I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
121–130 of 191 posts
Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 n…
> Almost everywhere, but not in the United States.
No. NBC is broadcasting the Olympics over-the-air all across the US.
Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
#123Sign 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
Our VPN at https://www.privateinternetaccess.com also has multiple gigabits of bandwidth available through our two UK gateways. We have an app that provides one click setup on both windows and osx.
Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
#124Wait, I don't quite get it - the first thing the author says is that he got "crystal clear" high-def Olympics coverage from someone called Telemundo over the air. He goes on to conclude that "There is no good way to watch the Olympics in the United States without a cable subscription". What did I miss? Edit: Thanks for the quick answers.
Sorry - I updated the article, but as the other reply mentioned, Telemundo is a channel in Spanish.
Did you check to see if they had English closed captioning? They do that for much of their programming.
Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
#125It is illegal if you live in the UK and consume TV to not pay for your TV license. Legally, I’m unclear of if an American connecting on a VPN to a live stream in the UK is breaking the law. I would guess that it hasn’t really come up with the TV license people yet. I don't know about the UK law, but nearby Ireland has a similar "TV Licence". The law there is not "you need a licence to watch TV", but "if you're in Ire…
Indeed, it is similar here in the UK. Although importantly, it tends to be interpreted as 'something that you do use to watch TV'. So for instance, the TV that OP had that he did not use to watch 'live TV' would not have needed to be licensed. You'd have probably got nasty letters about it, but would be well within your rights not to pay for a license as you would not be using it.
Also, although it has no weight on this discussion, it's worth mentioning that TV licenses are per household, not per TV.
However, having said that, the BBC probably has to take adequate precautions to stop non-UK viewers watching the Olympic coverage as part of their deal with the organising committee to be the 'official broadcaster'. Sports broadcasting is a massive money maker, I'm sure! :)
I don't know whether this would mean a US citizen using a proxy to view the BBC feeds is breaking the law though. Interestingly, our extradition treaty with the US [1] "allows the US to extradite UK citizens and others for offences committed against US law, even though the alleged offence may have been committed in the UK by a person living and working in the UK", although there is apparently no reciprocal right. Therefore one can only assume it doesn't matter whether it is legal or not! (IANAL etc.)
Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
#126This 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 c…
Are you sure cable providers are required to provide free over-the-air stations? I haven't heard of that being a requirement and can't find anything online except vague claims without citations. I've heard of low-cost plans that provide all the equivalent over-the-air stations, but no legal requirement to provide those for free. That said, this certainly does work for some people. It worked for us for a while after w…
Fred Wilson first brought this to my attention here:
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/02/clearqam-what-it-is-and-why-...
He references "ClearQAM" aka "Clear QAM".
Also note a few people commented on today's blog post (IOW, not here, but on the original post; see my comment and replies) that they tried, and it works.
Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
#127This 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 c…
Are you sure cable providers are required to provide free over-the-air stations? I haven't heard of that being a requirement and can't find anything online except vague claims without citations. I've heard of low-cost plans that provide all the equivalent over-the-air stations, but no legal requirement to provide those for free. That said, this certainly does work for some people. It worked for us for a while after w…
The poster is correct. There is a law, I cannot remember where it is stated and where I read it, but I have heard it and I did check when I only had cable. I got all the broadcast stations in HD no less without a cable subscription using my QAM tuner on my TV and on my HD Homerun.
Quality usually will not be nearly as good as receiving over the air though. At least that is my experience. Most cable operators will compress their stations, some more than others. It is obvious if you have seen or are used to viewing with rabbit ears.
Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure cable providers are required to provide free over-the-air stations? I haven't heard of that being a requirement and can't find anything online except vague claims without citations. I've heard of low-cost plans that provide all the equivalent over-the-air stations, but no legal requirement to provide those for free. That said, this certainly does work for some people. It worked for us for a while after w…
I can't cite a source but I'm quite certain that there is no requirement to provide these channels to non-customers. The requirement is that they broadcast those channels in the clear to customers. That means without a physical filter, non-customers get the channels. Adding/removing filters means a truck roll and $ so often you get lucky.
I'd agree that if your home never had cable, SOL.
And you're right that there's nothing in it for them to drive a truck around...it's just s/w setting to turn off your paid subscription.
However, see my comment above re ClearQAM, and link to Fred's post.
Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure cable providers are required to provide free over-the-air stations? I haven't heard of that being a requirement and can't find anything online except vague claims without citations. I've heard of low-cost plans that provide all the equivalent over-the-air stations, but no legal requirement to provide those for free. That said, this certainly does work for some people. It worked for us for a while after w…
The poster is correct. There is a law, I cannot remember where it is stated and where I read it, but I have heard it and I did check when I only had cable. I got all the broadcast stations in HD no less without a cable subscription using my QAM tuner on my TV and on my HD Homerun. Quality usually will not be nearly as good as receiving over the air though. At least that is my experience. Most cable operators will com…
My experience is the opposite. Before I knew about the above, I bought a digital antenna from Home Depot. I got barely any signal.
Now, I get HDTV quality on a few networks.
Re: I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
#130Answer: 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…
This is not the answer. My grandmother was kind enough to give me her Comcast account info so I can stream through nbcolympics.com
Their system is garbage. IE9 and IE9 64-bit come to a screeching halt after 30 minutes of live streaming and have to be killed by task manager. Firefox Nightly x64 (my main browser) does the same thing after ballooning to 600MB of RAM. In Chrome the video starts to skip after 20 minutes when RAM usage hits about 300MB. So far Chrome + AdBlock is the only thing that's been stable so far.
Which brings me to why nbcolympics.com is garbage. They've managed to take a YouTube stream, and then surround it on all sides with 2 flash ad banners, commercial breaks during live streams, many many more commercial breaks during replays, and a drunken orgy of Web 2.0 tracking systems and social medias as far as the eye can see.
They've taken the most widely used video distribution platform and turned it into a hulking behemoth that destroys web browsers.
Ignoring all of that for a moment. NBC also has gaps in what you can watch on nbcolympics.com The opening ceremony wasn't streamed live, or streamed "live" when NBC showed it on TV. I'd have to check, but I don't think you can even watch a reply of it now. I wanted to watch some archery and the USA women's soccer match from earlier. While scrolling through the list I saw a reply link for every event...except gymnastics. NBC decided not to allow replays of that.
This just grows the amount of hatred I have for NBC since the 2010 games when they implemented this system and I couldn't get the same Comcast account to authenticate. So I was stuck with tape delay everything while my friends up north were watching everything live through cbc.ca
The trial run of NBC's system in 2008 was the best run they've had. No ads, no pay wall system, every event streamed live and available for replay afterward. It worked without a hitch.