As a Pittsburgh Penguins fan, I have been very remorseful about not following their progress very closely over the past few years. I watch highlights on the news, and listen on the radio when there is a game on and I am in the car, but that has been about it. However, I have an excuse. I do not have cable television, and all of the games are broadcast on the cable television channel Verses. Aside form watching an occasional game on NBC broadcast TV @ 1:30 in the afternoon on Sunday, I have been a totally whack fan.

So anyway, I figured out how to stick it to the man! I refuse to pay for almost any media, and I am certainly not going to start paying for cable television, the lowest form of expression in popular media. So, my friends, if you don’t already know, HERE IS HOW TO WATCH ANY LIVE EVENT FOR FREE!

I assure you, that none of the instructions below will install any spyware or viruses on your computer.

EDIT (5/24/08): OK Mac Users. After bags and bags of hate mail, I decided to let you in on the party. Here is how to watch your sports for free on a Mac. This took about three minutes to find in Google, but I am not even sure if Google works on Macs, as Apple doesn’t own Google. I’m not sure if they let you visit non-Apple owned web sites (without paying more money)…  If you own a Mac, don’t feel bad.  You are not a bad person, you just make poor life decisions and enjoy wasting money.  That’s so gangsta of you…

INSTRUCTIONS FOR PC & MAC

Edit (10/24/08)  IMPORTANT!

There are now two major formats for watching sports live. VLC Player and TVAnts.  Instructions for installing both for Mac OS X and PC can be found below. I personally prefer VLC Player. VLC player is easier to install on a Mac, TvAnts is easier to install on a PC. The choice is yours.

TVANTS INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS

TvAnts for PC can be downloaded HERE.
TvAnts for Mac OS X install instructions can be found HERE.

Once Installed, go to http://www.myp2pforum.eu and select one of the live stream sports forums, then select a TvAnts file for the game that you want to watch.

VLC INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS

STEP 1
Download and install Sopcast - www.sopcast.com
FOR MAC USERS WITH INTEL CHIPS, you must follow these special instructions to install SopCast.
FOR MAC USERS WITHOUT INTEL CHIPS (OS X under tiger 10.4.11), you must do this instead.

STEP 2
Download and install VLC player and CCCP Plugin
VLC Player
MAC USERS download here

CCCP Plugin

STEP 3
Find your game: MyP2P is the place to be. Go to their web site and search their forums in your sport of choice for live streams that will be playing that day. For example, I want to watch the Penguins so I went to http://www.myp2pforum.eu/nhl-icehockey/

STEP 4
Once you find the stream that you want, you can either click the link and SopPlayer will launch, or you may have to right click on the link and select “copy url”. If you copied the url, past it in to your SopCast player in the “address” field and press enter.

STEP 5
Something is happening, but you are not sure what… This is good! Now:
a) start VLC player
b) go to the “file” menu
c) select “open network stream”
d) select the “http” radio button
e) input 127.0.0.1:8902 (If port 8902 doesn’t work, try 8912) and hit OK

STEP 6
You’re welcome jerk!

Don’t close SopCast or do anything stupid like that. If you want vlc to “always be on top” the option is in settings>>preferences>>video. NOTE: you have to close VLC and start it back up before it will stay on top. That one threw me for a loop. You are now able to watch nhl, mlb, nfl, nba, and all of those stupid European sports like horse shoes, air hockey, and soccer.

Written by Jake Peterson - Contact