Can you pay for BTN and ESPN college Football without having Directv/cable?

uihawk82 said:
You mean you watch them over the internet without a cable or satellite carrier contract? How do you do that?
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It's not entirely legal so I think most people will refrain from posting the websites. But there are a couple really good ones out there that stream basically every sporting event that is carried on tv from football to MMA to soccer to cricket. Also, I'd like to stress that if you go searching for or using these websites, they are generally loaded with malware....so be very careful with what you're clicking on, keep your virus definitions as up to date as possible, or else use a computer you can easily rebuild or don't care about :)
 
mopkins said:
It's not entirely legal so I think most people will refrain from posting the websites. But there are a couple really good ones out there that stream basically every sporting event that is carried on tv from football to MMA to soccer to cricket. Also, I'd like to stress that if you go searching for or using these websites, they are generally loaded with malware....so be very careful with what you're clicking on, keep your virus definitions as up to date as possible, or else use a computer you can easily rebuild or don't care about :)
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This. You shouldn't ever skimp on security anyway, but especially if you are sitting in the first row.
 
mopkins said:
Also, most channels, ESPN and BTN included, already offer free internet streaming of your content provided you have a valid cable/satellite subscription. If ESPN or another company was to skip the middle man (Directv, Time Warner, etc) and go right to the customer via online streaming, they could potentially make even more money.
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ESPN currently receives something like $4 for every household in the country that pays for cable or dish.

What streaming pricing model would they have to replicate their income? $20 a month per internet subscriber? More? I would think more, as I doubt 20% of current pay tv subscribers would be willing to spend that much on sports.

All the incentives seem to be with ESPN choosing to stay bundled. Not only the per month income, but their advertising dollars would drop greatly if they went a la cart.
 
uihawk82 said:
Legislatures and courts need to open up the spectrum to free markets and let companies start supplying their own signals. Put some satellites up that companies rent emission of their frequencies on and you buy one channel at a time.
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The free markets are acting and the result is bundling.
 
uihawk82 said:
I have done both of those things successfully but it is such a game.

I want a box that will pluck out the electromagnetic waves at BTN and ESPN frequencies and I will gladly pay

We put people on the moon 40+ years ago and have vehicles on Mars taking selfies of themselves but we cant get a cafeteria plan model from the friggin FCC.

Legislatures and courts need to open up the spectrum to free markets and let companies start supplying their own signals. Put some satellites up that companies rent emission of their frequencies on and you buy one channel at a time.
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There was a company that did just that and 6 Supreme Court justices voted to protect the cable monopoly. Scalia, Thomas and Alito voted to let the upstart tech company keep running. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-461_l537.pdf
 
ICHawk24 said:
The free markets are acting and the result is bundling.
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Free market? ROFLcopter. The cable companies have bought off Congress to ensure that bundling is not a violation of the Sherman Act and in most parts of the country there is a decades old government granted cable monopoly.
 
okeefe4prez said:
Free market? ROFLcopter. The cable companies have bought off Congress to ensure that bundling is not a violation of the Sherman Act and in most parts of the country there is a decades old government granted cable monopoly.
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Exactly correct. There has never been a cafeteria plan for this industry so how do we know the market has spoken.

Everybody used to have over the air cable tv. It was called your antenna and a cable took the signal down to your tv. Then about 50-60 years ago a town out east put an antenna on a hill to pick up the big city tv signals and they ran the cable down the hill to their town. Voila cable as a business was born. And really anybody could do that.

The problem is that now, like OK4P just said, is that governments of all levels have given in to let cable companies have a monopoly in their cities. These monopolies have a lot of wasted crap product. Ma Bell and the other Bell companies had a monopoly but they didnt have 200+ services on a phone line if you want to make the analogy that each cable channel is a specific service that you are paying for, which they are.

End the Monopolies, power to the people and all that good 60's stuff.
 
I gotta say that when you're wanting to watch the game live its not fun scrambling to find a viable website to stream the game from live. I've barely had luck getting the radio feed let alone the video. I think most of you are just talk and know that we are tied to the cable companies until a major change happens in the streaming world.
 
HawkfaninWA said:
I gotta say that when you're wanting to watch the game live its not fun scrambling to find a viable website to stream the game from live. I've barely had luck getting the radio feed let alone the video. I think most of you are just talk and know that we are tied to the cable companies until a major change happens in the streaming world.
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My original question was valid. It seems that someone said you can buy some espn programming as pay per view.

I will have to check that out.
 
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