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Streaming March Madness On Linux?

Posted by timothy on from the when-you-can-snatch-this-pebble-from-my-hand dept.

neersign writes "March Madness is here and NCAA.com is streaming all of the games over the internet for free. The downside is they are using Microsoft technologies to do so. The standard player lists Windows XP/Vista, IE6, and WMP 9 as the base requirements. The High Quality Video Player requires Silverlight 2. So my question is: how would a Linux user be able to work around these requirements and watch the games?"

4 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Yahoo Sports by snl2587 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yahoo typically streams NCAA basketball games, and I've had success with opening the videos with Totem using GStreamer codecs (from the "bad" and "ugly" set, though).

  2. Re:Faggots by Chabo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As unabashedly brutal as his wording was, I think he's absolutely correct. The technologically-oriented community must teach the rest of the world that things like proprietary formats, vendor lock-in, and all of the other various things we rail on about are bad.

    A high-profile example like the NCAA, which attracts many "Joe Sixpack" fans across the nation (does anyone outside the US watch basketball?), would be a perfect example of how closed formats hurt the average consumer.

    I know Mac users are about as likely as Linux users to watch basketball, but with the recent increased popularity of Macs, wouldn't that be a selling point for open formats? I can't imagine OSX has a good Silverlight implementation. I couldn't even find evidence of Moonlight being ported over.

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  3. It worked last year by steltho · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was able to watch the games online last year using the mediaplayerconnectivity plugin for firefox and vlc. I tried this year, but they block all non-IE browsers from accessing the video streams. I was able to get past this check by using the UserAgentSwitcher plugin, but now it won't let me get to the streams because I don't have windows media player.

  4. Anyone try Moonlight? by benwaggoner · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd be curious to hear how well it works.

    Their Silverlight 2 support's in alpha now, targeting beta in May and final in September.
    http://www.mono-project.com/MoonlightRoadmap

    Less than 11 months until the Vancouver WInter Olympics in Silverlight! I'm sure they'd appreciate any help in their Hackathon:

    http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight2Hacking

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