Streaming Election Night Broadcast TV?

kakapo writes "A couple of years ago, we dumped our cable TV, and don't have much luck getting old-fashioned broadcast where we live. That's fine — we can download or netflix almost anything we want to see, and it is great not to pay the Comcast tax every month. Problem is, now I want to watch the election live, complete with talking heads, pundits, glitzy graphics and all the rest, rather than reading about it on a website. So, is there any way to download network TV / CNN / MSNBC in real time — I don't mind paying. And yes, we could visit friends, but ideally our kids would watch the first part and then go to bed — and a sitter would be expensive if we have to wait until late for the result."

Comments

Yes

[Thelasko]

Go here and click on "live video."

Re:Yes

[knorthern knight]

The magic incantation is...

mplayer -playlist http://www.cnn.com/video/live/cnnlive_1.asx

*WITHOUT* the "[cnn.com]" in brackets at the end (damn you Slashdot). I'm running it on linux, and watching CNN right now.

Re:Yes

[LostCluster]

That's not the CNN TV feed... that's window #1 out of CNN Pipeline, an internet-only service.

Hulu.com?

[sohmc]

Hulu had streaming live feeds of the debates. I'd think they'd have some sort of streaming feed come election day. Also, I know CNN has streaming feeds of some of their programs.

Check the Cable feed

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried plugging a TV into the cable feed? A lot of times, the cable company won't bother implementing a cancellation, figuring that reclaiming the box is good enough and saving the cost of a truck roll. It's possible that you'll still have analog basic cable on that "disconnected" cable line. Alternately, you could sign up for one month of limited Analog Cable for $15.

Anything for non americans?

[Splab]

This election is pretty much sealing the fate of the western world as we know it; we are quite a lot of people very very interested in the results.

Re:Anything for non americans?

[LWATCDR]

No it isn't
Let me fill you in.
If McCain wins odds are that we will have a Democratic majority on congress.
The end result is that it should keep things somewhat in the center. Or very little will get done that doesn't have a universal support.
If Obama wins we will have a Democratic congress. Truth is that I would bet that it will also go more towards the center but if they start really messing up then in two years congress will shift back towards the Republicans and we will again have balance.
If Obama or McCain really mess up we fire them in four years and get a new president.
In the end it will not be the end of the world.
Geez I don't like Obama's energy policy since it is not as pro nuclear as I would like. I am not all that fond of McCain's tax plan. Or Obama's "Guess what folks. You can not give a tax cut to someone that already pays zero or gets more back than they pay in. That is called charity."
Truth is I doubt it matter much one way or the other. I don't think their is a great man running for president this year but I also don't think their is a monster running.
Chill out and relax.

Re:Anything for non americans?

[LWATCDR]

Yes I have. And yes most Americans have faith in checks and balances.
The invasion of Iraq passed with huge support from both Democrats and Republicans.
Also with a lot of support of other countries at the time.
The Economy? Not just Bush's fault. Take a look at all the other countries that have had the same thing happen to them at this time. We have been going from bubble to bubble since Clinton. No one was willing to deflate the bubble but bubbles don't last for ever.

If you think one person has that much power for good or evil you are just clueless.
Bush is just easy to blame since he is the president. The number of people involved is huge and isn't even limited to a single country.

Re:Anything for non americans?

[Gavagai80]

You don't go to Yale if you are retard

You do if your daddy is one of the most influential people in the country and he wants you to.

Listen instead

[duffbeer703]

Any decent AM radio station will have full-time election coverage, and radio news is generally 1000% better than the swill that you see on TV.

Re:Listen instead

[Crazy Man on Fire]

AM or your local FM NPR station if you can pull it in. I've found NPR's live election coverage to be quite good.

C-SPAN streams live

[NevDull]

For the things you want to watch which are covered on C-SPAN, you can see C-SPAN 1, 2, and 3, and C-SPAN Radio here.

Re:Same thing with the World Series

[TubeSteak]

I am wondering the same thing about tonight's World Series game on Fox. Anyone answer that question?

Baseball/Football/Basketball jealously guard their broadcast rights.
The only way to stream those things live is off the official website or through a premium membership (aol/msn/real networks/i'm not sure who anymore) after paying for it.

CNN is a lot easier. It's on their website for free.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

um...yeah, i'm sure the question is about the elections taking place in 2006. . .

LETS DO THE TIME WARP AGAAAIIIIINNNNNN!

Site is flakey. Here are direct links.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The C-SPAN site uses a flakey AJAX framework to try to sniff your stream reader. Unfortunately it's broken for some browsers. That seems to include firefox - including the version on my Ubuntu Feisty install which I keep up-to-the-minute with the upgrade tool.

So I've reverse-engineered it enough to find URLs for the underlying streams.

Here are direct links to the realplayer streams for C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, and C-SPAN3.

= = =

PS: I haven't been able to figure out how to construct similar links for archived shows. If anybody else can mange that, please follow up with it. Thanks.

Direct tv will have 8 feeds on one channel in HD

[Joe The Dragon]

Direct tv will have 8 feeds on one channel in HD

C-SPAN

[Rayge]

You could watch the live stream from http://www.cspan.org/

Good Luck

[aarenz]

First off, I am betting that the whole thing will be embroiled in troubles with all electronic voting machines and close recounts. I doubt that we will hear an official winner in several states until days or maybe weeks later. Second, suggest getting one of the digital converter boxes and an amplified antenna. Will serve you well for a long time into the future and provide a very good signal even when you normally get static on the old analog over the air. I work for a broadcast group and we have tested digital converter boxes in hard to recieve locations like condos and office buildings with some pretty good success.

Overall I say save the money and wait for the hubub to end after two weeks of the electronic version of hanging chads.

answer seems obvious

[discojohnson]

slingbox

Re:FOX

[Spacejock]

I have a faint suspicion the OP was being sarcastic.