Preferred site for watching football online?

[zzm9980]

Does anyone have a preferred site or method for watching Football online? Mainly EPL, etc. I'm open to paying a sub fee if required and/or using a VPN, but obviously cheaper/free is preferred Also would be great if it works from an iPad!

[citxpat]

Does anyone have a preferred site or method for watching Football online? Mainly EPL, etc. I'm open to paying a sub fee if required and/or using a VPN, but obviously cheaper/free is preferred Also would be great if it works from an iPad!

I use ustream.tv when I can, but sometimes it's hard to find a quality stream

[zzm9980]

Oh, I've answered this myself so I thought I'd share.

Like citxpat says, finding a quality live stream is a challenge depending on the teams (ManU may have 20 streams going to choose from, while Chelsea has 5, while other teams may have 1 or 2):

http://livetv.ru/en/ - My favorite site. Streams are OK, but they have a really good highlights archive, long highlights, individual goals, etc. They keep improving the quality of the highlights also as they can. 20 minutes after the game you may have a 160x120 stream in arabic, 12 hours later you'll have full HD quality in english.

http://www.fasthighlights.com/ - highlights

http://www.thefirstrow.eu/ - streams
http://www.rojadirecta.me/ - more streams
http://www.wiziwig.tv/ - more streams
http://www.vipbox.tv/ - more streams

[stiwi]

Free:
http://www.coolsport.tv

Paid (legal):
Al Jazeera Sport (US$135 / year) + SmartDNS or UnotellyDNS (US$50 / year) - plenty of matches, all EPL games with english commentary, major and non major leagues (except Bundesliga). iOS apps, AirPlay streaming to TV possible.

Paid (illegal):
http://www.ntv.mx (€15 / month) - they have 7 days free trial. Works pretty well. SD good quality stream.

http://futuboxhd.com (€8 / month) - many HD channels in different languages. You need at least 5Mbps connection to them. It has XBMC addon so you can easily watch all their channels on TV.

http://offsidestreams.com (£5 / month) - HD Streams but they have to sort out their server issues, they were basically down during last weekend's EPL.

http://sportsebooks.eu (£5 / month) - just another paid streaming website.

http://starstreams.tv - supposedly the best paid website this kind of. Almost impossible to get in though, rarely take new sign ups and if, only current members can recommend. I am not a member unfortunately.

Most streams including Al Jazeera are 20s behind live TV coverage. Only Futubox has something like 5s delay. If you don't mind the delay, Al Jazeera with SmartDNS or UnotellyDNS is best bet here.

[Fortan]

Go to the pub! 20$ at least every time though, if you are one pint every half kind of guy.

[Tanuki]

Free:
http://www.coolsport.tv

Paid (legal):
Al Jazeera Sport (US$135 / year) + SmartDNS or UnotellyDNS (US$50 / year) - plenty of matches, all EPL games with english commentary, major and non major leagues (except Bundesliga). iOS apps, AirPlay streaming to TV possible.

I was looking at the Al Jazeera service and the majority of their stuff looks to be limited to these countries:

Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine (including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates or Yemen.

I was unable to access much at all from the US right now. Does the above VPN vendor have servers in the middle east?

Cheers

David

[stiwi]

Free:
http://www.coolsport.tv

Paid (legal):
Al Jazeera Sport (US$135 / year) + SmartDNS or UnotellyDNS (US$50 / year) - plenty of matches, all EPL games with english commentary, major and non major leagues (except Bundesliga). iOS apps, AirPlay streaming to TV possible.

I was looking at the Al Jazeera service and the majority of their stuff looks to be limited to these countries:

Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine (including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates or Yemen.

I was unable to access much at all from the US right now. Does the above VPN vendor have servers in the middle east?

Cheers

David

Yes, they do but servers in the middle east might be slow. It is better to go with SmartDNS (Overplay.net) or UnoDNS (Unotelly.com) for Al Jazeera purpose, as DNS "forwarding" service doesn't slow down your internet.

[Tanuki]

Yes, they do but servers in the middle east might be slow. It is better to go with SmartDNS (Overplay.net) or UnoDNS (Unotelly.com) for Al Jazeera purpose, as DNS "forwarding" service doesn't slow down your internet.

One of these is probably the easiest choice, in the end. I just wish there were better solutions that didn't involve paying everyone off and were legal. Sigh...

Cheers

David

[zzm9980]

Yes, they do but servers in the middle east might be slow. It is better to go with SmartDNS (Overplay.net) or UnoDNS (Unotelly.com) for Al Jazeera purpose, as DNS "forwarding" service doesn't slow down your internet.

One of these is probably the easiest choice, in the end. I just wish there were better solutions that didn't involve paying everyone off and were legal. Sigh...

Cheers

David

These (DNS Services and Al Jazeera) are entirely legal to use in Singapore.

[Tanuki]

These (DNS Services and Al Jazeera) are entirely legal to use in Singapore.

Those individual services might be legal but using them together to work around the original provider's restrictions are likely not. Hence the info from Al Jazeera's site:

"Due to rights restrictions, premium content is not available to view where you are."

In reality I can't see anyone trying to prosecute a handful of people sitting out in Singapore watching BPL games. I've used Slingbox from Japan to watch US TV shows, and that's a marginal solution in the same way, though different technology. I just wish providers would make simpler interfaces for everyone so we wouldn't have to jump through extra hoops. When they make it more costly or difficult it just pisses people off and they come up with these sorts of workarounds.

Anyhow, thanks for passing along the info. I'll have to figure whether I might use this or just pay StarHub/Singtel/Whoever for the service. Woo Hoo!

Cheers

David

[stiwi]

Those individual services might be legal but using them together to work around the original provider's restrictions are likely not. Hence the info from Al Jazeera's site:
[...]

ISP providers in Singapore are developing exactly the same workarounds for their customers as DNS services mentioned:
http://www.viewqwest.com/freedomvpn/
https://secure.myrepublic.com.sg/add-ons/teleport.php

Since you mentioned Singtel and Starhub, if you care about the quality it is important to not use any of the 3 telcos here including M1. ViewQwest is number one followed by MyRepublic.

[zzm9980]

These (DNS Services and Al Jazeera) are entirely legal to use in Singapore.

Those individual services might be legal but using them together to work around the original provider's restrictions are likely not. Hence the info from Al Jazeera's site:

"Due to rights restrictions, premium content is not available to view where you are."

In reality I can't see anyone trying to prosecute a handful of people sitting out in Singapore watching BPL games. I've used Slingbox from Japan to watch US TV shows, and that's a marginal solution in the same way, though different technology. I just wish providers would make simpler interfaces for everyone so we wouldn't have to jump through extra hoops. When they make it more costly or difficult it just pisses people off and they come up with these sorts of workarounds.

Anyhow, thanks for passing along the info. I'll have to figure whether I might use this or just pay StarHub/Singtel/Whoever for the service. Woo Hoo!

Cheers

David

We discussed this recently. It most likely can be interpreted to be a violation of the US DMCA and other similar laws, none of which exist in Singapore. Unless you're KimDotCom, the US isn't likely to come get you for violating it.

[zzm9980]

ViewQwest is number one followed by MyRepublic.

I'd agree, but switch the order :p Pre-sales support for MyRepublic was much better. I asked both providers the same sets of questions by emailing them and had the answers back from MR in a few hours. It was a day or two for VQ to get back to me.

[stiwi]

ViewQwest is number one followed by MyRepublic.

I'd agree, but switch the order :p Pre-sales support for MyRepublic was much better. I asked both providers the same sets of questions by emailing them and had the answers back from MR in a few hours. It was a day or two for VQ to get back to me.

VQ response time depends on the nature of case but I have had positive results. Latency to one of the EU server increased from 200ms to 270ms due to route changing, so I sent them an email whether they can restore "previous" routing and they got back to me within 60mins saying that they have done it. Pretty amazing I would say.

They have also upgraded now all existing clients speed from 150/75 to 200/100 as they introduced new speeds while keeping same prices. Also recently they have upgraded ALL customers for few days to 1 Gbps - that was fun

They have also forum with internal section for customers only to report suggestions / faults etc, pretty active from their side. The routing I checked for few servers were better optimized on VQ than on MR. I guess you can't go wrong with either but VQ seems to have a slight edge in technical performance and routing optimization based on widely commented threads on HWZ forum of both ISP.

[zzm9980]

ViewQwest is number one followed by MyRepublic.

I'd agree, but switch the order :p Pre-sales support for MyRepublic was much better. I asked both providers the same sets of questions by emailing them and had the answers back from MR in a few hours. It was a day or two for VQ to get back to me.

VQ response time depends on the nature of case but I have had positive results. Latency to one of the EU server increased from 200ms to 270ms due to route changing, so I sent them an email whether they can restore "previous" routing and they got back to me within 60mins saying that they have done it. Pretty amazing I would say.

They have also upgraded now all existing clients speed from 150/75 to 200/100 as they introduced new speeds while keeping same prices. Also recently they have upgraded ALL customers for few days to 1 Gbps - that was fun

They have also forum with internal section for customers only to report suggestions / faults etc, pretty active from their side. The routing I checked for few servers were better optimized on VQ than on MR. I guess you can't go wrong with either but VQ seems to have a slight edge in technical performance and routing optimization based on widely commented threads on HWZ forum of both ISP.

Too bad they didn't get back to me sooner on the questions about no-contract plans then. They were my first choice.