I've realized over the last several months that without any basketball on TV, I very rarely use my cable box. These days I get my fix just fine from DVDs, Netflix streaming, or websites that archive TV shows. Therefore, I'm considering dumping cable altogether in favor of NBA League Pass Broadband, and saving myself about $60 a month. My question is whether or not there is a way to get around Rockets games being blacked out. Is the regional restriction based on where you physically access the service from, or is it tied to the billing address associated with the account? If it's the latter, I plan to have a friend in another city charge it to their credit card for me. Anyone know? Also, do the games stream in high enough quality that it would be a viable option to run an HDMI connection from my laptop to my HDTV? Thanks in advance.
pretty sure they tie the broadband feature to the credit card billing address the quality is great actually so you should be able to stream fine to your tv the only issue is nbatv, espn, tnt, abc games are blacked out and of course whatever home teams or regional teams are blacked out its not tied to where you are because i've watched games on the east coast where lakers/clippers games for me were blacked out but was able to watch Knicks games fine.
The quality is not that great, I had LP last year and you gets free BB with the service. I ended up having to watch a few games on the computer and wasn't very impressed, works in a pinch though. I think the blackout issue is tied to your billing address, so I would get your friend to charge it, if you end up going with BB.
Thanks for the feedback guys. Since posting this I found a thread on RealGM where Raptors fans were talking about getting around blackouts. From what they say, it seems as though they DO determine blackouts based on your IP address, but people have used a combination of programs called CCleaner and HotspotShield to get around it. Seems fairly easy, and many people report very high quality streams. Nice to know there's a workaround, but I think I'll have my friend charge it to his Dallas address just in case.
They do 1-2 hd games a night, I think the Rockets may have had 4 or 5 last year. Maybe more, but the heat will be dominating the LP hd channel this year.
the service sucks and it's a crapshoot whether any given game will actually be broadcast, whether the sound will be working, or whether the game will be shown in its entirety without the broadcast going down in the middle of the 3rd. it's entirely possible that league pass broadband would be a higher-kwality product if the zimbabwe government was running it instead. that's how much it ****ing sucks.
Has anyone tried to share the service with someone else? Would the NBA for example shut down an account if two people from different IPs were using it at the same time?
I agree, but I still subscribe to it every year because it's still the best way for me abroad to view many Rockets games. But the quality is really not good, even if you have a super fast connection.
even worse than the broadcast quality is their online technical support. they might as well have dyslexic drugged up junkies typing back to you
WARNING: League pass broadband is not not worth a single penny. You are better off using the links posted on clutchfans rather than that piece of crap. It lags and there were like 4 games last year I missed because there was something wrong with it. Not worth it in my honest opinion.
I guess I'm in the minority. I think NBALPBB is awesome and the quality is usually very good. I would recommend it to anyone. They use your IP address, not your credit card address, to determine blackouts. I can watch Rockets games on it when out of town.
i had lp last year thought it sucked. Does anyone know if it automatically renews if u don't cancel if I thought I read that somewhere
the NBA doesn't manage the service. it's been outsourced to a foreign company. and that tmac of a company is not nearly competent enough to figure out if 22 people are using the same account. they don't know up from down or front from back. even in their roundtable corporate board meetings the company directors are passing the dutchie on the right hand side while hearing colors and seeing voices
Wow, I love league pass broadband. It comes free when you order league pass, but it works for me when I am on the road and they archive games so if you are out late, you can get in and still watch it on the PC. The quality is not HD, but it is good enough. I recommend it. DD
Yeah, I did the free trial a couple years ago where you got 2 or 3 weeks of free games on your computer. It definitely is not worth it imo, I'll stick to the free links from atdhe or other various sites.
