Advice for out of market viewers.

Submitted by mrlmichael on

Hello,



I just recently got to Europe and will be here the entire football season. Does anyone know of a good place where I can stream the games to my computer so I wont have to miss any?

MBAgoblue

August 10th, 2010 at 2:14 PM ^

If you can get a soldier or sailor to buy a receiver for you on the base exchage, the AFN network usually carries the big games. When I was asigned to Europe it was a lifesaver, although the public service announcements the serve in lieu of ads got super annoying.

The drawbacks are it's not exactly legal, and you are out of luck if the soldier leaves because technically it's in his name and you have no recourse.

mrlmichael

August 10th, 2010 at 2:17 PM ^

I was stationed in Mannheim, Germany. We had AFN which was super annoying because they didnt always have your game and the commercials were horrible. I used ESPN 360 but it was free on Military bases. Now im in Belgium as a civilian so it will be a little different. There isnt any military bases around here so im out of luck in that department. I figured I would probably use ESPN 3 but I cannot find a programming schedule anywhere and dont want to pay for it if they arent going to carry every Michigan game.

Blue Bunny Friday

August 10th, 2010 at 2:15 PM ^

Try ESPN3 first. That should have you covered for all games on ESPN (possibly not ABC, but I'm not sure how that regional cross-coverage thing will work out this season).

Then you can pay for bigtenticket. Which is $45-90 a year for Big Ten FB and BB (princing on two of the pages differs, te one in the link advertises the cheaper).

This doesn't get you the functionality of a slingbox with it's own cable box, but it's likely to have better quality streams and be cheaper for a year.

a non emu

August 10th, 2010 at 4:45 PM ^

espn3.com only works when you are on certain internet providers. What I did when I was abroad was to connect to the umich vpn and watch games on espn3.com. As others have mentioned, the BTN has a package for people outside the country. So you can get that to watch the games that are broadcast on BTN. For ABC/NBC, you are pretty much out of luck. There are always some free streams online on ustream and others though. The quality is usually passable. 

LondonBlue

August 10th, 2010 at 6:14 PM ^

If you have cable or satellite TV you can subscribe to ESPN America. Check out www.espnamerica.com for how to get it in your country. They normally show 2-4 games live per week. Michigan was on 3 times last year (ND, Indiana and OSU). They show pretty much every bowl game including all of the BCS bowls. They also have NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and college basketball depending on the broadcast rights in your country. Be prepared for infuriating programming decisions from ESPN as the game you really wanted to watch is dropped for a pre-season hockey game or a baseball game. The good news is the broadcast is widescreen HD.

Eurosport, which is part of most cable/satellite packages, had a Big Ten game of the week for part of the season last year. Not sure if they're doing it this year. It was abbreviated and tape delayed. Michigan was on once (MSU). It was broadcast in 4:3 SD, looked pretty crappy and had a highly irritating overdubbed announcer.

Other than that, you're down to streaming. The most reliable source of streams seems to be www.myp2p.eu where you can access pretty much anything.

jweeg

August 11th, 2010 at 1:49 AM ^

Justin tv always works. I go to school in an out of market area and there are always people streaming the michigan games. it's free and it usually works great! I've never had any problems with it.

The Mick

August 11th, 2010 at 3:59 AM ^

Living in Europe I usually get my football-fix through ESPN America. With Michigan being so bad, they only showed the ND, Indiana and OSU games last season. I think there is a good chance for the UCONN game though since it's on ABC in the US and there isn't much competition at the 3:30 p.m. timeslot. The other games I watched over random streams. Justin TV is a good place to start looking. Just keep an eye on the game day chat here, someone will post a link if the game is streamed somewhere.  I'm thinking of buying the Big 10 Ticket though so I can watch the games the next morning when I get up. Torrents are good source too but I usually can't wait for them to be up and downloaded.

Red_Lee

August 11th, 2010 at 4:18 AM ^

I had a dream once that I watched a lot of Red Wings games thanks to a website called myp2p.eu. I went to the forums and the appropriate subforum, and it took me to heaven. So, call the sandman and have him take you there.