So the NFL season finally started up last night with a 13-10 win for the Steelers over the Titans. As someone without cable or satellite, I normally wouldn't have watched the game, since I had no interest in going out to a bar for it... but NBC had it live streaming on the web for free, and it seems like every Sunday Night game is going to be streamed for free as well. It looked(webcast in HD) and sounded great on my connection, but my connection is faster than average... but from some comments over at Balloon Juice, even if you can stream HD with Netflix you might not be able to with NBC... at least at this point.
Regardless, good news for those of us who the only thing we miss about not having a TV is the NFL. Unfortunately, there's still no way to buy a "Sunday Ticket" equivalent for the internet. Well, that's not entirely true... DirecTV's monopoly was chipped away a little bit... and they do now offer the games online, but only to DirecTV subscribers. You can't buy the internet access without having the satellite service.
Hmmm... maybe I can pay for the Sunday Ticket on the Maine house's DirecTV and use the internet access here.
EDIT: Looks like it costs $300(Regular NFL Sunday Ticket)+$100("Superfan" package), which is a a lot of scratch... though if I go out to a bar to watch all 16 Ravens games (I won't though), I'm buying lunch and having a couple of beers, which works out to roughly the same amount... though it would be a mistake to think that I'd never get food out and/or buy some beer for the games just because I'm watching them on my couch. In the end, I'm not a big enough NFL fan or Fantasy Football freak to justify that kind of cost.
Maybe in 2015 or whenever they next renegotiate, the NFL will provide options where you can play a lower fee just to get one team's games streaming online... as DirecTV doesn't offer that kind of option now to their satellite package customers, it seems that would only happen if they lose their monopoly.
Regardless, good news for those of us who the only thing we miss about not having a TV is the NFL. Unfortunately, there's still no way to buy a "Sunday Ticket" equivalent for the internet. Well, that's not entirely true... DirecTV's monopoly was chipped away a little bit... and they do now offer the games online, but only to DirecTV subscribers. You can't buy the internet access without having the satellite service.
Hmmm... maybe I can pay for the Sunday Ticket on the Maine house's DirecTV and use the internet access here.
EDIT: Looks like it costs $300(Regular NFL Sunday Ticket)+$100("Superfan" package), which is a a lot of scratch... though if I go out to a bar to watch all 16 Ravens games (I won't though), I'm buying lunch and having a couple of beers, which works out to roughly the same amount... though it would be a mistake to think that I'd never get food out and/or buy some beer for the games just because I'm watching them on my couch. In the end, I'm not a big enough NFL fan or Fantasy Football freak to justify that kind of cost.
Maybe in 2015 or whenever they next renegotiate, the NFL will provide options where you can play a lower fee just to get one team's games streaming online... as DirecTV doesn't offer that kind of option now to their satellite package customers, it seems that would only happen if they lose their monopoly.
No comments:
Post a Comment