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DirecTV's 'NFL Sunday Ticket' Offered as Standalone Subscription, Available on Macs/iOS Devices [Updated]

MacNut said:
The regional sports networks own the rights to each local team. They could stream their games on their own and make their money back. MLBTV is taking those local broadcast feeds and streaming them. Why blackout the home market.

The Yankees own their own rights but they allow MLB to handle the streaming, and they still black out the games locally.
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WHY would a regional sports network want to allow you to see their home broadcasts on another medium? The ONLY reason they broadcast the games is to sell commercials and in addition resell the broadcast to MLB.com, DTV, Comcast, etc. IF they allowed you to stream their broadcasts, especially without commercials, the advertisers wouldn't want to pay as much to the sports network for decreased viewership. Most MLB.com commercial breaks are blacked out with dead space.
 
That sounds a bit steep. I know to watch the World Cup here you just needed a TV license to watch all the games (which were either on BBC or ITV).
 
As much as I love this news, my NFL package is better. It's the bar down the street. For around the same amount of money each season, I get all the games and hot wings and beer. :cool:
 
MacNut said:
So DirecTV's deal ends after the season. Most likely Apple and Google will make a bid for the contract. This is why DTV is allowing streaming now to try to cut off Google. The problem is Google can afford to outbid DTV. The question is how much will ATT throw in if they acquire DTV.
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As far as I know ATT still wants to merge with DirecTV but ATT has an exit clause attached to the Sunday Ticket. Basically, if DirecTV loses Sunday Ticket ATT will most likely back out of the merger. I think DirecTV is planning on throwing a lot more money at the NFL to keep Sunday Ticket (hence more options for non-DirecTV subscribers to sign up) so that the ATT merger stays on track.

Netflix is already spending billions a year on content licensing (including expansion into Europe and Latin America) so I don't think they'd want to take on something like the Sunday Ticket right now. They are trying to manage their growth w/o overextending themselves.

Although the likes of Google and Apple have more money than god, that doesn't automatically mean they are a great fit. It was rumored Google was looking at Sunday Ticket in 2013 but nothing came of that (assuming the rumors were true). The NFL might not be ready to take Sunday Ticket streaming only and DirecTV is the second largest pay TV provider in the U.S. (only a bit smaller than Comcast).

Hopefully the streaming quality is better (and more reliable) than when they offered it with Madden last year. The quality for watching on my 15" laptop was okay, but if I watched it on my living room TV (55" I think) via ChromeCast it looked pretty bad. Way worse than Amazon or Netflix quality streaming. To get the version of Madden that came with Sunday Ticket was basically an extra $40 and I thought that was a good deal, but if I had paid $200-300 for it I would have felt ripped off due to the quality and number of times the servers were overloaded.
 
Not for Florida???

Treq said:
As much as I love this news, my NFL package is better. It's the bar down the street. For around the same amount of money each season, I get all the games and hot wings and beer. :cool:
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I am in airports on many sundays and would love to have it on my iPad. However, "Not available in your area" (Florida)
 
Google

Cougarcat said:
I'm guessing it doesn't work with AirPlay because the console tier is more expensive. Gotta pay more if you want to watch it on your TV. That's their thinking, anyway.
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Yea, but if you have Google's little TV dongle you would easily be able to stream it that way.
 
LethalWolfe said:
Hopefully the streaming quality is better (and more reliable) than when they offered it with Madden last year. The quality for watching on my 15" laptop was okay, but if I watched it on my living room TV (55" I think) via ChromeCast it looked pretty bad. Way worse than Amazon or Netflix quality streaming. To get the version of Madden that came with Sunday Ticket was basically an extra $40 and I thought that was a good deal, but if I had paid $200-300 for it I would have felt ripped off due to the quality and number of times the servers were overloaded.
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If you were trying to use chromecast, you were doing it wrong. Chromecast isn't exactly built for video rebroadcasting over the network, which is what you are doing when you cast your screen to the TV.

What I did was setup my laptop next to my TV (54"), wired the HDMI out to the TV, and plugged the laptop directly into the router with an Ethernet cable.

I wouldn't say that the quality was HD caliber, it was definitely somewhere in between DVD and HD quality. The trick at the beginning of the season was to log in 20-30 minutes early to beat the rush of connections. As the season went on, connecting became easier.

I don't think that deal will be coming again, but it was a steal!

I also discovered that no matter what the congestion factor was via connecting to the games via the Sunday Ticket website, it ALWAYS worked on my iphone or ipad no matter what. Apparently Direct TV has a completely different content distribution network for mobile apps vs. the website. The picture quality was fantastic on the ipad, but I don't have an apple TV so I couldn't test out mirroring.

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masuraj said:
Yea, but if you have Google's little TV dongle you would easily be able to stream it that way.
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No

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Truefan31 said:
I'd like to know this as well.
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One.
 
MacNut said:
The regional sports networks own the rights to each local team. They could stream their games on their own and make their money back. MLBTV is taking those local broadcast feeds and streaming them. Why blackout the home market.

The Yankees own their own rights but they allow MLB to handle the streaming, and they still black out the games locally.
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The Yankees do not exclusively own their content.
 
SeattleMoose said:
I have been dreaming of the day I can cut my Comcast cord. I ONLY have Comcast to watch college football for 4 months every year. I pay about $100/month for Comcast. That is $1200/year. I would gladly pay up to $400 to have the same access to college football games that I have now and pocket $800/year on the savings.

First domino? Unfortunately, most of the major college conferences have just signed lucrative TV deals so I guess it'll be awhile until what I feel is inevitable...actually happens.
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Why not just order cable for those 4 months and then cancel. Don't sign up for a 1 or 2 year agreement. Sure it will be more than $400, but it will probably be less than $1200.
 
Sunday Ticket looks like a bit of a ripoff. A friend of mine uses DNS masking so he can get NFL Game Pass' top package — which is only available outside the U.S. and Canada, go figure — for around $225 and I think they even have cheaper packages.

With the top of the line package he get's every single game including preseason and playoffs, as well as Redzone and NFL Network. There's even on-demand to watch condensed games (sans commercials, etc.), old games, and NFL shows... It's pretty much everything you could ever want as an NFL fan. He plugs his computer right into his flat screen and gets HD quality. He also figured out a way to get the Gamepass app from the UK app store on his iPad. Which he can then stream to his Apple TV as well, in what looked like HD or close to quality.

Pretty sweet setup where he pays for Game Pass and I pay for the pizza. If I wasn't at his house every Thursday and Sunday already, I'd definitely consider Game Pass.
 
Crispykickz said:
If you were trying to use chromecast, you were doing it wrong. Chromecast isn't exactly built for video rebroadcasting over the network, which is what you are doing when you cast your screen to the TV.
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Chromecast is exactly built for streaming video to your TV. The problem wasn't w/Chromecast but with my stream from DirecTV. Even on my 15" laptop the picture quality was jut okay so when I viewed it on my 55" TV it looked pretty poor. I've played high quality videos on my laptop, streamed them to my TV via Chromecast and they've looked just fine.

Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO GO, etc., all look fine when streaming so the problem was definitely with DirecTV's stream.
 
LethalWolfe said:
Chromecast is exactly built for streaming video to your TV. The problem wasn't w/Chromecast but with my stream from DirecTV. Even on my 15" laptop the picture quality was jut okay so when I viewed it on my 55" TV it looked pretty poor. I've played high quality videos on my laptop, streamed them to my TV via Chromecast and they've looked just fine.

Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO GO, etc., all look fine when streaming so the problem was definitely with DirecTV's stream.
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No. Chromecast wasn't built to stream video in the way you were using it for NFL Sunday Ticket.

You stated the stream was OK on your laptop, but it sucked when you cast it to the TV. The stream from Direct TV was ok, if it wasn't it would have sucked on your laptop as well.

When you stream NFL Sunday ticket to your Chrome browser, data is coming from the direct TV servers, to your network, to your laptop. When you cast that to your TV you are then retransmitting the same data from your laptop to your Chromecast across your home network. As a result you are in effect streaming it twice and clogging your home network with double the bandwidth and taxing your network adapter with both input and output on the fly, all over the air with Wi-Fi. Its terrible.

This is not what was intended by the Chromecast. Sure you can "do" it, but it works best for casting your browser or desktop to view static images.
The reason it works well when you cast a video from your laptop to Chromecast is because I suspect you are casting local content. I can drag a video file into a Chrome browser and cast that with decent results.

The other services you mentioned (with the exception of Amazon I believe) have purpose built apps specifically for Chromecast. When you hit that little cast button on Netflix or HBO or whatever, you're sending a signal to Netflix to send the video data DIRECTLY to the Chromecast stick, using the native Chromecast capabilities and compression techniques. Therefore, it doesn't go to your device and then cast to your TV. Your device only is the controller for the stream at that point, but no data goes through it, and no data is rebroadcast.

The video stream goes from content provider, to your network, to your Chromecast in one fell swoop, just like any other video you would stream on the internet.

Like I said, Direct TV's stream was great on my laptop, but I made sure everything was hard wired..the network and the video output. I controlled it with a wireless mouse. It was well worth it.
 
Truefan31 said:
I'd like to know this as well.
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With the current NFL stream only one person can be logged in at a time. They didn't ride in on a load of pumpkins bro.

I let a friend use the computer based portion of my package cuz I rarely use it but if I do want to use it only one of us can be logged in to the account at one time. That i how th current Sunday Ticket Max works. Maybe they're gonna change that but can't imagine why they would. Wouldn't make sense for them to sell me the package for $199 and then I give the login info to 20 people lol
 
Crispykickz said:
No. Chromecast wasn't built to stream video in the way you were using it for NFL Sunday Ticket.

You stated the stream was OK on your laptop, but it sucked when you cast it to the TV. The stream from Direct TV was ok, if it wasn't it would have sucked on your laptop as well.
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The quality was okay on a 15" inch screen (still well below the streaming quality of Amazon, Netflix, etc.,.) but if my laptop had a 55" inch screen the quality would have been subpar. Going DVI from my laptop to my TV would not have made a difference as the DirecTV stream was too poor to look good on such a big screen.


This is not what was intended by the Chromecast. Sure you can "do" it, but it works best for casting your browser or desktop to view static images.
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I've used the cast button in Chrome to send local and streaming content to my TV and never noticed a quality hit worth mentioning. I recently watched some content from Showtime Anytime in Chrome, used the cast tab to send it to my TV and it looked fine. The Sunday Ticket stream, for me, was of substantially lower quality than other streaming services I have.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
Hate to break the news to you but DTV is going to to get the renewal. DTV's business depends on it, and so does its merger w/ ATT. But even if DTV were to lose the deal it's not going to be less expensive w/ a different provider.

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Hate to break it to you, but if the NFL is going to offer this thru other providers(ie the internet) then I can get rid of cable, which is $1200 a year, at least. And yes, that does mean that Directv wouldn't have exclusive rights to the service. I am sure they will still offer it as part of their overwhelmingly expensive and ridiculous packages, as will other cable companies, but this allows penny-pinching poor sports fanatics(such as myself) to avoid this useless bill. Read my previous posts.
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HurtinMinorKey said:
Goodbye free NFL games. It's been fun. <-that's where this is all headed.
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And ya know what? Screw them anyways. The NFL has become a totally watered down product with too many teams that don't matter, regional coverage that sucks, way too many commercial breaks, terrible rule changes, and so much else. Rampant free agency and holdouts are also a killer. Overexposure is also a problem since Roger Goodell the dooshbag wants to play games every night of the week and in thirty different countries too. Worst commissioner ever.

Instead of awesome dynasty teams that kept the bar raised high they've dumbed it down due to "fairness" and every team basically resets every year. Super Bowl winners from the last ten or fifteen years would have gotten KILLED by any of the great 80's or 90's powerhouses and it wouldn't even have been close.

So, adios, NFL. You don't matter as much as you think you do. :rolleyes:
 
I had the NFL ticket last year and I really enjoyed it, though it was free because I switched to DirectTv. I think the price is too high for a 17 week (16 games) season
 
I have this too since I just joined DirecTV. I'm not much of a football fan, but I may watch some games since it's available to me.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
I have this too since I just joined DirecTV. I'm not much of a football fan, but I may watch some games since it's available to me.
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Being a father of two kids, its hard to sit in front of the TV for 6+ hours on a sunday to watch two sets of games on the NFL Sunday Ticket. Its great if you're a fan of a team outside your coverage or like to watch a lot of football, but family comes first for me, and spending time with my kids over rules the time spent in front of the boob tube.

I did enjoy it last season but as mentioned I couldn't fully take advantage of it.
 
maflynn said:
Being a father of two kids, its hard to sit in front of the TV for 6+ hours on a sunday to watch two sets of games on the NFL Sunday Ticket. Its great if you're a fan of a team outside your coverage or like to watch a lot of football, but family comes first for me, and spending time with my kids over rules the time spent in front of the boob tube.

I did enjoy it last season but as mentioned I couldn't fully take advantage of it.
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Do you have the Genie DVR set up? You could always record some games and watch them at 4am!
 
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