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Comment by jusben1369 | Hacker News Reader

Yes! Cable = Sports. If they somehow decouple those two then I'm all Internet.

Cable = Sports is why I am not watching ANY sports other than little snippets I can grab on youtube or mlb.com. Seriously. Have not watched a full game (definitely not MLB, NFL, NBA) of anything in a LONG time.

And none in family (yes little kids too) are watching much sports on TV either. Definitely not enough to grow up to be a fan of a particular pro sports league or a team, other than soccer via AYSO.

IMHO pro sports commissioners should start thinking about how less and less young kids are exposed to sports via TV (because not much to watch on non-cable TV) and what that means for potentially smaller fan base in the future. Just my 2 little cents...

What's funny is I would sign up for MLB.com in an instant if I could watch the local game but they block that so I'm out.

This was my frustration also. It surprises me that they haven't worked out an arrangement to either make that feature an upgrade or worked out a way to make financial arrangements with (I'm guessing) the people who have broadcast rights for a market.

I don't have cable anymore, but watch most of the games with a buddies Comcast log in on my iPad.

Which is the most infuriating part... I have NBA League Pass, live in a separate TV market (same state) from my preferred team, but still a large percentage of games are blacked out.

If someone (Apple/ Amazon/ startupX) figures out how to get great live sports content on demand to consumers, they will have an amazing company.

Get a VPN or use a DNS "hack" ...

My one regret with cutting the cord was that I gave up my precious Red Wings. NHL.com has a yearly subscription to watch the games online, but paying for that meant that I would have paid just as much for cutting the cord, as I did for having cable.

Really? Isn't it only like $100 for the entire year?

last time I checked it was $165. not a significant sum, but enough to mostly cancel out what we were paying for cable

I highly doubt you were paying $14/mo for cable TV.

I can't believe you're making your children suffer as part of your ideological war against cable companies. Think of the children and pick up that phone and dial 1 - 800 - GETTWCCABLE now!

MLB At Bat

NHL Gamecenter

NBA League Pass

NFL Sunday Ticket (currently DirecTV exclusive via contract)

* I am assuming you are American and/or care only about the four major sports in the US. Not sure about futball, rugby, cricket, tennis, cycling, etc

I'm pretty sure those don't include playoff games though and they also block out local games.

NBA League Pass is a horrific abomination. I was debating it, and came across articles that showed that depending on your location and nominated team(s) it could be nearly impossible to get more than 25 games for your favorite team (out of an 82 game season). 30% of the season showed on a "Season Pass" costing approximately $200? No thanks.

Spend $5/mo on unblock-us.com and you can see every "blackout" game...

Check out ballstreams.com

MLB.tv only works for out of market games, and worked amazingly when I was in school across the country, but useless when I moved back, and I got a free subscription to stream NFL Sunday ticket for the season and directv had basically no competency in streaming so it almost never worked.

Honestly, I bought a TV antennae from best buy and a long HDMI cord for my laptop and that's satisfied all of my sports needs through OTA broadcasts and questionable streaming sites.

I, too, use questionable streaming sites (well, just one since it's been reliable for the last year or two), but the picture quality is often worse than standard def, and the sound is apparently funnelled through a tin can.

It's almost bad enough to make me want to pay for cable. Almost.

Unfortunately for me, I live in Canada, where OTA stations do not care about the NBA. And I refuse to buy the League Pass since any games broadcast on cable would be blacked out.

For NHL, I've heard Gamecenter has poor quality feeds. Ironically, there's a one man show who runs a better service - albeit unlicensed - at hockeystreams.com

$20 per month, all games streamed in HD plus your choice of broadcast options (ie- home / away feed on NBC or TSN, etc).

FWIW, Gamecenter has had decent feeds for me; it annoys me that the browser viewer won't play the best quality (it only does 3Kbit, 30fps I think), but the ipad app will play 60fps HD streams. Missing blackout and playoff games is the worst though.

Aaand for the sake of posterity, that's actually 3Mbit. 3Kbit video doesn't really make sense.

I've been a subscriber to NHL Gamecenter for two years. If you're very far from your home team, it can be a good deal.

In California, I can catch most of Detroit's games. In a major hockey market like Toronto, however, Detroit's games are often on TSN2 (think ESPN2), which means they are blacked out. Cable was the only way to see these, even though I would have guessed they were out of market.

As much as I want to believe in these kinds of live sports services, I'm always disappointing in the quality and/or reliability of the feed. Maybe it's my ISP, I don't know. But for me streaming seems to be a second class citizen compared to cable & satellite.

As for the merger, I hate it because I actually think DirecTV is a pretty good product - even though the price is a bit high. I don't think a merger will do anything but reduce the quality of service, increase the price or both!

"Maybe it's my ISP, I don't know. But for me streaming seems to be a second class citizen compared to cable & satellite."

Don't worry - once your ISP is able to charge each streaming service more money, they might be able to budget to upgrade to slightly faster service a few years later.

You have to understand that Cable and Sports is a mutual lovefest. So all of these online alternatives are designed to be incremental revenue streams and specifically designed not to cannibalize the main revenue stream. They're mostly targeted at people who may away from their home market and so can't watch their favorite team on local cable.

Well depends, http://www.verizonwireless.com/wcms/consumer/products/video....

So if you use Verizon wireless you can stream from your tablet all you want. I think other ISP are doing the same too.

Do you get ESPN3 through your ISP? It covers most sports both live and recorded, and doesn't require a cable subscription.

Most sports? Hardly. Sure you can, in theory, watch American Football, Rest of the World Football, basketball, and baseball on ESPN3, but if you want to see these sports played by teams that matter then you need regular ESPN or a cable subscription to view them. All the games that matter were removed from the ESPN3 lineup at least a couple of years ago.

ESPN3 access gives you access to all espn channels including regular espn. I use it every day for sports center and baseball.

I'm unable to access ESPN's live feeds without a login provided by my cable company. That login flags what ESPN channels I pay for so, for example, I can't watch ESPN U without paying for an upgraded "sports" package filled with garbage channels.

I do have access to some live and recorded events, but the selection is limited to filler content like college volleyball and minor league soccer. Another plus is the ability to use my neighbor's login without restrictions since our cable provider's flagging system is piss poor. As long as I know somebody paying for cable I can cheat the system.

This is not true. Unless something has changed recently, college football on ESPNU is not shown on ESPN3. This has caused more than one game I cared about to be (legally) unviewable for me.

It shows pretty much all college sports (at least, all of what's broadcasted on cable anyways -- and then some). Sometimes there's a blackout on a game, which is annoying, though....

It's just not that great for professional leagues.

Even if my ISP had a deal for ESPN3 service, I would not use b/c it's a slap in the face to net neutrality.

Are there ISP's streaming ESPN3 without a cable subscription containing ESPN? My local options both require you to subscribe to a TV package.

Why else do you think the WWE Network is such a huge deal. It's the first huge step for sports entertainment.

or split a cable sub with someone and use it to log into live events. everyone wins!

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