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Comment by thefreeman | Hacker News Reader

How are you able to get NFL games without a cable / satellite subscription? Or did you just give up on the NFL? I am in a similar situation with sports being the only thing keeping my cable subscription active.

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I can't get them (legally) like I said in my OP. I usually stream games not on locally to my computer and tabcast to my TV with chromecast but the quality is mega-shitty. We also have an HD antenna in the living room which gets us NBC, Fox, CBS, and ABC just fine so that covers a couple of the games every weekend.

The little exclusivity pact the NFL and the major Cable companies have makes me have zero qualms about just straight stealing the content. If they have me a legitimate way to pay for every Packers game (directly through the NFL, not a cable provider) I would do it in a heartbeat, but they haven't, so screw 'em.

Apparently there's a way to signup and pay for NFL game pass using a VPN and pretending to be in Europe but I won't do that on sheer principle. It's insane to me I could legally pay for NFL outside of the US but inside the US I have to go through a third party (cable company) to get streaming access.

I can't imagine they can hold out for much longer. You can already stream basically every other major sport over the internet.

I wouldn't be surprised if DirectTV has some sort of exclusive contract to provide all of the games, but that can't last forever.

Hopefully HBO will be starting a trend [0] by allowing access to content without cable access.

0 - http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/15/6982049/hbo-go-will-offer...

There is a streaming service called NFL Rewind that you can get for ~$40 per year. The drawback is that all games are blacked out until after SNF is over. So I live in a bubble and ignore football until I can watch my team play at 9pm Pacific.

There is also a service called NFL GamePass which lets you watch games live if you live outside the North American market. I think the geographic restriction can be gotten around using VPNs & other geo-location defeating measures, but I've never tried.

The games for both NFL Rewind & GamePass are streamed via their website, and there is an official Android app, as well as a Plex app, and an XBMC plugin. The quality is not great, but it is better than nothing.

Give up on sports and utilize that time (and money from cutting the cable) for something productive, you won't regret it.

Question: Do you literally spend all of your time on "productive" things? You never watch a movie or tv show, you don't go to a concert or read a comic? You don't listen to a record or play a video game?

I'm pretty sure I'd regret giving those things up.

We live in a sea of available entertainment and sources of amusement. Why be so attached to one particular form of entertainment when the cartel that controls it doesn't make it easy or inexpensive to consume?

Where I live something like 5 football games a week are available in HD for free.

Off topic: Can you stream over the air digital antenna content to a Chromecast directly?

@touchmuchtodo, unfortunately you cannot stream digital antenna content to a Chromecast directly. I would assume it would need a digital signal converter, at the very least. I've been considering getting a TV tuner card for my desktop explicitly for streaming live games to my Chromecasts.

(I couldn't seem to reply to you directly for whatever reason)

Not all my time, but as much as I can bear. Everyone needs to relax and enjoy themselves. I do watch movies and tv shows, but I generally try to choose forms of entertainment that have some educational value (even if it's social commentary, such as in the Simpsons and South Park). Between Netflix and Amazon Prime (and Vimeo and Crackle and all the other options) there is no need to go to see a movie in the theater. I do not go to concerts any more, there are free ones available on YouTube. I read free webcomics like Dilbert and XKCD. I buy PC games during Steam sales. Some forms of entertainment are egregiously expensive in my opinion. That level of inefficiency deserves criticism.

We've already cut the cable, saving us about $1000/year. I played football for more than half my life and love watching it, and am willing to pay for high quality access to it, but I refuse to jump through hoops to do so.

It's not a technical limitation by the cable companies/NFL, it's literally just bureaucratic bullshit.

I think it is probably a business decision.

Give up on telling people on the internet how best to relax and which hobbies they should have and utilise that time (and karma from not being a jerk to strangers) for something productive, you won't regret it.

Now you're telling me to give up on my hobby :)

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