GatewayRedbirds.com

The kid and I are on the phone during Friday night's game. Both of us have Comcast. Her broadcast is about a pitch behind mine. And I'm 2000 miles away.

Check it out, lots of people are doing this now. Cable/sattelite TV just had their worst 12 month stretch, ever.

http://qz.com/146664/proof-that-america ... e-tv-cord/

y'all know this was available? basic tv with HBO?

http://homes.yahoo.com/news/how-i-did-t ... 29818.html

I haven't had cable in about 5 years now, but I am tempted to pick up DirecTV again. It is so damn frustrating having all of my online sports broadcasts on a one-minute delay (ultimate first-world problem). My sports-watching buddies constantly text me reactions before I even see what happened.

Now, MLB.tv is great -- I love it. But the online NFL package is bad (I got promotional access to NFL Sunday Ticket online this year). There are 15-16 games a week. Monday Night Football? Blacked out. Sunday Night Football? Blacked out. Local games? Blacked out. CBS/FOX national game of the week? Blacked out. Thursday Night Football? Blacked out. I considered getting NBA League Pass (which includes online access), but I guess it has the same problem as the NFL packages -- games on TNT, ESPN, etc are all blacked out.

Plus, as good as the picture quality of online sports broadcasts are getting, they still do not rival satellite/cable TV. Although they may have a true HD resolution, they lack the fluidity of their TV counterparts. I think, for performance/bandwidth reasons, they strip out some frames per second from these streams. And honestly, it shows. I was watching a football game at my buddies house (DirecTV feed), and I was blown away. It was like I was at the game. At home (internet stream), the picture quality is great, but it still feels like TV. (By the way, we have the same TV make/model.)

So... I don't know. I'm sure to get ESPN/TNT/NFL Network/etc I'd probably be paying $60 a month. Then I'd have to buy/rent receivers for 3 TV's. Okay... nevermind, I remember why I stopped subscribing to cable. Stream-only options are getting there, but they are not on TV's level yet -- at least not in terms of quality.

Kyle wrote:I haven't had cable in about 5 years now, but I am tempted to pick up DirecTV again. It is so damn frustrating having all of my online sports broadcasts on a one-minute delay (ultimate first-world problem). My sports-watching buddies constantly text me reactions before I even see what happened.

Now, MLB.tv is great -- I love it. But the online NFL package is bad (I got promotional access to NFL Sunday Ticket online this year). There are 15-16 games a week. Monday Night Football? Blacked out. Sunday Night Football? Blacked out. Local games? Blacked out. CBS/FOX national game of the week? Blacked out. Thursday Night Football? Blacked out. I considered getting NBA League Pass (which includes online access), but I guess it has the same problem as the NFL packages -- games on TNT, ESPN, etc are all blacked out.

Plus, as good as the picture quality of online sports broadcasts are getting, they still do not rival satellite/cable TV. Although they may have a true HD resolution, they lack the fluidity of their TV counterparts. I think, for performance/bandwidth reasons, they strip out some frames per second from these streams. And honestly, it shows. I was watching a football game at my buddies house (DirecTV feed), and I was blown away. It was like I was at the game. At home (internet stream), the picture quality is great, but it still feels like TV. (By the way, we have the same TV make/model.)

So... I don't know. I'm sure to get ESPN/TNT/NFL Network/etc I'd probably be paying $60 a month. Then I'd have to buy/rent receivers for 3 TV's. Okay... nevermind, I remember why I stopped subscribing to cable. Stream-only options are getting there, but they are not on TV's level yet -- at least not in terms of quality.

Just a couple things. Sunday night football should be available on NBC with a set of bunny ears. It's awesome quality (for me at least) every bit as good as satellite/cable. Same with Fox/CBS Nat'l games of the week. Also, if you can get one of your friends with a cable subscription to share his password, or your parents, or your brother, or whoever, you can watch all espn/tnt games (mnf included, I believe) over the internet.

I really don't care about the NFL or NBA, so I'm no expert. But....those suggestions above are all free.

for me, fox and nbc come in the best with the hd antenna. cbs is kinda hit or miss. then i get some really random channels. i actually get like...15 stations even just with an antenna though only 2 or 3 are useful/interesting...

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:Just a couple things. Sunday night football should be available on NBC with a set of bunny ears. It's awesome quality (for me at least) every bit as good as satellite/cable. Same with Fox/CBS Nat'l games of the week. Also, if you can get one of your friends with a cable subscription to share his password, or your parents, or your brother, or whoever, you can watch all espn/tnt games (mnf included, I believe) over the internet.

I really don't care about the NFL or NBA, so I'm no expert. But....those suggestions above are all free.

Yeah, I've actually tried all of those things. I live in the basement of an apartment complex and wasn't able to pick up any signals with the antenna I bought... but I hardly messed with it at all. Perhaps if I was a bit more diligent I could get some channels through that. I think I tried to do it last October to watch the baseball playoff games on FOX.

And I did have my parents set me up with an online account through their cable provider so I could stream games on ESPN. But then you still have the issue of the subpar framerate and the delayed feed.

Thanks for the suggestions though. And like I said, I know these problems are petty. I still watch every single live sporting event I want (through sports packages or underground streams), it's just seeing live sports at my buddy's house left a lot to be desired.

Kyle wrote: it's just seeing live sports at my buddy's house left a lot to be desired.

I understand. A couple weeks ago a few people came over and I had to set two computers up to get different games on ESPN, switch the HDMI cords going into the TV if I wanted to switch those games, and switch back to the antennae feed if we wanted to watch a game over the air. They were like...WTF. Of course, it worked though and that's all that matters.

I am jealous of my friends who just say ta hell with it and pay the extra $50/month or whatever to get ESPN and all that and can just switch channels.

But....it's just not worth it....especially when all I care about is college football and baseball (which would cost an extra $20/month or so (for FS Cardinals) ontop of the extra $50 or so for cable in the first place)

Also, a friend in KC made one of these and had pretty good luck with it.

http://lifehacker.com/5919128/build-you ... hd-antenna

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:But....it's just not worth it....especially when all I care about is college football and baseball (which would cost an extra $20/month or so (for FS Cardinals) ontop of the extra $50 or so for cable in the first place)

That's where I'm at. I do think cable sports broadcasts are considerably better, but not $70/month better.

I've had some similar setups to that as well. In fact, my living room TV is fueled by a dedicated home theater PC that I built. I prefer something like that over a set-top box/TV/video game console apps, because a true computer offers more flexibility (for example, tiling multiple games at once if the app doesn't support it, Adblock to get rid of advertisements, etc...).

The best investment I made for out in the living room was a wireless keyboard that has a built-in touch pad. Sooo much better than trying to use a wireless mouse out there. Logitech sells them for like $20-30.

If there are only certain times of the year where you want to watch sports, then get a satellite package and put it on hold during the off-season. Want football? Put your account on hold from February through August. Want baseball? April through October. You get the idea.