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I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?

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Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?

#61

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dave84 wrote: post #49
sudonim wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why others downvoted you. I just tried unblock-us.com and it works... basically by changing your DNS servers. I added it to the article as another option. I'm confused because I thought that geo-restrictions were handled by IP address, so I'm not sure how this gets around that.

It's still based on proxy servers, but their DNS server returns the address of their proxy server instead of the real IP address.

As with any DNS provider they can presumably spoof any site they wish too; so I'd be pretty cautious about using them for all DNS calls.

Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?

#62

Post by ricardobeat »

techsupporter wrote: post #52

Answer: Get a cable TV subscription. If you don't want to "pirate," or be in a "grey area," then do what the license rights holder wants you to do and pony up. I pay for Frontier FiOS TV and can watch whatever events I want as part of my subscription. In many areas, the local cable company will have you installed in a day or two and you can go month-to-month. Comcast in Seattle is offering $29.99/month for the first…

The Olympics, as well as most other major world events, are transmitted via broadcast TV almost everywhere in the world. The whole operation and licensing rights are already paid for by ad space.

Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?

#63

Post by sbarre »

kennywinker wrote: post #47

As a Canadian, I run into this bullshit all the time. Comedy Central embedded videos, hulu, etc. The whole thing seems like a perversion of the promise of the internet: to connect us all... It's double ironic in the OPs case, given the stated goals of the olympics. Going around via VPN is well within my technical means, but I don't want to support the people who behave this way online, so I usually don't view the geo…

Except this time around, CTV has done a good job of providing Olympic coverage to non-TV people.

The iOS app is great, and the web portal is great, and it's free.

Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?

#64

Post by techsupporter »

ricardobeat wrote: post #62
techsupporter wrote: post #52

Answer: Get a cable TV subscription. If you don't want to "pirate," or be in a "grey area," then do what the license rights holder wants you to do and pony up. I pay for Frontier FiOS TV and can watch whatever events I want as part of my subscription. In many areas, the local cable company will have you installed in a day or two and you can go month-to-month. Comcast in Seattle is offering $29.99/month for the first…

The Olympics, as well as most other major world events, are transmitted via broadcast TV almost everywhere in the world. The whole operation and licensing rights are already paid for by ad space.

Almost everywhere, but not in the United States. Whether or not this is right or fair is left as an exercise to the reader; personally, I think it is not. However, the answer to the question is one of three things: subscribe to the required service, be in a grey area, or do not watch.

I honestly cannot see why we keep having these debates. OBVIOUSLY the content providers are making money doing exactly what they are now doing. Bypassing the restrictions and consuming the content anyway does nothing to change this situation except on the micro level. The only way to change the status quo is to demonstrate that the content is not sufficiently valuable to a sufficiently large group of people that the mechanism changes.

Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?

#66

Post by sudonim »

brudgers wrote: post #51

"I use a service called Vyprvpn which is $14.99 a month. I get it as part of a bundle with a subscription to Giganews. That’s how I connect with a VPN to the UK. And you can too." So the author ended up paying to watch the Olympics. Illegally, instead of legally, I would add.

I guess technically I'm paying for VPN service, but I would have been anyway, so I didn't buy something new.

And, I'm not certain it's illegal. Are you?

Is the legislation specific about where you must reside? What if you're consuming content but you're not in the UK?

If it is illegal for anyone to consume BBC content at the time of broadcast without a TV license regardless of location, what if someone outside of the UK paid for a TV License?

Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?

#68

Post by mindslight »

acabal wrote: post #53

This exact same thing happened to me today! I'm in Germany, so I put the Olympics on TV. But I don't yet speak German, so after an hour I wanted to watch them in English. I went to the NBC web site, but they geolocate your IP and only stream to US people. Fine, I'm used to this crap (lots of Youtube videos are blocked in Germany too) so I just fired up my proxy and tried again. This time I got through, only to find t…

> Wasn't the internet supposed to break through barriers like space and location?

The Internet philosophy eschews these things, but the implementation simply ignores them. Of course the incumbents desire to reimplement their archaic business models on top of TCP/IP. It's up to us to carry the philosophy and create higher level protocols that are resistant to such things; fiefdom-based HTTP certainly isn't.

Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?

#69

Post by jimhirshfield »

This won't get you live coverage, but it will get you legal NBC coverage on your home TV... The broadcast industry does not want American's to know this, but they are legally obligated to provide the free "over the air" stations on cable (coax) even if you do not pay for cable service. In other words, do what I have done: 1. You need a modern cable-ready TV 2. Plug the coax into the wall (assumes your residence had cable installation at one point). 3. Plug other end of coax into your TV. 4. Scan for channels. 5. Voila: CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, and more.

Yes, it's that simple. And this is NOT using the coax as an RF antenna. This is the cable company providing me with what I am legally entitled to: over the air stations in a digital age.

The cable companies are trying to fight this, but as of now, it exists. It's legal. And it works. My son's watching PBS Kids as I type. And we watched many Olympic events through-out the days today - OK, not live, but still I DO NOT PAY FOR TV.

Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?

#70

Post by jimhirshfield »

codequickly wrote: post #35

I can't get any major networks over OTA, except for channels I wouldn't watch, ie Telemundo, Univision, HomeShopping,etc. I live about 50 miles from SF. It's really frustrating, not being able to watch the Olympics. But I'd hate to go through VPN. Just like my previous viewing of World Cup,I'd have to resort to non-English channels and learn a little bit of Spanish, although their coverage is focused more toward Span…

See my comment above. You CAN get the OTA channels.
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