Saturday, January 8th "Enjoying torrents, but where’s the sports, dammit?"

I have written a little about BitTorrents in a previous entry. I know I live in a wonderful city and should spend my time doing something more than watching TV, but I missed the Simpson’s and the Amazing Race too much. And some days you just don’t want to go outside. So I have my weekly rhythm of downloading a few shows along with a few movies and here and there have managed to fill up my hard drive. But when it comes to sports I can find NFL games and NBA games – I like the NFL but I can watch it on satellite television in Spain. And the NBA, well, it just really sucks in my opinion. College basketball is what it’s all about but you can’t find a single NCAA ball game on these sites. It’s a pity, really. It reduces you to a few options:

ESPN’s college basketball pay per view which sells their online product for the same price as their cable or satellite product. And then there are blackouts depending on where you live. Their product packaging and distribution method is truly the result of the moron’s mentality in several ways: 1) the 2”screen windows media feed which stops to be buffered every 10 minutes should not cost anyone the same price as 32” crystal clear video feed on a television. I know they want to make money, but man, this is just plain stupid to offer a crappy product for the same price as a good one. 2) Blackouts because I can watch it in my local area??? What world are you living in? Would I opt for that 2” pixilated video stream over my television just so I miss the commercials? I’d rather watch commercials than a black screen telling me the game will return in a few minutes, not to mention sitting on my couch and watching a better quality feed on my television. 3) Only available in the U.S. Well, I can get around this with my credit card and U.S. billing address. But who has the rights to these games in Spain? They certainly are not broadcast anywhere in this country except for 6 games during the tournament. And I can purchase and watch the CBS NCAA tournament package online from anywhere in the world. Wouldn’t live online basketball’s market also include expats and countries where you can’t watch the games? Who are these people?!!!???

Yahoo’s Sports College Broadcast, which is cleverly bundled with other sports aside from basketball. Why? So they can say you can watch live ACC sports online! Problem is there isn’t a single ACC basketball game with live video on the site. There is football, maybe soccer, baseball and perhaps something like track.

Then there’s NASN, which won’t answer my emails. When will it come to Spain (if you don’t illegally subscribe to Sky and want to install a 2 meter dish on your apartment roof)? We’ll never know…