Help- How to "Cut the Cable" and Watch Live Games
by drewtosa on Feb 9, 2012 10:45 PM CST
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PrintFor the last couple of months I've debated "cutting the cable" to save on monthly bills. My wife and I only watch a handful of channels and mostly watch shows off of the DVR. We are tired of paying over $100 a month for something we barely use. I've figured out the logistics to watch all the necessary shows via Hulu, Netflix and over the air local channels. The last and most important obstacle is watching Brewers games live. I thought a subscription to MLB.TV would be the answer, but I recently found out they blackout any local games. Since I live just south of West Bend, this is an issue.
Watching the game as an archived game doesn't seem feasible because I would have to avoid the news and reading the Mug. Although the local blackout makes sense from the cable rights side, it seems completely counter-intuitive from being a fan of a local team. Watching the Brewers is the main reason why I would sign up. This looks like it has been a major flaw for years, and every once and a while there are rumblings of reform and stories of MLB looking to make a change but, to date, the issue still exists. Does anyone think they will make a reform?
After some quick research online, I found the using a proxy would be a workaround; however I'm pretty sure this is illegal so I want to avoid this solution. I've even looked into getting just a "local" style cable package, but it doesn't look like FSN Wisc would be offered. I figured I was not the only person with this issue and decided to reach out to the BCB community. Does anyone know a solution to my cable cutting dilemma?
If I can't come up with a way to watch games live, I will be forced to stick with the current plan. Or worse, the wife will force the cut and I'll have to follow the Cardinals. (just kidding. I'd burn myself alive before wearing a bird on my shirt)
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No ideas here
I’ve tried the subversion of the MLB.TV blackout rules in the past (especially when I had to spend extended time in Chicago for work) and haven’t found anything that’s not a MAJOR inconvenience. From trying to time switching on the proxy at exactly the right time, to purchasing a Slingbox and getting someone who would also watch all the games and getting them to hook it up in their house so I could leech off of them.
To be honest, there’s no easy way to do it. You can find live broadcasts online, they are out there with enough searching, but with the recent crackdowns on online sporting event streaming, what’s there for one game, might not be there for the next. shrug
"The Milwaukee Brewers' line score is starting to resemble an international phone number" - Pittsburgh Pirates Radio during 20-0 shutout - 4-22-10
Find a local bar or watch numbers
That has good specials for Brewers games. I don’t have cable, so end up watching the games at my local bar…though if you watched every game, cable would be cheaper; but its also more fun to watch with others!
The other option is you could watch “numbers” with gameday ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx5x7kGVImw ) and listen to Uecker on the radio. I found last year gameday did well putting up highlights to many plays.
Consider DirecTV
My father just moved into a Milwaukee area assisted living center. He gets a ‘basic’ package of 39 DirecTV channels, one of which is FS-Wisconsin. So he will be able to watch most of the televised Brewers (and Bucks) games live. It was something he didn’t have with Time Warner Cable’s basic cable package when he was at home.
I don’t know how much it costs for the DirecTV package, as it’s included in the care facility monthly fee. However I would assume that an assisted living center is going to provide the lowest cost ‘cable’ service it can. It’s got to be less than $100 per month for only 39 channels!
no easy solution
I went the mlb.tv route last year and it was a quite a hassle. basically the procedure is to a) install a proxy swiching addon to your browser(proxy switchy for chrome in my case), b) find a free proxy server on hidemyass.com or equivalent, c) plug said proxy into proxy switchy. d) go to the watch/listen page and turn on the proxy e) click on the link to the game f) wait for the game to load and then turn off the proxy. MAJOR MAJOR PITA. Especially because the free proxies go down over time, so you have to keep finding new ones, sometimes I was just straight SOL. Paying for a proxy might be what I end up doing this year. I really wish MLB would just fix their blackout rules already. I’m NOT paying for cable/sat for one channel.
I tried but even when I could get it to work it would load so slowly it wasn't worth it.
E: George 4 (5, throw, throw, throw, throw).
It's not a pain if you pay for a proxy.
fka "warwick5s"
by DEUCE SLUICE on Feb 10, 2012 4:44 PM CST up reply actions
I've been looking into it a bit
seems like somewhere in the $5-10 range per month. When combined with mlb.tv, over a season that works out to be quite a bit cheaper than cable.
A Proxy Primer™ for Noah:
Proxy servers allow one to disguise the source of traffic by redirecting requests and packets through the proxy. There are several types of proxy, but for our purposes we’re talking about IP port proxies. If I set my proxy to say, 192.168.123.254(not a real proxy), any tcp/udp requests sent by my browser then go to the proxy first, where it sends them along to the actual site I’m visiting. The proxy then receives the data I want and sends it along to me. This fools mlb into thinking the requests came from the proxy, not from me. If the proxy is located outside wisconsin, it passes the blackout check and loads the game. Once that happens, I can then turn the proxy off and connect directly. This is done because the extra hop the proxy requires is necessarily rather slow. Hope this helps. :)
Move to L.A.
Then you can watch the Brewers on MLB.tv. Though your other costs-of-living might go up a bit. And you’ll have to get cable/DirecTV to watch the Angels.
Remember: Schadenfreude is still Freude.
Totally!
Living in LA I don’t have any blackout issues… however I don’t get any of the local pre and post-game coverage.
The Time Warner Cable feed cuts out promptly when the game is over and goes to commercial. I still think it is weird that paying on cable doesn’t give you computer access; have thought about a slingbox…
I could possibly help
But I can’t post here, and you’d have to be ok with moral gray areas. I don’t know that there’s a way to send a pm, so post your email address or something if interested.
Where do I send Brian Anderson's thumbs?
"That's not a weird stat. Rickie is a run-scorer," Yost said. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter," Yost told reporters. "See, you guys have no concept. He's a run-scorer. So there's nothing weird about it. That's what he does."
BCB Fantasy Football League 1 Champ
You can always use one of those sites that stream games.
They don’t have every game every time, but there are enough sites around that one of them has the game most of the time.
I hid the link you posted--Kyle doesn't want anyone posting stuff like that on the site directly.
If you want to email it to people who request it, that would be OK.
you could try, but I doubt it would work
using the incognito mode of google chrome. I think firefox has an equivalent, and the most recent IE may as well, but certainly version 7 did not.
there are no blackouts to the mlb radio, so if you’re content listening to the game and watching highlights through gameday, do that. Sometimes there are free games-of-the-day on .tv, available to radio subscribers, that include brewers games. Not sure if those are ALWAYS blacked out in the home market or not.
Gameday typically has video clips available about 5 minutes after the event. Unfortunately they very very seldom show you the whole AB – just the last pitch.
Listening to the games isn't really an option.
Unless the let the new guy call the whole game.
Twitterize me if you dare: @mykenk
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| W | L | PCT | GB | STRK | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cincinnati
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27 | 20 | .574 | 0 | Won 2 |
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St. Louis
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26 | 22 | .541 | 1.5 | Won 1 |
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Pittsburgh
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23 | 24 | .489 | 4 | Won 3 |
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Houston
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22 | 25 | .468 | 5 | Lost 2 |
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Milwaukee
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19 | 28 | .404 | 8 | Lost 2 |
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Chicago
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