DODGERS The TWC/SPECTRUM NIGHTMARE Thread

Discussion in 'Los Angeles DODGERS' started by THINKBLUE, Mar 27, 2014.

?

When will deals strike with other providers?

  1. Opening Day

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. 10 games into season

    5 vote(s)
    20.0%
  3. 20 games into season

    5 vote(s)
    20.0%
  4. 30+ Games into season

    6 vote(s)
    24.0%
  5. Never

    9 vote(s)
    36.0%
  1. rube

    rube DSP Legend Staff Member Administrator

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    Spectrum should just put the games on the internet. Charge a crazy subscription fee of $20 a month.
    Ton of people would pay for it.
     
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  2. BlueMouse

    BlueMouse 2020 World Champions

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    The original plan was to get $5 from every cable and satellite subscriber in the LA market. So there’s probably no a la carte subscription they could sell that would bring in anything near that.

    That said, they have clearly lost that battle. So anything to recoup a fraction of what they are spending would make sense. If they can offer a subscription without losing their own cable subscribers, then it would make sense.
     
  3. rube

    rube DSP Legend Staff Member Administrator

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    Doing it themselves through the internet at an inflated price is also a way for them to take a shot at Direct TV. Many Dodger fans might just forgo any cable/satellite provider and just get neftlix/prime/hulu and other direct to consumer broadcasting apps.
     
  4. CapnTreee

    CapnTreee Guest

    Lad ye' blather not.

    I personally know two (admittedly oldish) women who spend stupid amounts of money on shopping channels. Imagine the old girls golf wives talking and shopping on their phones at the club during lunch. No shit. Jewelry+ If I didn't know them 30 years I'd dispute me but they love to shop and hubby can afford whatever trinkets might sway her eyes.

    But me? We agree, "F" all of those stupid shopping channels!! I do not need 5 different Shark vacuum or Bullet blender channels 24 /7.

    And living currently with DirecTV they waste dozens of channels of "Upcoming... or pending..." Well then "F" you, turn the channel on when you have something to show, otherwise quit wasting my remote channel up/down bandwidth.


    To my view you are right, the Telco's want to sell us 'the most entertainment' as if we measured that by quantity of channels, and then they flood the channels with crap, pending crap, sales crap and precious little actual entertainment.

    and for more gawddamn money every month!!

    whoops rant aborted.. reset
    circling back... ...
    we will NEVER get to see the Dodgers play again
    they are hostage of a nation sized corporate media power play

    and we fans lost
     
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  5. BlueMouse

    BlueMouse 2020 World Champions

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    Does unblock-us.com/other location spoofers still work with mlb.tv? I haven't used it in 2 years, so I don't know if mlb.tv started blocking those.

    I'm asking for a friend.
     
  6. blazer5

    blazer5 DSP Legend

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    It worked for one season and then I tried again and MLB TV turned my shit off with no refund. Wouldn’t even listen when I called to get it turned back on. BS.

    Have had spectrum for 2 seasons now.
     
  7. irish

    irish DSP Staff Member Administrator

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    times article from a few years ago
    not sure about unblock-us.com and others
    but unlocator.com apparently works...

     
  8. BlueMouse

    BlueMouse 2020 World Champions

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    Yeah, I know it worked 2 years ago. I was just wondering if it still worked.

    The same thing used to work with Netflix, you could get the Netflix programming for any country, but Netflix caught on and blocked those services about 3-4 years ago. I assume MLB could block those services as well if they put in the work to do so... but last I checked they hadn't.
     
  9. irish

    irish DSP Staff Member Administrator

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    i didn't think they could detect it
    thought that was the whole purpose of the vpn
    idk
    side note/question... would it protect someone if they were downloading torrents?
    like you, asking for a friend
     
  10. BlueMouse

    BlueMouse 2020 World Champions

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    1. I really was asking for a friend. I have my own solution.
    2. I don't know about the torrents
    3. unlocator and unblock-us aren't technically VPN's but instead they use their own DNS server, and Netflix can detect that DNS number. They don't know your location, but they blacklisted those DNS servers. With it on I couldn't even use the US Netflix. In the case of an actual VPN, Netflix can still detect the IP Address, and could potentially blacklist an IP... but they would have to suspect it was a bad IP which they might if 100 different accounts were running through it.
     
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  11. MZA

    MZA MODERATOR Staff Member

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    Guys just use stremenadous.com or reddit mlb streams.

    Don't pay.
     
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  12. irish

    irish DSP Staff Member Administrator

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    those are good alternatives
    but they can be unreliable too
     
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  13. rube

    rube DSP Legend Staff Member Administrator

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    not really that unreliable
     
  14. irish

    irish DSP Staff Member Administrator

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    some are better than others
    but watching an actual broadcast is much more reliable
     
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  15. Doughty8

    Doughty8 DSP Legend

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    sportshd.me!!!!! Works well but only the 1st time for me using it.
     
  16. THINKBLUE

    THINKBLUE DSP Gigolo

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    I'm thinking about dumping RSpectrum cable and rolling with just internet.
    I have an MLB.TV subscription for when I travel but cannot watch Dodger games in market.
    I have used UnBlockUs in the past and it worked great. However, that was using a desktop computer.
    I'd like to have no blackout MLB.TV on all my Ethernet wired devices. Roku, Tivo, desktops, etc.

    Has anyone had success with this? Setting up one desktop was easy but I don't know about setting up an entire network, rokus, tivo, etc...

    @BlueMouse

    EDIT: I don't think UnblockUs is a VPN, but something similar. Any alternatives are welcome.
     
  17. irish

    irish DSP Staff Member Administrator

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    if no desktop, what device are we talking about?
     
  18. THINKBLUE

    THINKBLUE DSP Gigolo

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    Roku 3 or 4 gen, let's say.
    I have a TiVo as well
     
  19. irish

    irish DSP Staff Member Administrator

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    it's suppose to work fine but i haven't tried it
    let me see if i can find some info...
     
  20. irish

    irish DSP Staff Member Administrator

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    here's the article i was looking for
    the roku reference is near the bottom under how to get started/setup


    How to watch the Dodgers on TV
    by Chris Erskine | Los Angeles Times — 23 April 2015
    [​IMG]
    My life is a series of small pathetic failures broken up by unsustainable microbursts of clarity and achievement.

    That's why getting the Dodgers on TV the other night was so rockin'. My kid and I hugged as if we'd just climbed some digital Kilimanjaro. Which in a sense, is exactly what we'd done.

    Emboldened by the buzz surrounding a new service, we changed a DNS code that masked our location. That allowed us to access an MLB.TV subscription, which till now had blocked Dodgers telecasts if you didn't have a Time Warner Cable account.

    If such hocus-pocus seems beyond your skill set, let me refer you back to Scene 1, Paragraph 1. In short, if I can do this, you can do this. I don't see why everybody doesn't do it, despite the $130 MLB season subscription.

    Keep in mind, that's roughly what you'd spend at the ballpark on parking, two beers and four anorexic hot dogs.

    Even better news: The whole setup took less than 30 minutes.

    The bad news? It requires a small investment, a bit of patience, and the right electronic chassis. My self-made Dodgers for Dummies kit also included an Apple TV device, which makes hooking up to subscriptions such as Netflix and MLB.TV about as easy as setting up a new coffee maker (previously, we'd used gaming consoles to access such things, but the Apple TV device is much simpler).

    So, here I sit watching Clayton Kershaw and Adrian Gonzalez on TV after a yearlong forced abstinence. When that cute redhead crowed, "It's time for Dodger baseball!" I'll confess to getting chills — and an extra beverage from the beer fridge outside.

    My work-around comes from Unlocator.com, an online service that guides even Luddites like me through an easy setup menu.

    Essentially, Unlocator allows you to access Dodgers telecasts by telling you how to change what is known as your system's DNS, which fools MLB.TV into thinking you're outside the blackout zone. Sure, that sounds sinister, but Unlocator reps say you are doing nothing more than what millions of VPN users do every day when they sign on to their corporate network from home.
    [​IMG]
    Can you get into trouble for it? Time Warner Cable declined to comment on the work-around. The Danes who run the Copenhagen-based Unlocator.com won't guarantee that some local regulations might crop up. But for the most part, they say, only Iran and the United Arab Emirates have laws that prohibit this sort of digital zigzag, known in the Nerd World as "proxy service alternatives."

    Proxy, shmoxy, all I know is that the Dodgers and Giants are on my TV right now. And I'm far from alone.

    "My brother has this setup," says fan Matt Shupper, who has been using the service since the start of the year. "My dad has it, and five people from my son's baseball team are using it.

    Fine print deep in the MLB.com website warns of a $100 fine and service cutoffs to anyone trying to circumvent blackouts, though I have found no signs of any such crackdowns so far.

    "I've had zero issues," Shupper says.

    Of course, overriding the Dodgers' blackout goes back to the start of the standoff a year ago, when techie types started rerouting MLB feeds through foreign servers to disguise their locations. As you may know, a computer's IP address is the digital lighthouse that lets a cable provider know where you are. TWC , which owns rights to Dodgers telecasts, has failed to get other major services to buy in so it has blacked out about 70% of local TV households from seeing the games on satellite or cable.

    Savvy users had to download programs that spoofed the IP address, so that MLB.TV would think the user was in the Bahamas or Nova Scotia — pretty much anywhere outside TWC's dragnet.

    "Finding a good connection can take a while," says one college student, who asked not be identified, and who still relies on a Canadian server. "But it's much better than watching pixilated games on Moldovan gambling websites like my friends do."

    Locator.com is different in that it requires no software downloads, just the DNS alias and the instructions on how to change it.

    A device known as Slingbox has become another popular way of getting around the blackouts. But it requires a TWC account someplace, often at a second residence in an area covered by TWC. In that case, Slingbox allows viewers to redirect — or sling — that cable signal over the Internet, where they can access the games on home TVs, phones and tablets.

    "It's extremely reliable, a very crisp signal. It works extremely well," says one user, a JPL executive who asked not to be identified. He said the $120 device is about the size of a hardcover book and was an easy install.

    But he's a rocket scientist, after all. Me, I'm just a lost soul with a hole in his shoe on the boulevard of broken dreams.

    And one of those dreams was to see Vin Scully in my den again, singing songs for a summer's night.

    Done.

    chris.erskine@latimes.com
    Twitter: @erskinetimes

    HOW TO GET STARTED

    Unlocator.com: The service provides an alternate DNS number and instructions. Cost: $4.95 a month. Free seven-day trials also offered.

    MLB.TV: Unlocator requires this subscription. Yearly subscriptions are $130. But if you don't want to commit, monthly fees are $25.

    Setup: Unlocator requires a wireless network or an Ethernet connection. It works with all sorts of gaming consoles, household routers, operating systems and media players such as Apple TV, Roku or Chromecast. In our case, Apple TV proved a 10-minute install, plus another 15 minutes to subscribe to MLB.TV via an iTunes account.

    Slingbox: The streaming device is about $120, and install is simple. Also necessary: a TWC account that you can access over the Internet.
     
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  21. THINKBLUE

    THINKBLUE DSP Gigolo

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    Thank you. Maybe I will do a trial run later.
     

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