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How to watch the Olympics, live, from the United States
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- irq 14y agoThis doesn't actually work, not using latest Flash on Mountain Lion anyway. This, however, does work: https://gist.github.com/3195652 https://gist.github.com/3195652
- avolcano 14y agoKinda seems more like "how to watch the Olympics for $20" (or more - I don't know quite how many games are available, and at what quality, from the BBC, but I feel like you could potentially use over 200 gigs of transfer in watching them). Many actual VPNs are somewhat cheaper, and just as simple to set up. Of course, paying money to a third-party to watch BBC feels as insane and dumb as ever. You'd think that they'd start looking into overseas subscriptions at this point. Nevermind the IOC - why can't they offer anything on Pay-Per-View? Both are great alternative sources of income they're passing up, instead essentially encouraging piracy and sending money to third parties instead!
- micflan 14y agoArticle doesn't mention anything about free.
- iloveponies 14y agoThis is a complicated affair. It's the rights holders to the content that the BBC broadcasts who are probably the biggest hurdle in expanding the BBC Worldwide's reach. Global iPlayer is a start, but it will take time.
- kristofferR 14y agoJust use these two DNS servers, they're free and takes no effort to get working: Primary DNS: 64.250.122.104 Secondary DNS: 199.167.30.144
- sch1zo 14y agoyou probably should mention the guys providing the service. These DNS Servers are from http://tunlr.net/ http://tunlr.net/ and you shouldn't use these Server permanantly because they do DNS Traffic shaping
- w1ntermute 14y agoThis seems pointless. If you're going to watch BBC content without paying their licensing fee, you might as well torrent it - that way you're not using up their bandwidth.
- baddox 14y ago> live
- streptomycin 14y agoWhere are these torrents, with high quality video posted in near real time? EDIT: I'm half serious, I wouldn't mind seeing Phelps lose, I missed it live. I'm an American, the NBC video website doesn't let me log in for some reason even though I have a valid account that worked yesterday (no error message, it just brings me back to the login screen every time), and they seem to be scrubbing YouTube quite well.
- w1ntermute 14y agoMy private tracker has 720p recordings of events 10-15 minutes after they end.
- streptomycin 14y agoSo when you said "this seems pointless", you meant "this seems pointless if you have access to some particular private bittorrent tracker". I trust you can see the difference there :)
- w1ntermute 14y agoGetting access to a private tracker isn't that hard, and you can probably find the stuff on EZTV anyway.
- supercanuck 14y agoWe are all ears.
- coderrr 14y agoOr you could sign up at https://www.privateinternetaccess.com https://www.privateinternetaccess.com for our VPN with two UK gateways for 6.95 for one month. Cheaper and much easier to setup. And from what I remember flash does not follow the system SOCKS proxy settings: http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/how-to-force-flash-or-any-program-to-use-a-socks-proxy-using-transocks-and-iptables-in-linux/ http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/how-to-force-flash-o...
- natrius 14y agoUnblock Us is easier and it's free for a week. http://unblock-us.com/ http://unblock-us.com/
- jevinskie 14y agoFor the price of a fast food lunch I decided to try it out. I appreciate the many supported protocols. The L2TP w/ IPSec VPN works just fine in OS X. The streaming quality was quite good and the online offerings from the BBC puts NBC's broadcasts to shame! I couldn't find a commercial either... is that really the case and I'm just a shellshocked American who hasn't seen the BBC in the UK before?
- GlenAnderson 14y agoThat's the case - no adverts any of the bbc's television channels or radio stations in the UK. Most broadcasts are available on iPlayer too, always without adverts.
- k-mcgrady 14y agoNo commercials. The BBC is funded by UK taxpayers through a license fee (about £12 per month).
- egwor 14y agoSo it basically means that everyone doing this is breaching various licensing agreements
- cdalonzo 14y agoOr you could just download TunnelBear http://www.tunnelbear.com http://www.tunnelbear.com, set it to UK, and go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv/bbc_one_london/watchlive http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv/bbc_one_london/watchlive Why go through all that trouble?
- binaryorganic 14y agoThis is spam. First step is a referral link to linode.com.
- bradgessler 14y agoIts not. I just put a disclosure at the bottom of the post and would like to donate whatever the referrals are to an anti-censorship organization, assuming Linode can make that happen.
- ceol 14y agoThe bottom of the post isn't where you linked the referral. Pretty shady behavior, honestly.
- nivla 14y agoSince when is including referral link on your own site considered spam? If then, you would be disappointed in visiting stackoverflow's site.
- kamkha 14y agoI wouldn't call it spam, but it is worth noting that this is at least the third "how to watch the Olympics" article I've seen on HN in the past day which contains a referral link to some VPS provider.
- activepeanut 14y agoAfter you setup your proxy, you can quickly enable it from a script using this: networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate Ethernet0 on And disable it using this: networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate Ethernet0 off
- cesart 14y agoThanks for the step-by-step, but I think you should mention in the blog post that you're including a referral link. At least @irq is transparent about it.
- ck2 14y agoI know this won't be popular but is it actually a right to watch the Olympics live? Like movies in theaters I just ignore the hype and wait six months for either redbox or netflix to get it.
- alayne 14y agoIt's obviously not a fundamental human right to have access to Olympic programming. However the way in which they delay programming and restrict access seems manipulative which I file under unethical.
- AffableSpatula 14y agoNo, not unethical, just plain idiotic. But illegally watching a free TV station at the cost of another country's tax payers is definitely unethical.
- wamatt 14y agoWho says it's coming at a cost? There is a very real chance the BBC have fixed sized pipes already paid for, that are not even close to being fully utilized.
- Someone 14y agoIn the EU, that is borderline. http://europa.eu/pol/av/index_en.htm http://europa.eu/pol/av/index_en.htm: "The Directive requires EU countries to coordinate national legislation with each other so that […] major events – like the Olympics or football World Cup – are available to a broad audience, not just on pay-TV channels"
- wisty 14y agoThat's right. There's no reason to give a shit about the Olympics these days. And if the IOC wants to make it hard for fans to watch, why should we make any effort to support their celebration of ... what does it stand for now ... obese cable subscribers watching fit people wreck their bodies?
- alokm 14y agoI just bought a 32 mb vps. That is more than enough for openvpn. It was only 0.5$/m. For slightly more you can get a decent one outside US.
- apenwarr 14y agoopenvpn is hard. Use sshuttle instead.
- itsme995 14y agoPretty easy. Took me 2 minutes to set it up (I already have VPS). But Live streaming is also available on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/olympic http://www.youtube.com/user/olympic .Why are you not using that? Isn't it accessible in US?
- djthorpe 14y agoLive streaming from the IOC on YouTube is only available in 64 countries where there aren't exclusive broadcaster rights. All of those countries are in Africa or Asia, so not available in the US alas.
- kristofferR 14y agoJust use http://tunlr.net/ http://tunlr.net/ 's DNS servers - it's completely free and with no signup required, takes 20 sec to add. Primary DNS: 64.250.122.104 Secondary DNS: 199.167.30.144
- pacemkr 14y agoThis doesn't work. I get "The content does not seem to be working." when trying to load the stream.
- growt 14y agoOr you could use Hide My Ass, they have a summer special starting at $9,99 for a week. http://hidemyass.com/vpn/r3906/ http://hidemyass.com/vpn/r3906/ (disclaimer: affiliate link)
- wamatt 14y agoI'd recommend witopia over HMA.
- temptemp123 14y agoUse a vpn and use http://www.eurovisionsports.tv/london2012/index.html http://www.eurovisionsports.tv/london2012/index.html Enter bbc into the playlist box and voila.
- c16 14y agoFor those looking for cheaper VPS's, http://www.lowendbox.com/tag/uk http://www.lowendbox.com/tag/uk has a big list of 'low end box'es. I'm having problems connecting, this link might be better: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=10&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Awww.lowendbox.com%2Ftag%2Fuk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sugexp=chrome,m...
- Sidnicious 14y agoThis reminds me of the steps a friend of mine took as a cable nonsubscriber to watch Yankees games from New York City. MLB.com lets you subscribe and watch games online but Yankee games are blocked in NYC due to the team's exclusivity agreement with their own cable channel. I'm waiting for him to write a post about his solution (it involves both a VPN and an FM radio).
- JacobIrwin 14y agoI'm posting this in all three of the 'Olympics' threads showing up on the front page of HN: I live in Berkeley, CA and I was able to get full access to videos, including streams and highlights, by selecting Xfinity as my service provider during my initial sign-up/activation on the NBC Olympics website. Here at my apartment, we have no cable service and an internet provider called Zoom. So obviously, I wasn't being truthful - but instead was trying to circumvent this ridiculous corporate stranglehold during my first attempt to access Olympic footage. I don't know if it will still work, but it worked for me on Friday and my credentials have held since - allowing my full access without login each time I access the website.
- voyou 14y agoNBC are streaming all the events live at http://www.nbcolympics.com/ http://www.nbcolympics.com/ , although you need to have a cable/satellite TV subscription to access the streams. The complaints about them not showing events live on TV are legitimate (not to mention their editing out the tribute to the victims of the 7/7 bombing during the opening ceremony), but there's an easier solution for most people in the US than the one in this article.