Sports on XBMC?
#1
Lately I have been really pushing my parents to switch their house from over-priced and under-used cable to a HTPC. They are not totally opposed to the idea, but have plenty of concerns, most of which I have been able to answer. My father's main problem that I don't know the answer to concerns sports. We live in the Madison Wisconsin area, and he likes to watch local sports and NFL on TV. That is one of the biggest reasons they still have cable TV.

I'm not really into sports on TV, or regular TV viewing in general and never cared to look into getting them. I was wondering how other users get sports? Do you?
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#2
That's the trickiest thing to answer. The only real way to get live sports is to have a live signal. I watch sports using OTA tv signals, my xbox 360's Espn3 feature, and the local Buffalo Wild Wings. XBMC itself doesn't have much for live sports.
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#3
MLB.TV currently has a great service for streaming live games in HD, and they have a good plugin for Boxee. As far as I know, the NFL doesn't have a similar service yet, but it's only a matter of time. On the other hand, I'd imagine it will be a long time before local sports are available on an a-la-carte subscription basis in a way that's easy to aggregate on a software platform like XBMC or Boxee.

Every once in a while I download a game in HD after it's aired and watch it in File Mode on XBMC, but that's really not an option for hardcore fans. This is pretty much the only thing I miss about cutting my cable subscription, and I think live sports is the last thing that will have a workable streaming-only solution. There's just too many different doors that the content providers will want to sell you a key for, and it's unlikely that it will be possible to use open platforms to access all of the streams.
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#4
NFL games means Fox, CBS, and ESPN. Two of those come OTA and one (ESPN) doesn't.

XBMC itself doesn't really help with that...

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#5
I have a launcher setup to launch Chrome and it opens a webpage for Yahoo LIVE NHL games.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/hockeynight/

I then switch to full screen.
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#6
poofyhairguy Wrote:NFL games means Fox, CBS, and ESPN. Two of those come OTA and one (ESPN) doesn't.

XBMC itself doesn't really help with that...

^^ Exactly. (OTA means "Over The Air" for the acronym-challenged)

Why not just put up an antenna? I've been watching sports on Fox and CBS in HD for free for years with my antenna.

-Wes
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#7
Quite a while ago Voinage made a myp2p.eu plugin. It's not been functional for a long time, but if someone were to pick it up and get it to work then I think it'd cover pretty much any sport you'd want to watch.

original thread link:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=43782
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#8
I use XBMC for 95% of all my entertainment, and I tried to cancel my cable. Unfortunately I watch a lot of sports and it is untenable most the year. There are just too few options, and those there are are extremely limited.

Basketball, baseball and hockey are the worst. Local teams are no longer on OTA cable at all (except for some baseball). Even the Stanley Cup, the ALCS, and most of the NBA playoffs are cable only now.

You can subscribe to MLB.tv and NBA League Pass, or the NHL equivalents but:
  • All have black out restrictions which make watching the local team impossible without cable, due to agreements signed with the regional afilliates

    I'm in the SF Bay Area and cannot watching any of the local teams (Warriors, Giants, A's or Sharks) with the legit options.

    If your dad is a fan of the out of town team you might have better luck. My buddy moved here from Michigan and can watch the Tigers, Pistons, or Red Wings using the above services with no problem.


  • The subscription fee for all three services is comparable to the monthly fee for cable + HD + a sports package

Football is a little better with an antenna and the ESPN 360 package (on Xbox 360, no decent plug-in for Boxee or XBMC yet). You can see the same NFL games on Sunday with Antenna (minus Red Zone) and it looks much better than over any cable provider. You'll miss the six or seven NFL network games and all Monday Night Football. You can also see most top 25 College games either OTA or on ESPN 360. You will probably not be able to see the local FBS college team, again due to deals with cable affiliates.

International soccer is okay with ESPN 360 (all World Cup games were on there). If you're a soccer fan you're probably used to watching it less than live already so the delay is not bad. You can usually find torrents for anything in Europe by the time you get home from work (the Classico is on my hard drive right now). It doesn't sound like your dad is much of a international soccer guy.

I'm a big boxing fan and there is no way to see HBO or Showtime fights without a subscription (except illegal streams). I have no idea what your MMA options are, but I think it is the easiest thing to find illegal streams of.

College basketball is worse than anything else during the season, but March Madness is on CBS and cbssports.com, so you can watch every game with an HTPC and a web browser and an antenna.

The long and short of it is sports on an HTPC is just not ready for prime time. The only real solution is using something like Justin.TV or other non-Us streaming sites and these are unreliable, look poor, and difficult to track down for 90% of sports (ie, anything but soccer or NHL.) There is no way a non-tech saavy person could find a game on Justin.TV using the Boxee or XBMC plug-ins.
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#9
Thumbs Up 
not sure if you're still looking.

There is a plugin for ESPN3 with BlueCop's repository. check it out.
Linux Mint 18 LTS 64-bit - Kodi 17 Beta6
Odroid-C2 - Libreelec v7.90.009
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#10
Thumbs Up 
not sure if you're still looking.

There is a plugin for ESPN3 with BlueCop's repository. check it out.
Linux Mint 18 LTS 64-bit - Kodi 17 Beta6
Odroid-C2 - Libreelec v7.90.009
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#11
You might want to head over to http://www.silicondust.com and check to see what channels are available through this device, I just upgraded my frimware and found that while looking through some of the other cable providers in my area have added espn hd, espn2hd and espnu hd. I Currently do not have this device working with xbmc but I did find this thread.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HDHomeRun
The use of this hardware should allow for recording as well.


I am not sure where you are located but the device runs for a single tuner roughly 67usd and the dual tuner runs about 120usd.

Hope this helps
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#12
I haven't looked much into sports on the XBMC but with football season upcoming I figured I'd see if any advancements have been made as far as any apps that people use. The team I support is out-of-town so I can't watch them OTA. Traditionally, I've used myp2p to find a stream and watch it on my computer then hook that into the TV. It works okay but I was wondering if there's anything within XBMC now that people have been using.

Just curious mainly.
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#13
The only thing i miss out on is the Denver Nuggets games which are uusually on Altitude Sports & Entertainment. Can't find anywhere on the net that streams that. Otherwiswe there are alot more sports than some think, as mentioned before bluecops repo has the ESPN app which I can watch live ESPN all day long. From Skip Bayless in the morning to Monday Night Football(halftime right now saints up 21-3). The best!! But there is Sportsdevil addon from max mustermanns repo. That has alot of college games on just watched CU beat Utah on Friday. There's NFL Network addon not sure of repo but has team highlights and other stuff. There's even more if you fished around. I pray for 2 things, an NBATV addon and my biggest dream come true of Altitude live streaming. The NBA is back!!!
XBMC (11.0-RC2 Git:20120229-f38655f), Platform: Darwin iOS (11.0.0 AppleTV2,1, Version 5.0.1 (Build 9A406a)). Built on Mar 1 2012
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#14
I just thought I would point out that you can watch the NLF's Sunday night game on NBC's website. I actually prefer it compared to OTA since you get to pick which camera you want to watch. Besides that I use the OTA channels for local broadcast games.
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#15
I'm using espn3 on the blue cops plugin, but for some live events it gives the error, 'content unavailable in your area' anyway to get around this?
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