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by erichsu 5590 days ago
I tried very hard to pay the NBA to stream its games online. I bought NBA League Pass Broadband two years running and found:

1. Many games I wanted to see were under local blackout

2. Many games I wanted to see were blacked out because they were the Tuesday NBA TV game.

3. I tried time shift games and found that whenever the game ends, the stream ends and snaps you to the final score. No matter where you are in the stream.

4. I found replay was flaky.

For all these reasons, I found myself often watching games on atdhe despite having paid to watch them. I also found myself really enjoying watching random TV commercials in Polish or Czech or Arabic, depending on atdhe source. I also really was impressed with the quality of the Veetle software.

Anyway, issues 3 & 4 could be solved by competent programming. Issues 1 & 2 (blackout) are likely to be with us for a long time due to the idiotic history of profit divvying in the industry.

I would still love to pay the NBA to watch the games, as long as all the games are viewable!

2 comments

Ditto. I have NBA League Pass Broadband as well and I have to use a proxy just to watch freaking Timberwolves games. TIMBERWOLVES GAMES, I mean come on! So I've had to come up with a mish-mash of atdhe, sporttorrent, NBA League Pass, and going to bars. I get the feeling the NBA doesn't want me watching their games..
Could not agree more. I'm glad to pay the NBA to watch the games, but they make it next to impossible.

From what I understand, MLB is better, but I can't speak from experience... curious if anyone has any comments...

MLB.tv isn't terrible. Their interface is actually quite nice, except that it only works properly in Firefox. The blackout restrictions are so-so, all local market games are blocked, as well as Saturday afternoon (FOX) games and Sunday Night Baseball (ESPN). Basically its not a bad deal if you don't live in your team's local market, especially if you are like me and can easily spend an afternoon watching every NL game.