NFL Sunday Ticket may leave DirecTV next year.

fnordcircle said:

Honestly, so far, the VPN + Gamepass solution has been fantastic this year. Last year was the first major blip on the radar of issues and they have been resolved through the 10 or so games I've watched live so far.

IIRC it was $180 for game pass and then I pay $10 a month for ExpressVPN. I use ExpressVPN for other things (no not child porn, you a-holes) so there's additional value there for me, but a $180 one-off payment that takes care of all of my NFL needs is worth it to me and seems cheaper than paying for DirectTV + Sunday Ticket.

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How do you get gamepass to show you live games?

Hyped said:

And college kids get Sunday Ticket via wifi….just because they can't mount dishes in college dorms...total BS.

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You should still be able to stream it without a physical dish through their “Sunday Ticket to go” program. May be worth looking into.

ForThoseAboutToRock said:

How do you get gamepass to show you live games?

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He likely uses a VPN service that masks your IP address so that it appears to be from a different country. GamePass is live in other countries outside of the US.

supafly said:

I used to be able to connect my iPhone to the TV through a HDMI splitter and the picture was great. As of this year week one, I now get a message on the TV that says “HDMI output not supported.” It’s a real bummer because not only am I losing the ability to watch on the big screen, but I’m stuck holding my phone/tablet the entire time.

Like you said, I do have an app on my smart TV, but the picture is total ass. It’s choppy and it freezes. How are the reddit streams? I’ve never tried them, but I’m assuming that it’s much of the same.

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Reddit steams are excellent on a computer. I haven’t had to try them on the TV yet.

supafly said:

I used to be able to connect my iPhone to the TV through a HDMI splitter and the picture was great. As of this year week one, I now get a message on the TV that says “HDMI output not supported.” It’s a real bummer because not only am I losing the ability to watch on the big screen, but I’m stuck holding my phone/tablet the entire time.

Like you said, I do have an app on my smart TV, but the picture is total ass. It’s choppy and it freezes. How are the reddit streams? I’ve never tried them, but I’m assuming that it’s much of the same.

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Do you have a Roku or something similar? You can connect the Roku to your TV via HDMI. Roku allows you download virtually any app, including Sunday Ticket.

Link (below)
Roku

Ice_Ice_Brady said:

Do you have a Roku or something similar? You can connect the Roku to your TV via HDMI. Roku allows you download virtually any app, including Sunday Ticket.

Link (below)
Roku

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I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be similar to using the app on the new(er) Sony smart TV? Unfortunately, the picture quality takes a big hit. What I had going with the iPhone to TV connection was beautiful. I guess that Directv put a stop to that. I dunno. It sucks.

I’ll definitely look into the Roku though. Thanks for the tip.

supafly said:

I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be similar to using the app on the new(er) Sony smart TV? Unfortunately, the picture quality takes a big hit. What I had going with the iPhone to TV connection was beautiful. I guess that Directv put a stop to that. I dunno. It sucks.

I’ll definitely look into the Roku though. Thanks for the tip.

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I can’t speak for all Smart TVs in a blanket statement, but I personally do not like them at all. Roku, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Fire Stick are all dedicated devices designed to give you apps and high quality streaming. Smart TVs are generally more of a gimmick in my opinion. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my time in audio/video sales, it’s that separate components are always better than integrated components. With the Smart TVs, you get the apps as a feature; they are typically built into the software architecture of the television manufacturer (Sony in this case) and are pretty much bound by the hard code and don’t allow for many settings or options. In addition, you usually can’t update them with new firmware, as the manufacturer is less motivated to keep their Smart Apps cutting edge than a company like Roku.

All that said I can’t swear by Roku and say the picture quality is comparable to streaming from an smart phone or tablet, since I haven’t tried it, but you could always give it a try and return it if necessary.

As someone who has used multiple cable companies, dish, and directv, this isn’t ideal.

Directv delivers a superior product and it’s not even close.

Ice_Ice_Brady said:

I can’t speak for all Smart TVs in a blanket statement, but I personally do not like them at all. Roku, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Fire Stick are all dedicated devices designed to give you apps and high quality streaming. Smart TVs are generally more of a gimmick in my opinion. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my time in audio/video sales, it’s that separate components are always better than integrated components. With the Smart TVs, you get the apps as a feature; they are typically built into the software architecture of the television manufacturer (Sony in this case) and are pretty much bound by the hard code and don’t allow for many settings or options. In addition, you usually can’t update them with new firmware, as the manufacturer is less motivated to keep their Smart Apps cutting edge than a company like Roku.

All that said I can’t swear by Roku and say the picture quality is comparable to streaming from an smart phone or tablet, since I haven’t tried it, but you could always give it a try and return it if necessary.

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Great advice, man. I really appreciate it. If it were just me, I’d deal with watching it on the phone, but my wife watches an out of market team, as well. I’d really like to solve the issue so that we can both go back to enjoying the games together, rather than having one of us sitting in front of a damned tablet all afternoon.

Thanks again. I’ll be checking it out for sure.

ForThoseAboutToRock said:

How do you get gamepass to show you live games?

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ExpressVPN and then set your location to either the UK or Germany. Login to gamepass.

The NFL doesn't give a crap if your billing address is in the US, at least not yet anyways.

The main reason I pimp Gamepass a lot is that I like to be able to pause/fastforward and rewatch games. Obviously reddit streams or kodi are easier on the wallet and maybe there's better functionality in kodi than I'm aware.

But Gamepass + a vpn + a usenet account means I can watch anything when I want and then download the games for posterity later on. IF the ****ing NFL would just give us a way to do this I would happily pay them directly for all of this crap. But because of idiotic TV contracts no, I have to impersonate a goddamn Kraut just to watch games for the team I like.

You can just torrent the games after the fact but I like the dependability of usenet and I'm a cheapskate 99% of the time but when it comes to the NFL I spare no goddamn expense.

fnordcircle said:

ExpressVPN and then set your location to either the UK or Germany. Login to gamepass.

The NFL doesn't give a crap if your billing address is in the US, at least not yet anyways.

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Hoping not to ask a stupid question, but I would assume that it’s imperative to use the VPN in order to set up an acct with gamepass first, right?

Or are you saying that you can already take your established gamepass account and then deploy the VPN and log in, even if you’ve used it before?

supafly said:

Hoping not to ask a stupid question, but I would assume that it’s imperative to use the VPN in order to set up an acct with gamepass first, right?

Or are you saying that you can already take your established gamepass account and then deploy the VPN and log in, even if you’ve used it before?

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I don't think so. It definitely seems like they only care about your location when you try to watch a game. I don't recall if I had my VPN up when I setup my account and it definitely wouldn't hurt.

But, for instance, I forget to turn on my VPN from time to time, login to Gamepass and it's like 'yo you're an American get bent.' And then I just turn on my VPN and login again and it's like 'oh sorry Herr Circle, here's every game live + NFL Network live + Red Zone live'.

It's not like they flag your account. TBH I think they're more than happy to turn a blind eye to what I'm doing because the only reason they aren't selling live Gampass to everyone is their TV contracts not because they hate freedom.

fnordcircle said:

But Gamepass + a vpn + a usenet account

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The list of **** you have to do has grown from the last post. Now there’s a third step. What exactly, is usenet? I don’t think I’m familiar.

supafly said:

The list of **** you have to do has grown from the last post. Now there’s a third step. What exactly, is usenet? I don’t think I’m familiar.

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You also have to mix a raven's claw and the hair of a virgin (fnord in this case) with the blood of the elders and sacrifice your first born child.

supafly said:

The list of **** you have to do has grown from the last post. Now there’s a third step. What exactly, is usenet? I don’t think I’m familiar.

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Sorry, your last post was thorough enough that I can find this information on my own. @fnordcircle

supafly said:

The list of **** you have to do has grown from the last post. Now there’s a third step. What exactly, is usenet? I don’t think I’m familiar.

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Oh sorry. I'm high on coffee so I get very posty.

Usenet isn't required unless you want to save games. You used to be able to use PlayOn to record games directly from Gamepass but I haven't tried in a while since it broke. I like having a Plex (think personal netflix running on a server in your home) library of all the games I can get. So I use usenet because unlike Torrents it's very reliable. Usenet is an old message board-esque type system a lot of us old old old timers used to argue with Bob Jensen, Jet Troll extrodinaire. It's where I first read KenT's posts, for instance.

People can do more than just post on usenet they can also host binaries. It's more reliable than torrents but isn't free. But that's only if you really want to keep copies of the games locally and not have to worry about what streaming services are going to do. For instance Gamepass used to have more years up for watching after the fact but last year they cut it down to just 2 previous seasons. They said they were going to add more of the previous seasons back up but I haven't bothered to look because I just got angry about their reducing the service and started downloading games.

fnordcircle said:

Honestly, so far, the VPN + Gamepass solution has been fantastic this year. Last year was the first major blip on the radar of issues and they have been resolved through the 10 or so games I've watched live so far.

IIRC it was $180 for game pass and then I pay $10 a month for ExpressVPN. I use ExpressVPN for other things (no not child porn, you a-holes) so there's additional value there for me, but a $180 one-off payment that takes care of all of my NFL needs is worth it to me and seems cheaper than paying for DirectTV + Sunday Ticket.

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I just send $30 worth of bitcoin to some weird shady Russian dudes every year and get all the gamepass feeds through their site and/or Plex channel. It hasn't screwed me over yet and therefore it clearly never will!

KontradictioN said:

You also have to mix a raven's claw and the hair of a virgin (fnord in this case) with the blood of the elders and sacrifice your first born child.

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I shared that with you in private, you ****.

BradyFTW! said:

I just send $30 worth of bitcoin to some weird shady Russian dudes every year and get all the gamepass feeds through their site and/or Plex channel. It hasn't screwed me over yet and therefore it clearly never will!

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The reality is that you have sent them somewhere between $0.25 and $300000000 with how volatile crypto has been.

Oh and also I'm mildly surprised it has worked out for you without a hitch. A lot of those places that let you pay for a service at a tremendous discount via shady **** are using stolen Credit Card numbers to purchase the service then effectively laundering credit from those cards via your purchase.

I'm not going to get preachy but I prefer to not possibly hurt others and honestly I don't mind paying the NFL to consume their product, my issue isn't with cost it's with the fact that the technology exists to give me exactly what I want (all of the games on demand to watch from any season whenever I want) but antiquated TV contracts and other crap keep them from offering that to me so I have to seek my remedy through some other fashion, to sorta quote Brom Garrett from Deadwood.