The Death of TV

[Winnow]

Dramatic title!

It's become easier and more reliable to download episodic content from internet. Anyone with Newsleecher and Supersearch knows what' I'm talking about and those that don't have a way to grab these files fast and easy will soon. The high cost of cable/satellite due to "packages" requiring paying for many stations that you will never watch doesn't help either.

While newsgroups (and torrents for the less knowledgeable) aren't legal, it's clear that Apple and Microsoft are both working hard to get movies and TV shows delivered over the net to end users as quickly as possible.

The only thing IMO keeping TV afloat is live content. I can't download sporting events, etc or wouldnt want to download them after the fact for the most part. That's where I've been looking into some online service that are trying to provide live sports over the net...NBA, NFL, Soccer (for the Euros), etc. These won't be replacing HD broadcasts anytime soon but they're a start.

Here are two options, so far, that I'm going to check out:

MyP2P Free Live Sports on your PC:

http://www.myp2p.eu/index.htm

SOPCAST:

http://www.sopcast.org/

A few years ago, I subscribed to a shady online message board that had real video type live links to all sporting events. It didn't work very well and the streams were usually overloaded or crashed. I'll check these out and report back as to how they are! Perhaps move live events will be broadcast this way as well.

Here's an NFL schedule for SOPCAST:

http://streamednfl.blogspot.com/

[Zaelath]

The high cost of cable/satellite due to "packages" requiring paying for many stations that you will never watch doesn't help either.

To be honest, most of the additional channels add little or nothing to the cost of the "package", but it looks better to say you're getting a lot of channels than "we're going to go ahead and charge you $20/month just for HBO, plus $30/month to have cable, so your one channel subscription will be $49.99/month. Thanks!"

But, you know, however you want to salve your conscience...

[Winnow]

The high cost of cable/satellite due to "packages" requiring paying for many stations that you will never watch doesn't help either.

To be honest, most of the additional channels add little or nothing to the cost of the "package", but it looks better to say you're getting a lot of channels than "we're going to go ahead and charge you $20/month just for HBO, plus $30/month to have cable, so your one channel subscription will be $49.99/month. Thanks!"

But, you know, however you want to salve your conscience...

Well, however you want to look at paying 70.00/month for HBO is fine by me. Don't forget the extra 10.00/month for the privilege of having HD channels. Gotta love the "HD package"

[Zaelath]

I don't have it here.. or the ability to leech hundreds of Gb of data a month But I don't pretend that if I'm grabbing Heroes or Big Love or whatever that it's the industry's fault for trying to make a buck...

[Boogahz]

Have you actually used any of the items here to watch live sports? I looked over some of the programming, and I "should" be able to catch some of the Bundesliga games I have been wanting to see based on the schedules.

[Winnow]

Have you actually used any of the items here to watch live sports? I looked over some of the programming, and I "should" be able to catch some of the Bundesliga games I have been wanting to see based on the schedules.

It's nothing that can be relied on atm. For these services where you're counting on Joe schmoe to stream the game, it's usually a game time decision on whether you're going to be able to see the game or not.

I'm going to check out some of the pre season NFL football games tonight that are linked here:

http://streamednfl.blogspot.com/

and see how well the streams work.

I'm not getting the NFL Ticket this year so I'm looking to see if it would work to have one or two of these streamed games going on a PC while watching the main games on the big screen, to keep track of scores, etc.