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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?

#181

Post by secabeen »

jimhirshfield wrote: post #177
detst wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in there does he, or the link he references, substantiate the following claim? 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. If you follow the link trail, you'll find this quote from the FCC: broadcast signals that are subject to mandatory carriage must be "viewabl…

I'm not trying to win a legal case here, just sayin'... 1. "The broadcast industry does not want American's to know..." Opinion. Why would they want this widely known? 2. "...legally obligated..." OK, that might be a little strong, but I stand by the POV that they can not encrypt this signal. The FCC citations (on Engadget article) make that clear (to me). It's possible that this works for me (and others) because...…

My understanding is that it's more subtle than that. If you subscribe to no TV services, they can block all channels. However, if you get any TV service from your provider, they have to provide all broadcast channels to you, either un-encrypted, or encrypted with a free cable box for every TV in your house.

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

#183

Post by detst »

jimhirshfield wrote: post #177
detst wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in there does he, or the link he references, substantiate the following claim? 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. If you follow the link trail, you'll find this quote from the FCC: broadcast signals that are subject to mandatory carriage must be "viewabl…

I'm not trying to win a legal case here, just sayin'... 1. "The broadcast industry does not want American's to know..." Opinion. Why would they want this widely known? 2. "...legally obligated..." OK, that might be a little strong, but I stand by the POV that they can not encrypt this signal. The FCC citations (on Engadget article) make that clear (to me). It's possible that this works for me (and others) because...…

  I'm not trying to win a legal case here, just sayin'... 1.
  "The broadcast industry does not want American's to
  know..." Opinion. Why would they want this widely known?
  2. "...legally obligated..." OK, that might be a little
  strong, but I stand by the POV that they can not encrypt
  this signal. The FCC citations (on Engadget article) make
  that clear (to me).
Agree. Sorry if I'm being pedantic, but this is really nothing more than the cable companies being compelled to broadcast these "mandatory carriage" channels without encryption and the impracticality of filtering every non-subscriber.

  It's possible that this works for me (and others)
  because... I am a subscriber to my cable company for
  telephone and internet access (but not TV), and so they
  can not send a tech out to disconnect me from their grid
  because it would terminate my current services[...]
That's why it works; however, it's not so much that they can't disconnect you but that they can't practically filter you.

  [...] AND they can not encrypt the Clear QAM signal for
  the Broadcast TV channels.
They can't encrypt but they can filter non-subscribers. If this were always practical, there's no doubt many companies would aggressively filter.

  Again, I'm not trying to argue some legal case here. But I
  do think it's more than just the cable company being lazy
  and not sending a technician out.
Sure, the impracticality is there but no legal impediments that I know of :)

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

#184

Post by svdad »

robomartin wrote: post #168

Well, my opinion is that the IOC and broadcasters like NBC are being held back by ideas from the last century. They are using the Internet as another broadcasting method and ignoring the potential it offers. At a very basic level, they could offer live streaming of all events --advertising free-- for a fee. I would gladly pay, say, US $100 for this service. Some might only be interested in a subset of events, which m…

Yeah, I think this is right. And NBC actually did this for the soccer World Cup, IIRC -- you could buy a package subscription from NBC letting you watch all the games online.

I have to imagine there's a market for pay-as-you-go subscription to things like Olympic events, same model as buying movies on Amazon or Google Play. I know I would pay.

As it is, try getfoxyproxy.org.

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

#185

Post by codequickly »

jimhirshfield wrote: post #70
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.

Thanks for the info. I will try that. I am subscribed to Comcast internet, but not TV. I have my fingers crossed. Hopefully I'll get some ClearQAM coming through the coax.

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

#186

Post by nazgulnarsil »

kristofferR wrote: post #144
OmarIsmail wrote: post #5

Sign up for www.unblock-us.com or www.unotelly.com and watch the amazing BBC coverage on iPlayer. Super super simple setup. Personally, I prefer www.unblock-us.com

Just use http://tunlr.net/ 's DNS servers instead - it's the same type of service, just completely free and with no signup required. Primary DNS: 64.250.122.104 Secondary DNS: 199.167.30.144

how did you use this to watch iPlayer? It seems like it is for giving a US based DNS for people outside the US.

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

#187

Post by cheald »

porlw wrote: post #150
rprasad wrote: post #143

Pay for it . Broadcasting the Olympics costs NBC lots of money. These deals are how they pay those costs. (And if it wasn't NBC, it would be CBS, ABC, or Fox.) One of the hazards of giving up living television is that...you give up live television. NBC is not obligated to do squat for you if it can't make money from you. It's a business, not a charity. And stop praising the BBC. It's not free . Brits pay a mandatory…

I wish people would stop harping on about the UK TV licence fee. TV in the US is not free - you pay for it every time you buy something made by a company that spends money advertising on TV. It's practically impossible to opt out of paying for TV in the US. At least in the UK you can opt out if you genuinely don't want to watch anything.

Frankly, I'd rather pay £150/year for all the BBC programming (without commercials, including full online on-demand streaming) than $720/year for my cable company's "basic" package (which I continue to pay for by sitting through advertising for a third of the show's airtime anyway). If we bought that model to the US, I'd be ecstatic.

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

#188

Post by mcpherrinm »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #186
kristofferR wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use http://tunlr.net/ 's DNS servers instead - it's the same type of service, just completely free and with no signup required. Primary DNS: 64.250.122.104 Secondary DNS: 199.167.30.144

how did you use this to watch iPlayer? It seems like it is for giving a US based DNS for people outside the US.

The DNS resolves supported websites to their hosts, which proxy through the US. (n.b, not verified but that's a sane implementation of this)

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

#189

Post by pbhjpbhj »

adamt wrote: post #163
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm nitpicking but I feel it's worth pointing out that not only do UK viewers of live TV need a license but all taxpayers contribute to the BBC by separate payments from direct taxation. UK ISPs appear to throttle iPlayer traffic so ironically using a proxy might be worthwhile in the UK too.

The bbc is almost entirely funded by the licence fee. There is a small grant to cover world service (mainly for political reasons eg providing news in Arabic) and BBC worldwide makes some money, but the vast majority is from the tv license. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Finances I also don't think it's true to suggest ISPs are throttling iPlayer specifically. The bbc has said it will name and shame any ISP that do…

From you Wikipedia link BBC income includes "£279.4 million from government grants;". That's about 6% of the amount taken from license fees, I'd argue that's not insignificant. Financial information about treasury spend on the BBC seems quite hard to find however.

On point 2 why would the BBC be spending money to develop a system to indicate throttling if there wasn't even an "appearance" (as I claimed) that there was some throttling. Surely they'd want to show at least that there was an appearance of throttling before starting such a project?

FWIW my own experience with one of the top UK ISPs has been of quite poor service for iPlayer - significantly lower bandwidth is used for iPlayer connection than for other streaming sites. That is watching the same show in low quality on iPlayer I get significantly poorer connection than watching in higher quality streaming from some other site - this gives the appearance that iPlayer is being throttled.

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

#190

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ConstantineXVI wrote: post #81
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a radio broadcast you can listen to for sound whilst watching the images from Telemundo. I've heard of people doing this to choose a superior radio commentary whilst watching sport on TV in the UK.

AFAIK, NBC/Telemundo doesn't own any radio stations. And since NBC isn't broadcasting live, even if someone was running a radio broadcast it's highly unlikely they'd be in sync.

If there was a radio stream available online you could probably resync using eg VLC?
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