . . . it won't be long. I'm confident that a few more years at most and it'll all be available, legitimately, online.

[ChadTower]

Yep, but even with a standard DVR and cable, you have the same issue.  It's far worse with something as common as the NFL than it is with tennis.  I could easily go a week and never accidentally stumble upon a tennis result.  The Patriots game?  I can't answer the phone or look at the newspaper or go into a restaurant or a store or talk to anyone with a blue shirt or use facebook or read a text message or pretty much do anything where there might be people or a tv or a radio.

[hypernova]

Wow . . . you bet on the world Number 2, current defending French Open champion who had won six of the previous seven French Opens. Insightful!

What did that pay out, 30 pence to the pound?

Stinks, because he was on the ropes the day before.  Wish it had stopped raining.  This occurrence sounds familiar.  I could swear Nadal was in a similar bind before, and the match was delayed or something, which worked to his advantage.  Knew as soon as they called it last night that he would win today.

[ark_ader]

Wow . . . you bet on the world Number 2, current defending French Open champion who had won six of the previous seven French Opens. Insightful!

What did that pay out, 30 pence to the pound?

I rarely place a bet.  I play on the lottery as I have a better chance of winning.

I made a little bit of profit.  I'm going to buy two Xbox 360 and two PS3 titles from Blockbuster with the winnings. 

Lighten up Jake.  By next year you can watch the tennis on the Xbox 360 as it happens. 

[whammoed]

Wow . . . you bet on the world Number 2, current defending French Open champion who had won six of the previous seven French Opens. Insightful!

What did that pay out, 30 pence to the pound?

Stinks, because he was on the ropes the day before.  Wish it had stopped raining.  This occurrence sounds familiar.  I could swear Nadal was in a similar bind before, and the match was delayed or something, which worked to his advantage.  Knew as soon as they called it last night that he would win today.

I think Nadal was getting back to it the last game before the delay.  Nole was off and on the whole tourney.  Even if he pulled off the 4th I doubt he would have kept it up in the 5th.  Was going to be a cool achievement to win for either player.

[gonzo90017]

Most major sports are available in HD online. Of course it's not going to look like Over the Air or Cable's HD but it's close.
MLB.tv 3000 kbps $120 year
NBA 3000 kbps $179? year
NFL Rewind 3,500 kbps $50 a year

If your ISP pays for it you can get ESPN3.com for free. You don't get Sports Center or PTI but you get every sporting event aired on any of ESPN's networks Live and On Demand.

I was like you. Always trying to find an illegal stream. But the quality sucked and spent too much time looking for them.
I currently subscribe to MLB.tv and NBA and NFL Rewind. I record most of my home teams games using Windows Media Center. Including a proxy service it averages to around $33 a month.

[ChadTower]

Okay, the NFL Rewind is intriguing.  If I could record the games locally as you mention that would be good enough for me.  I pay for Sunday Ticket and DVR now but barely ever watch anything close to live.  The restrictions do say they shut the service down during the sunday night game, though, which is usually when I'm watching the early games.  So it will take some adjustments if I can manage to get it working.

What is the proxy service included for?

[JMB]

What is the proxy service included for?

mlb.tv blocks games in your local area.

[ChadTower]

That explains it.  I wouldn't want the MLB package anyway.  I'm strictly interested in the NFL in this case.

Time to look into Windows Media Center, too, in this context.

[ChadTower]

I just plunked down the $60 for the NFL Rewind Season Plus subscription.  It has a 7 day refund policy.

So far, it's pretty cool.  I was just watching all four NFC South games, at one time, from week 1 last season.     Streaming seems good, quality is adaptive to your bandwidth, and it is multiple monitor friendly.

[gonzo90017]

You can't use NFL Rewind basically all day Sunday starting at around 9am. About 30-60 minutes after Sunday Night Football it's available again. Monday at around 4:30pm it's also not available until the end of Monday Night Football. They usually then post the MNF game 24hrs later. I'm sure this is because they have some type of ESPN restrictions.

I wonder if it's because of NFL being off-season but it's usually $49?

By the way. What I do is tape a thin piece of paper across the bottom of my tv. That way I don't see the sports ticker and don't get any spoilers. 

[shmokes]

By the way. What I do is tape a thin piece of paper across the bottom of my tv. That way I don't see the sports ticker and don't get any spoilers. 

Lol . . . that's pretty hardcore.

[gonzo90017]

For Golf fans. US Open is streaming live at http://www.usopen.com/

[Dechene]

Not 100% legal, but head to sportlemon.com

They normally have a few different feeds of the same event so if one is slow you can skip to another one.

I watched some of the french open & euro 2012 in HD on it, I also use it for sports like darts & snooker that aren't always broadcast in Australia.
They often have snooker in HD which is nice.

One warning though, don't click on anything but the event you want to watch, and then wait patiently for the 30 second ad to finish which will let you close it.

I've never had anything malicious from this site, but clicking on things will make popup windows come from everywhere.

Enjoy, I work for a bookmaker and we all use it there too!

[ChadTower]

NFL Rewind presented three subscription options.  One was regular season only, one was the whole NFL season but only during the season, and the other was the whole NFL Season for use year round.  $60 was the full year round access package.

So far, it's working great at work with the full corporate bandwidth.  At home it was a joke.  Only the lowest quality would stream cleanly and that's heavily pixellated in a small window.  I have a pretty decent home use cable line so that should not be the case.  I'll try it again tomorrow night, run a speed test or two, but if it does not substantially improve I will cancel it and call it nonviable.