Minnesota Sports Forum

I know in the past various posters have had questions about the online streaming options. I'all share a bit of my experience this year here. At this point in my life I've gotten to the place I will pay a few bucks to be able to watch a legit stream or replay on demand. I'm still a cheap guy but I get pretty annoyed with the free streaming cites and again A lot of the time especially for Wolves games I am not able to watch live. Here are some of my thoughts and others can add theirs or people can ask questions.

My free trial of Sling TV needs to be canceled tonight and I will admit I will miss it. When I flipped over to the Spurs vs GS game last it worked the best of anytime I have watched sports on it. It did downgrade the stream a few times (not complaint about that) but I don't remember the annoying flickering I have had before. When I get my internet upgraded I might have my wife do a free trial at a convient time when there is a Wolves game on ESPN or something to try it out again. If it played smoother I think my wife would watch it some when I ordered it. It's been nice to have the option to flip to whatever the ESPN networks broadcast and last night TNT for the game. I'll plan to get Sling TV at least for the NCAA tourney.

Even though this isn't basketball related I will mention if you want to watch a ton of football and have a few bucks and you don't care if you watch games live get NFL Game Pass which was formerly NFL rewind. The games are available a little sooner now than I remember at least on Sunday. The option of watching a condensed game which takes 30-40 mins might be worth spending the money. It's terrific and well done. I don't feel like I miss much watching a game in that format you see every play and a few replays. Right now for the rest of the season is $74.99. You can do a week free trial just don't forget to cancel it. I recommend getting it if you like watching the playoff games. In a couple hours you can watch all the games on any of the weeks. It's pretty nifty. I think it tends to be about $40 and you have access to the regular season games also. Since it's getting close to half way through the season they may have another price drop soon.

NBA Broadband Pass

You won't be able to watch every game of your team (because they didn't have the ESPN and TBT games) but it's pretty good. $119.99 if for 1 team's games I think it's $199.99 for the whole league. It I don't remember for sure. Generally speaking I am pretty happy except when blacked out or I can't watch an ESPN game or something. I've subscribed for a. Umber of years and considering how many games I have watched it's a pretty good deal even with the price it is now. I did have an issue with my automatic renew this year. It oddly didn't automatically select the Timberwolves as my team and since it was just the 1 team selection and it didn't have a selection it wouldn't show that I had subscribed even though I had been charged. Once I realized this it was easily and quickly resolved using the chat feature.

I don't know if they will be doing it this year but TNT has done TNT overtime. It's free to watch their games (maybe not all but for sure some) via your computer or their app. It it's just a feed from one camera angle that you select from several options. You get no replays etc. I liked the top of the backboard cam the best it give a pretty good view of the action and a little different view of the game in general. It's far from perfect but I was pleasantly surprised when i found of it's existence last year as NBA broadband directed me to watch it from their app/site.

Well if you are outside the Fox Sports North zone like I am now, you might want to check with a friend or relative in the Fox Sports North zone and see if you can get access to their credentials to watch the game. Otherwise, League Pass is only $120 if you limit your games to Wolves games (they black out games on ESPN/TNT/NBATV). If you can handle a low quality stream and use an Adblocker, First Row Sports is a free option.

Thats what I've done the last two years Teamricky. I only ever watched minnesota sports and a few shows with my wife. So we dropped cable, use netflix and yesmovies.to (which is amazing for free anything movie/show related) and just use her parent's credentials whenever we want to watch a sports game on foxsportsgo. Its wonderful.

And of course Foxsportsgo doesn't seem to have this game ... Damnit!

Edit: disregard above post. It is on there.

http://nbastream.net/nba-live-streams/

this place promises HD streams for $10 per month or free regular stream Not sure if you can see replays on this, probably not. I would never pay NBA broadband with their blackout games BS.

Brooklyn_Wolves wrote:http://nbastream.net/nba-live-streams/

this place promises HD streams for $10 per month or free regular stream Not sure if you can see replays on this, probably not. I would never pay NBA broadband with their blackout games BS.

using this right now thanks, I can't get to a tv so even a SD stream is heaven right now!

After a few games of watching the games on NBA broadband pass I have a few thoughts as there are a few changes from previous seasons. I should have mentioned at the beginning of the thread the first few days there was a free preview.

In the past there during commercial breaks you would watch either commercials or something like a screen that showed scores or some NBA logo. This year it's typically feed from the arena the game is at. If you watch the game later they cut out most of the commercial break so there isn't much reason to fast forward which is kinda nice. Overall it makes for a more enjoyable experience and one closer to being at the game. In the past watching the game later you would get a bunch of pregame coverage and some after the game. This year the game starts right before the tipoff (I always fast forwarded to that time so this is great) and cuts off pretty much right after the game ends.

The ability to skip around is a little more tricky when watching back later. On Both the iPhone app and using the chrome browser there is no time left or anything just the mark on the progress bar. So if you have to stop watching for a while and you want to make sure of your spot I ended up using an object to get a solid estimate of around where I was at. One time this proved to be a smart thing to do but the rest of the times my place was held in my chromebook. The scraper bar is very small. In the iPhone it's pretty difficult to control. You can skip forward or back 20 seconds at a time which is handy. When I start in the chrome browser I have to suffer through one commercial before it plays the video and that's it.

On the Roku it's the same navigation as it always has been.

Anyway overall I think I get a better product for my money because I don't have any commercials unless I am in a real hurrry I don't need to do any fast forwarding which is nice. It probably take about as long to watch a game now as it did before since I had to fast forward through timeouts etc and it's possible it's actually faster. Ok the Clippers game maybe not since I would have fast forwarded though a. Unch of those FTs! Lol the Roku says the reply of the Clippers game was 2hrs 23 minutes. That seems long I could sometimes get through a game in closer to hour and a half on the previous iPhone navigation but I would skip through everything but play and sometimes would fast forward FTs etc.

so is sling the way to go? you basically pick a handful of channels and only have to pay for those few?

BloopOracle wrote:so is sling the way to go? you basically pick a handful of channels and only have to pay for those few?

It depends. What are you hoping to watch?

I'll add here a HUGE difference from league pass boadband from the past. If you have a game that you can't watch live it's available to watch on demand usually less than an hour after the game ends. So games on ESPN, TNT, NBA TV etc have all be available to watch after the game. So if you pay the money to watch your team's games you can actually watch all of them. That's pretty big plus if you watch on demand it takes less time there isn't any commercials etc.

monsterpile wrote:

BloopOracle wrote:so is sling the way to go? you basically pick a handful of channels and only have to pay for those few?

It depends. What are you hoping to watch?

I'll add here a HUGE difference from league pass boadband from the past. If you have a game that you can't watch live it's available to watch on demand usually less than an hour after the game ends. So games on ESPN, TNT, NBA TV etc have all be available to watch after the game. So if you pay the money to watch your team's games you can actually watch all of them. That's pretty big plus if you watch on demand it takes less time there isn't any commercials etc.

basically all I watch is Vikings games, Wolves games, and NFL Redzone