I cut the cord a couple of years ago and have found one sports live stream that didn’t look horrific. That was a game feed from Opening Day this year.

I would love to find find some live sports streams that weren’t garbage quality.

Outside of the NBC Football stuff last year on nbc.com, I have found nothing.

It’s just easier to download the torrent the next day. Still not much out there for MLB

Dollars Not debt

http://www.cancelcable.com/

If you think that the cable/satellite providers aren’t trying hard to fight this just pick a provider and type it’s name and a name of a network, you’ll find tons of results. In the past 5 years I know of 7 attempts by providers refusing to pay the huge increases. The channels would start huge campaigns and scrolling texts under shows reading. ” Your provider is going to remove, (insert favorite show), and that you need to call them up. The providers get hammered with calls about disconnecting service and going with other providers that did pay. These increase end up in your monthly bill and make it go up every year.

Personally, as long as the TV can play an occassional movie I really don’t care about the rest.

I also got rid of cable TV (though not cable internet) and I am also a big sports fan (mostly soccer and baseball). I saw that lots of people have posted how they would miss the sports, so here’s my suggestion for those of you into soccer and baseball:

Soccer – ESPN360 carries a ton of games. Go to ESPN’s web site and find the link to ESPN360 and have a look at their schedule. They also carry college basketball, football, and even sometimes stuff like Cricket. They had some US Open tennis matches on there as well this past fall.

European Soccer – Again ESPN360 carries some La Liga games, Bundesliga, Eredivisie, Coca-Cola League (England’s Championship division), etc. The best deal though is to go to UEFA.com and buy the Champion’s League/UEFA Cup REPLAY package. It’s about $40 for the season and you can watch EVERY champion’s league or Europa league match, or highlights the day after the match. The games are posted at midnight central European time, which is 6 pm Eastern and 3 pm Pacific, so you can virtually watch the match the same day and you won’t have to pay for cable + special sports channels (GolTV, etc.) to watch the champion’s league. This works abroad too, btw. I subscribed when I lived in Botswana…that’s how I watched EURO 2008. It’s certainly not HD, but it’s good enough for me.

Baseball – MLB is the only other league I know of that has put all its games online. I subscribed to MLBTV when I lived in Botswana, so we could keep up with the Red Sox. Back in the states, I downgraded to just the gameday audio ($15 and you can listen to the radio broadcast of any game through the season and post-season…you have the choice of home or away broadcasters). But you can get streaming video if you subscribe to it (I think it’s around $80 a season)…there may be blackouts though. Games are also available through the archives, so you’ll never have to miss a game. Just to reiterate, MLBTV.com is available internationally too.

Other than that, there’s live streaming of some sports on websites like justin.tv, which is definitely good for European soccer matches you can’t find online elsewhere. Not sure how legally kosher that site is though…

And I agree…Hulu is fantastic. I started watching the Daily Show on Hulu instead of off the show’s website because Hulu has fewer and much more tolerable ads (many of them PSAs). And for the trekkies out there, CBS.com has all the original Star Trek series available online . I watched all 14 episodes of Firefly on Hulu.

One last comment…USE YOUR LIBRARY!!! Libraries have TONS of TV shows and Movies on DVD and IT’S ALL FREE!!! My wife and I LOVE mysteries, and our local library has tons of great British mystery series, a great selection of movies (even very recent ones). Once you get into the habit of going to the library, the 7-day lending period
(or whatever it may be at your library) for movies is not a big deal and our library accounts can be accessed online, so we can re-new items with a couple of mouse clicks if we find we haven’t watched a movie by the due date. I watched the entire BSG series by borrowing the DVDs from my library.

One of the best things about the new TV is the digital tuner. The cable company wants $13 a month just for a digital box to recieve the HD, but my TV recieves all the HD channels without the rental box.

You can’t get much cheaper than FREE. Here’s a point I’ll capitalize: LIBRARIES ARE FANTASTIC, FREE (THAT’S FREE!) RESOURCES PEOPLE DO NOT USE. USE YOUR LIBRARY!

This does require returning your videos on time or paying a fine, so if you don’t actively maintain your account, the library deal might not be for you. Otherwise, make the effort. It’s good for you, and also good for your library.

Thanks.

Hulu sounds great. It’s not available for viewing outside the US yet, (I live in Mexico), but I did leave my email and name for when they expand.

If you know of any such service that allows North America viewing outside the US, I’d be delighted to hear about it!

-Romy

I mean, it’s not like you can watch television many hours on a single day. Getting on-demand showing is a better idea, I think.

Thanks for the tips.

We turned off our satellite a year ago. we watch all the major networks, plus USA online. We also watch Hulu and use Netflix instant download a lot.

Our internet plus satellite bill was $132 a month. Now our Netflix bill and our internet bill are $63 a month.

We pay $4.99 per month for basic channels from Dish Network (actually, with taxes it comes to $5.35. Honestly, I could cut that out – there is literally nothing on television I’m interested in. Certainly nothing that would be worth hundreds of dollars a year, which would equate to many, many working hours of my life.

I use the rabbit ears to watch real-time television once per year, for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (It’s a family tradition.) Once the digital conversion makes that impossible, we’ll be truly cable-free.