Tennis w/out a TV?
 

I need your help. I'm hoping to ditch satellite TV. But I can't sacrifice watching tennis. I'm mostly concerned about Masters and Grand Slams. I know some matches are online - I watched the Aussie Open almost exclusively online this year - but do they have matches online every day, and are they often archived so I don't have to watch them in real time?

Is there anything else I should consider before cutting the cable? (I will receive networks.)

Thanks!

I watch a pretty decent amount of tennis online, especially masters events and slams. Still, I don't think hardly any archive them. You'd pretty much have to watch it live.

Most of the time, you can find a stream. But sometimes you can't. Early last week for instance, no one could find a stream for Acapulco.

The only service I know of that will archive footage (for a day or two) is ESPN 360, and that all depends on whether your ISP accommodates 360 or not. I can get it here on campus, but not when I'm at home.

Wimbledon Live apparently archives matches for you to watch for one year. But I believe someone (nelslus?) was complaining that they're maybe not allowing that anymore. I'm not sure.

They had originally said that customers would be able to watch the Wimbledon 2008 matches until May of this year. However, they cut this off as of December, with this posted statement: "The All England Lawn Tennis Club regret to announce that due to circumstances beyond our control, as of 5 December 2008 the Wimbledon LIVE service (operated by a third party, Mediazone) is no longer available."

You can also sometimes watch full and partial matches thanks to You Tube- albeit for longer matches you'll have to watch them a section at a time, as I guess you can only have a You Tube video play on for so long. Some post matches in double-digit sections.

There are also sites, including some started I believe by TAT-ites here, that have archived matches. Can anyone else help out with specifics on this?

For me- HELL NO, I ain't ever gonna lose cable.

I dont own a TV either. So the vast majority of tennis I watch is online on live streams (atdhe, justintv, channelsurfing), and this works for a large number of events. I have never tried recording, but there exists software for video-recording screen/audio activity on the computer (like http://camstudio.org/). But then you would have to know beforehand what stream will work, and sometimes you dont know until right before the match.

I actually watch more tennis not on TV than I do on TV, Megan, so I bet you'll be able to ditch your cable without many problems...except for maybe a little bit of buffering.

You can subscribe to Tennistv for the Masters and ATP 500. Yes, when something is on Tennistv you can find it most of the time on any the free streaming websites but it is better quality and piece of mind

Do you always watch matches live? My concern is losing my DVR, too. I work 9-5, so I can't watch during the day. I'm trying to figure out if I'll be able to watch French and Wimbledon matches when I get home.

Maybe I'll just try it for IW and Miami, see how it goes.

If someone has info on the sites tha archive tennis matches, please let me know! If one doesn't exist, there's a business idea for someone!

Thanks, everyone!

Megan, if you subscribe to Russian television, they have a tennis channel and you can go back and watch things up to a week later. It's about $40/3 months.

Otherwise, I'm in the same boat you are. I work 8:30 - 7ish, and there's just no way I can always be watching livestreams. I'd love it if TennisTV would archive their matches, but they don't. http://forum.talkabouttennis.com/ima...lies/frown.png I sent them an email asking about it, but never got a reply, and there's no way I'm going to dish out a subscription fee for something that's pretty much useless to me. Their loss. http://forum.talkabouttennis.com/ima...ies/tongue.png

Just so you know megan...

You won't be able to order Wimbledon Live this year. They cancelled that service. http://forum.talkabouttennis.com/ima...lies/smile.png

There was a notice on their website. I did send an email inquiring about this and have yet to receive an answer because I can't find the notice anywhere. I hope it isn't true.

Megan, you can usually find places to download matches online within a day or so after they happen. You can usually find most significant matches that were televised somewhere in the world. There's a thread devoted to this on MTF, I believe, and there are a couple sites online. It's usually done through either a torrent or something like MegaUpload.

Unless I'm missing something, it isn't necessarily true that some kind of a "Wimbledon Live" service won't be an option this year. What's posted on the site is concerning those who purchased the service last year, letting everyone know that, while we were suppposed to be able to watch last year's (and some past years') matches until May of this year- the service was shut down in December due to circumstances, they say, beyond their control.

Hopefully, Wimbledon will use SOME company so that we all can have the option to pay for watching multiple matches live. We shall see.....

Thanks, everyone. Testing it during IW and Key Biscayne. Will report!