Streaming NFL Games

In my last post, I talked about how frustrating it can be when your favorite team is playing a big game, but you can't watch it on TV for any of a variety of reasons. Today I'm going to talk about a solution to this problem, which has allowed me to watch almost all of the Cowboys games this year, even when the game isn't carried in my area, or is broadcast on a channel which we do not receive.

The solution I have found is a piece of software called SopCast. It is a peer-to-peer program for broadcasting normal television broadcasting over the Internet. It works by downloading the SopCast client, logging in, and joining a channel. The channels are similar to regular TV channels, but not as convenient. For example, in my experience it takes about a minute for a channel to start showing video.

The video quality is quite poor. A few weeks ago I was watching a Cowboys game using SopCast when a play was challenged. They showed the replay over and over, but because the video quality was so poor, it was almost impossible to determine the correct outcome of the play (which I am usually an expert at, along with every single other person that has ever seen a play challenged).

Although it's not perfect, SopCast is a much better alternative to following a game than that stupid live GameCast thing that ESPN has. The video does sputter sometimes, and it occasionally freezes, but the audio is pretty resilient, so even if you can't see what's going on, the announcers usually do a pretty good job of filling in the details.

This Sunday the Cowboys play the Minnesota Vikings. Although the game will be carried in other markets, our local affiliate has decided to show the Rams vs. Seahawks game instead. I'm starting to get sleepy just thinking about that matchup, although we'll probably watch at least parts of it because Lacey likes the Rams, and we both love to root against Seattle. My prediction: Rams win their first game of the year in an upset.

So if you find yourself wishing you could watch a game that isn't broadcast on any of your channels, check out SopCast. Once you have it installed, you just need to find the right channel that is broadcasting your game. Lucky for us, there are people out there that have setup a website for finding out which channels you need to watch to see your game. Sometimes they even have regular video streams, so if you're paranoid about p2p software, you just might get lucky and find a direct video stream, although when I tried one to watch the Cowboys vs. Bills game a couple weeks ago, the video would freeze after a couple minutes and would have to be restarted. I eventually switched to the sop feed and had a much better experience.