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June 14, 2006

video

How do I watch the World Cup on my Mac?

Posted Jun. 14, ’06, 11:08 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar
Category | Video

Ok soccer fans, like many of you, I’m at my desk during most of the World Cup games. And given that the games are in the morning, there’s not really much chance that I’m going to duck out early at the end of the work day to watch the World Cup.

So here’s the problem that I pose to you, without using Virtual PC/Boot Camp, how do I watch World Cup games on my Mac?

There have been an number of answers, including this one by my tech journalist buddy Paul Boutin, but it requires a PC application. Isn’t there a way to watch on a Mac?

Mac soccer fans, where are you?


12 Comments

Chris said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldcup

“Real” streams of it live on any PC or Mac! Yay for the BBC!

If you live outside the UK, try connecting through a proxy server in the UK.

June 14, 2006 11:41 AM
spk said:

Have been happily watching the World Cup in my office using... EyeTV and Miglia Mini. Sweet.

June 14, 2006 11:45 AM
Cyrus Farivar Author Profile Page said:

Haven't gotten the BBC feed to work.

No other web video/audio feeds?

For the Tunisia game I listened on RFI (www.rfi.fr).

June 14, 2006 11:50 AM
Paul Boutin said:

My engineer buddies have pointed out that the TVU player uses VLC to play the video - note the orange-cone icon when it starts up. Maybe if you can get the URLs being requested by TVU for each channel (I don't know how to do this offhand on Windows), you can open them in VLC on OS X.

June 14, 2006 1:31 PM
Amar said:

So, in other words, we're out of luck? Nothing is working here in the US?

June 15, 2006 12:41 PM
fractured1 said:

Sorry, but you won't be able to load the links directly into VLC, unless you have TVU or any other Peer-To-Peer streaming program installed on your operating system.

If you have a Mac, either get yourself the Virtual PC for Mac or PeerCast. There are also many Windows Media & Real Media streams on the internet (mainly Chinese) that show football but these will buffer a lot as they are not P2P.

http://www.peercast.org/download.php

June 15, 2006 7:06 PM
Aaron Author Profile Page said:

I found the solution! It's not free, but it's cheap. Go to http://www.bbcproxy.com to get a UK proxy to trick BBC's servers into thinking that you're in the UK. The proxy costs $4.95 for one game, and $49.95 for the entire World Cup. You need Real Player, and the configuration instructions on the BBC proxy site are for Real Player for Windows, though they also work for Real Player on OS X. NOTE: You do NOT need to change OS X's proxy settings in System Preferences.

June 24, 2006 12:36 PM
woo said:

Here is how:
make sure you have downloaded and installed the free flip4mac wmv stuff for quicktime. Just google it.

Then, open quicktime, and go to file, open url, and paste "mms://live.espnevent.espn.com.edgestreams.net/reflector:51921" in as the url.

Thank espn360.com for the stream, but don't thank them for being morons and not supporting mac's properly.
Send your checks to me. Enjoy!

June 30, 2006 9:39 AM
Cyrus Farivar Author Profile Page said:

WOW! A MILLION THANKS!

What's your email address?

June 30, 2006 9:48 AM
bradley said:

when i enter the url into quicktime, it just stalls then times out. no viewer window opens, nothing.

on all the latest versions, have flip4mac installed.

:o(

July 1, 2006 9:15 AM
haha said:

don't even brother install the tuner on virtual PC. It will never load!!!!

Mac users (PPC), stop wasting your time trying to watch it on my Mac, go buy a TV

July 9, 2006 11:58 AM
Harry said:

You can watch TvuPlayer flux with VLC (Pc and Mac version) under Virtual PC. Open TvuPlayer, select your channel. Then, open VLC (pc version) with this link : http://127.0.0.1:8901
Save the stream with VLC ("dump brut") into your shared folder (VPC) Open the video with Mac QuickTime Player (Flip4mac must be installed). Enjoy.

September 22, 2006 2:47 PM

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