A couple weeks ago, I was stuck at work sitting on my thumbs during the NFL playoffs. There were conditions not under our control that caused us to spend a lot of time just waiting around. My employees asked if I could watch the playoff games somehow on my Nexus.
These are my initial findings on this subject.
January 8thFirst of all, there is absolutely no way to view anything NFL unless someone is paying for it. There are apps that allow you to view the NFL games if you purchase a package through your television provider. There are other websites that charge a fee for streaming. There are others that use a slingbox or HTPC and stream the content, then share that stream. This is the way to go.
I found a website that hosts these streaming links. There are two types of applications for this: torrent streaming, and flash streaming. The flash streaming does not last very long. Every time I would get the stream running, the plugin or the browser would crash within minutes and wouldn’t restart even after clearing the cache. I tried with Dolphin and with Firefox to no avail. The torrent streaming requires additional software. Most of the software is not compatible for mobile platforms. I did find some beta software that actually worked… temporarily…
I was able to use my Razr Maxx to provide a hotspot. On 4GLTE, the speed is plenty sufficient. The site
Wiziwig hosts many sports streams. From here you are able to que the desired stream. Some of the streams are fairly low quality and I wouldn’t dignify them by being viewed on my device. Some streams are HD quality.
I used
Sopcast Beta v0.9 to stream the feed. Worked very well for a few minutes, then it would stop streaming. I had to reconnect to the source to continue the stream. This might have something to do with my mobile hotspot or the dynamic ip.
I plan on using my own HTPC in the future. I have a
HVR-2250 in my PC capable of 1080i. I just found out that Hauppauge has their own software for the streaming too.
Later that day, Jan 8th So I just found out that the mobile software for the tuner card I have is only available on devices with fruity flavors. A little tiffed at that one… I’ll have to come up with something else.
January 19thSo I have my own solution set up and ready for tomorrow! I used my HVR-2250 and ran a digital cable signal to it. This tuner card has no problems decoding the local digital broadcasts. I did have to manually configure my tuner for the correct signal though. As it turns out, I had everything I needed already at my fingertips. The software needed was already installed as part of the package that came with the card. I used my gateway router to port forward the tuner hardware. Coupled with the software, I log into the web server and access all of my channels that are fed through my tuner card. I can access the web server with any device that supports flash. Now of course Android 4.2.1 doesn’t officially support Flash. The server uses an embedded player called Flowplayer that’s based on Flash and work’s great with Firefox! The web UI is awesome. I can even select my desired resolution up to 1080i and toggle fullscreen mode.
