Repair-It

Summer is upon us now and while the rest of the world is watching soccer, I'm dreaming of some real football. This is usually the time of year where I consider whether to pony up hundreds of dollars to DirecTV so I'm not stuck watching the Carolina Panthers play Tampa Bay while the rest of the world gets to watch a decent game. Last year I was fortunate enough to benefit from the Madden NFL offer where if you bought the video game, you got a free pass for streaming NFL Sunday Ticket from DirecTV. I bought the game for $100, took the free pass for Sunday Ticket out of it and promptly sold it back to Amazon for $50. $50 for a season of streaming NFL games is a bargain in my book.

Current state of cable TV in my home: TWC left it connected after the previous owner moved out. Not sure how long this will last, but paying $0 for cable seems about right considering how little I watch TV. This also makes it harder to justify starting service with DirecTV.

Alternatives being considered:

1. Get a Slingbox and send it to a friend in New England. Even just connecting it to a regular antenna should give me all the Patriots games in most areas. Also, having the ability to stream to devices like my iPad is an advantage here.

2. Do some exotic VPN thing so I can use NFL Game Pass, which is readily available in the rest of the world, but not in the US where DirecTV reigns supreme. This will still cost money and could prove to be complicated as the NFL is getting better at cracking down on this kind of activity.

3. Go to the bar to watch the games. Not only is this not cheap, but it is also not that enjoyable when you are outside your team's home turf.

4. Just pay the man. Admit defeat and just start a contract with DirecTV.

Questions:

Does anyone have experience using Slingbox or other similar devices?

Is there an even cheaper way to do this that I haven't considered?

I haven't forgotten about this. Just have no good advice to offer yet.

Yeah, I am still giving it some thought. I am actually researching the VPN/Gamepass option right now. I think that could prove to be a good one as long as they don't find a way to close the loophole.

I just have zero experience (or interest) in your situation, even though I recognize it as somewhat common. So I just have never given it any thought. You know more than I do about it. The only thing that I would be somewhat familiar with is the idea of recording a show (on some Windows Media Center HTPC) and dealing with that (export the show either as-is or transcoded, or a real-time transcode/stream arrangement). Not sure how the logistics would work.

Basically I could record the show, package it up and share it on my Onedrive. Transcoding is more sophisticated and there are a few options, one of which is natively handled by Windows. But I think that method requires you to actually be a member of my Homegroup. 3rd party would probably be better.

Just run a VPN endpoint and let Bob join your home group that way. The performance would be limited to whatever your upload speed is, which might be too slow.

I just tested my Cox upload and got around 6Mbps after the "speed boost" affect wears off.

I don't know if I can watch prerecorded sports in the modern era of social media. I had a dream about this last night that reminded me I probably need to figure something out before the start of the football season. I may experiment with the VPN + Gamepass option. The nice thing is if I travel outside the US, which I often do, this would still work for me. I guess the same is true for the Slingbox as well.

I decided to experiment with the VPN + Gamepass option tonight. It seems to be working reasonably well tonight with some of the pre-recorded content. I am hoping it will keep working well throughout the season because there is a large up front payment involved after the 7 day free trial for Gamepass.

VPN + Gamepass has worked well after two Sundays so far. The first week was a bit shaky due to what I believe was a line quality issue where my cable modem was connected. I moved the model to a different outlet and it seems to be working better now. The quality isn't as good as HDTV obviously, but it is a lot better than signing up for a big contract with DirecTV.

It seems to be working out then. Who hosts the VPN?

I am using HMA (Hide My Ass) VPN. Sounds legit, right?