Get sports on TV without buying a lot of other garbage

[RalphVa]

Comcast cut off my ESPN and ESPN2 usage as of June 11th. There was an audit done, and it was found that I was getting the sports and entertainment package for only $22/mo. They said the price was going up to $55/mo. to get it in the future. We said "no".

So, now I'm still looking for how to get ESPN, ESPN2, TBS and MASN without paying for a whole lot of "entertainment" garbage channels that I never watch. Neither DirectTV nor Dish TV have just sports channels. They package ESPN and ESPN2 in with similar "entertainment" channels that I had with Comcast.

Been looking at Aereo and VPN. Aereo isn't in our area. Not sure about VPN (vpntelevision.com, about $5/mo.). Not even sure my internet speed (with CenturyLink) is fast enough to get sports on my computer anyway. (CenturyLink is linked up with DirectTV for TV. Even with "bundling", can't get sports at a reasonable price from them.)

No luck yet.

Anyone have any success stories on how to cut the cable?

I'm about ready to get an antenna to get the local channels and tell Comcast to go jump in the lake and not pay their $9/mo. to get the local channels. However, Pay Per View just might be a possibility to get some sports this way if I continue the Comcast subscription (Xfinity). Wouldn't be that satisfactory, as I often surf among 2 or 3 or 4 channels during football season. Currently, the CWS games aren't until 8 p.m. Wouldn't be able to watch the whole game before bedtime anyway. So, they're not a good PPV item.

Ralph

 

[sseelhoff]

Comcast cut off my ESPN and ESPN2 usage as of June 11th. There was an audit done, and it was found that I was getting the sports and entertainment package for only $22/mo. They said the price was going up to $55/mo. to get it in the future. We said "no".

So, now I'm still looking for how to get ESPN, ESPN2, TBS and MASN without paying for a whole lot of "entertainment" garbage channels that I never watch. Neither DirectTV nor Dish TV have just sports channels. They package ESPN and ESPN2 in with similar "entertainment" channels that I had with Comcast.

Been looking at Aereo and VPN. Aereo isn't in our area. Not sure about VPN (vpntelevision.com, about $5/mo.). Not even sure my internet speed (with CenturyLink) is fast enough to get sports on my computer anyway. (CenturyLink is linked up with DirectTV for TV. Even with "bundling", can't get sports at a reasonable price from them.)

No luck yet.

Anyone have any success stories on how to cut the cable?

I'm about ready to get an antenna to get the local channels and tell Comcast to go jump in the lake and not pay their $9/mo. to get the local channels. However, Pay Per View just might be a possibility to get some sports this way if I continue the Comcast subscription (Xfinity). Wouldn't be that satisfactory, as I often surf among 2 or 3 or 4 channels during football season. Currently, the CWS games aren't until 8 p.m. Wouldn't be able to watch the whole game before bedtime anyway. So, they're not a good PPV item.

Ralph

If you have the right internet provider, you can watch ESPN online.

Information About WatchESPN

Access to live programming on the ESPN3 channel of WatchESPN.com is available at no additional cost to fans with subscriptions to participating high speed internet service providers. Click HERE to view a complete list of participating providers.

ESPN3 is also available at no cost to U.S. college students and U.S.-based military personnel on computers connected to on-campus educational networks and on-base military networks.

Here's the link to the ISPs who have deals with ESPN.

WatchESPN FAQ

 

[DANOCHEESE]

Good Luck The Sports players need there millions, if you want to be cheap how will they make it.

 

[DT86]

Good Luck The Sports players need there millions, if you want to be cheap how will they make it.

The average salary for NFL, NBL, NHL and NBA players is something like 3 million/ season.


I feel sorry for those poor ba$*ards. I could never live off that.

 

[RalphVa]

We're talking nearly $700/year for a package; whereas, what I want to watch is only costing them maybe less than $200/yr. The extra cost of the packages aren't going to the sports people. It's going to the TV providers.

Ralph

 

[Gary Fowler]

They claim that they have to bundle the less watched stuff with premium channels in order to make it pay for the stuff no one watches. If no one watches them, why do they have so many talking head channels, news channels, HSN and reality show channels. They could drop all of that junk from my dishnet and I wouldn't care. I am not a sports watcher either but at least those have some value and entertainment value where as those other JUNK channels just fill space on the channel guide.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

yep, there are only a few channels I watch, and have to pay for all the other junk channels.

 

[dmccarty]

We got the cord almost two years ago and we should have done it a decade ago. We don't regret it one bit but we also don't watch sports.

We have Century Link and our service stinks to put in kindly, it is slow and unreliable, though its reliability has improved a bit when a bunch of people county wide complained. Instead of having to reset the DSL modem at least 1-2 a day we only have to do it a few times a week.

We are at the end of the phone line, literally, and Century will not improve our data rate. House built recently behind us, and farther from the central office, get 10 mbps while we are stuck with 1.5 mbps.

The point to all of this is that even with 1.5 mbps we still stream videos from Netflixs, Amazon, YouTube, etc, to multiple device. We might have a problem from time to time but that is because of the unreliable network, not data rate.

If you can find the servers to stream the video, you do not need to pay the high cable fees.

Later,
Dan

 

[OKnewguy]

pretty much the only truly legal way is with cable or sat. You can sometimes get some sports on JustinTV. They have a Roku app. When my wife was visiting California, she could not watch the OKC Thunder playoff games because it was not carried at her hotel. She used JustinTv.com and found the games and watched them on her laptop. She told me most of the time the feeds were killed, but she often would land on a spanish version of it that she could at least watch. On a seperate note, if you completely cut the cord, there are lots of things now days to help you out if your slightly techie. Roku, Apple TV, XBMC.
Dave

 

[RalphVa]

Think we have a deal with CenturyLink to bundle DirecTV. They're scheduled to come Tuesday afternoon and do the installation, which should be pretty simple, as it's all wireless: dish with its transmitter, receiver anywhere in house and little receivers on each of the two TVs.

We found an old antenna and connected it to a new 32" LED TV upstairs. Got the local channels on it. Those are all my wife wants. Think I can get all these on the other 2 TVs and have DirecTV on them as well. The cable from the upstairs TV can bring the antenna input to the other 2 TVs.

Ralph