How is watching LIVE football possible?
There are still more then a few countries around the world where Pay Per View (PPV) has not yet been established, and football is televised for free. Broadcasts of some of the TV stations in these countries are available via video streams on the internet.

How good is the quality of the live streams?
The quality depends on the rate at which video streams are transmitted. This quality is measured by the same units measuring how broad you internet connection is: Kb/Sec. Most streams are transmitted at a quality of between 100Kb/Sec and 400 Kb/sec, so if your connection is somewhere around 750Kbs there is no need to rush off and pay for a broader connection package. 400Kb/sec is more or less the rate at which it is possible to watch the video stream on a full screen in reasonable quality. For quality lesser than that, the size of the media player’s window has to be reduced.

Sounds too good to be true!
While this method might be a good alternative to the good old TV set, there are still some problems associated with it. Millions of people around the world are trying to connect to the servers broadcasting the streams, just as you are. These servers are not designed to support such a large number of users, so the load on them is immense. The number of users each of those servers can support is limited, and sometimes even if you manage to connect to one, the high traffic might impair its functionality, in some cases causing it to crash.

What Hardware/Software do I need to watch live streams?
1. A reasonably good computer (Pentium 3 / AMD K6-II minimum).

2. A broadband internet connection of at least 0.5Mb/sec.

3. Up to date versions of Windows Media Player or Real player.

To download Windows Media Player click HERE

Some of the streams need the latest version of media player so if you have any problems try updating to the latest version.

To download Real Player click HERE

There is a free version of the software you can download here, you don’t need to pay for the full version as the free version will do fine. You should see a link in the top right corner that says free Real One Player click here to get to the page where you can get the free version. Ignore the 14 day free trial links.

The Streaming Technique - Buffering
The high load on servers as well as other internet related disturbances makes it hard to stream videos without any disruptions. To overcome these problems and offer a continuous broadcast, the different media players use a method called Buffering. The video streams are not shown live, and are delayed by a couple of minutes. This gives the players time to buffer the bits of video that are to be shown. This way when the broadcast is disrupted the player can go on playing for a few more seconds before it runs out of video segments to show. When streaming resumes the player will once again buffer the bits that are to come ahead.

The size of the buffer is important. If can’t be too small, otherwise frequent interruptions will cause many delays. On the other hand the player has also got to show the stream and not to be solely occupied buffering it. It is recommended that the size of the buffer is set to 30 seconds.

The buffer size in Windows Media Player:
When Windows Media Player is open, choose Options from the Menu toolbar. Then click on the Properties tab, and set the number of seconds buffered to 30.

Setting the buffer size in Real Player:
When in Real Player choose Preferences from the Tools tab. Then go on the left to General > Playback settings. On the bottom right side of the screen set the number of seconds to 30.

Links to Streams
In the same way that we recognize Microsoft Word files by their Doc or Rtf type/extension, we can also determine that a certain URL is a link to a video stream.

Windows media player streams will usually begin with mms: //, for example: mms://cmd.terra.com.pe/cmd, or end with .asx, for example: http://www.irib.ir/live/tv3.asx.

WReal player streams will usually begin with rtsp: //, for example: rtsp://helix.beotel.net/encoder/rts2.rm or end with .rm or .ram, for example: http://www.crtvg.es/reals/gal_tv.ram.

Winamp streams are the easiest to recognize as they will always have an .NSV suffix, for example: http://916.14.13.81:5200/stream.nsv.

Playing Streams
When you click a stream link, OS (operating system, Microsoft Windows in most cases) should automatically play it using the right player. That will happen if this type of file is associated with the right player. Those setting are usually being set when the player is first installed. However, if a file type is not associated with a player, you can either associate it yourself, or if you are not familiar enough with your OS you can manually load the stream into the player.

In Windows Media Player go to File -> Open URL (or press CTRL + U) and type/paste the stream link in the 'Open:' field in the 'Open URL' dialog box (Figure 1).

P2P Streaming
All media players Buffer segments of a video stream prior to actually showing them. They will only show a segment once they are done buffering it, and while doing so they will start buffering the next segment.

On many occasions the server that functions as the streams' source is overloaded with clients asking for segments, and will not be able to satisfy this demand at a high enough rate. The clients' media players will have to stop showing the streams in order to finish buffering the missing segments, resulting in a segmented video stream.

That’s where the brilliant P2P technology comes in to the rescue. It enables users to share stream segments. By doing so is creates numerous sources that replace the overloaded servers, from which the media players can download those segments at a satisfactory rate. This process has great resemblance to P2P file sharing clients such as BITTORENT.

Since this technology relies on sharing, the more segments one uploads to other users, the more he is entitled to download segments for himself from others. For this reason it may take a few minutes before the received stream would run continuously. One has to upload to other users at a rate high enough to be able to download segments in a sufficient rate himself. Therefore it is recommended to establish a connection as early as possible before the starting time of a desired event. The more users sharing segments there are the better stream each one of them will get.

The current P2P programs are:
Coolstreaming, PPLive, PPStream, TVAnts, Sopcast, QQLive and Feidian. The latest versions of this software can be downloaded on the Internet.

PPlive

We call all 1.0.9.x and later versions "2nd generation" PPlive

As in old generation PPlive applications, you can choose channels directly from the PPlive website:

PPlive Channels

PPlive Channels Translated

PPlive Sports Channels Translated

In the new versions of PPlive the main application is called the PPlive Engine. An icon of a blue arrow pointing down replaces the old grey 'Pp' Icon (Figure 1). Although the default language is set to English, the channels list is still in Chinese. Choosing a channel will play it in the PPlive Player (Figure 3), a stand alone player which is basically no more than a Media Player in a PPlive skin.

There is an added bonus to playing channels directly from the PPlive website. The streams are played in a regular Windows Media Player window which is still the better option. Either way information about the chosen channel will appear in the PPlive Play list window (Figure 4) that can be opened by double clicking the PPlive icon in the taskbar (Figure 1).



If you are running a firewall on your pc you should open a couple of ports for PPlive. You can specify the ports you prefer through the PPlive option menu (Figure 4). Since it's not mentioned anywhere within the application, we assume it would be best to allow both TCP and UDP communication through these ports.

Why are the streams disrupted?

There can be a number of reasons for getting disrupted streams:

1. Not enough users sharing the stream.

2. Your network connection is not fast enough. We recommend using at least a 750kbps connection.

3. Other applications are consuming too much bandwidth. Most notably traditional P2P clients such as Emule, Kazza or Bittorent are very bandwidth demanding. Make sure those are not running when you try to watch video streams.

4. Your system is infected by a virus, spyware or malware. The later two are very common these days, and may significantly reduce your pc's performance. Keep your system clean by using anti virus and anti malware/spyware software regularly.

5. You are running Windows XP with service pack 2 which limits TCP/IP connections. You can free your OS from this limitation by installing this PATCH

While we can assure you that many people have used this patch successfully, if you choose to install it you do so at your own risk.

1. English Audio Commentary (Sports events only)
Watching foreign channels can sometimes be frustrating when you don’t understand the language. Some channels have English subtitles, which make things easier, but those are not available during sports events. But if you can find an audio commentary stream for the event you are watching, you can synchronize it to the video stream. What you have to do is pause the audio stream at the occurrence of a certain event (most convenient would be when a game starts), and start playing it again when you see it taking place on the video stream. All of that is being said assuming that the audio stream precedes the video stream, but that is usually the case as video streams demand longer buffering periods than audio streams.

Where do I find audio streams?
Sport events are usually broadcasted on national or local radio stations so try those.

Note that the BBC radio streams are intended for UK users only. You can get around that limitation by using proxies. Proxy servers allow users to connect to remote servers indirectly. The remote server will see the IP of the proxy server. So when you use a UK based proxy it will enable you to get the stream. You can find lists of free proxies by googling the term "free proxy".

2. Improving Visual Quality
The picture quality of most video streams is far from what we get on TV. PixelFusion is a plugin designed to enhance the picture quality of Windows Media Player streams. For further details please click HERE

3. Watching streams on a TV
Most people prefer watching Movies, TV shows, sports etc on a television set rather than on the PC screen. Almost all graphic adaptors are equipped with a TV-out feature that allows you to plug your pc to a TV or VCR. The TV-out socket comes either in the form of S-Video or RCA connections, or both.

Most TV sets come equipped with RCA and Scart input sockets. If the cable you got with your graphic adaptor does not match the kind your TV has you can use an adaptor. You can find these online or on the high street for pennies.

If you don't want all the hassle associated with cables, or if the TV set is too far from you computer (a cable longer than 10 meters may result in a reduced quality of the video signal) you might want to consider buying a wireless transmitter. Google "A/V sender" to find out more about these devices.

Ready To Go
Once you have downloaded the above software you will now be ready to go. This should allow you to watch the streams.

Please remember these streams and links do go offline from time to time, just like any other link on the internet. If you find one of the links isn’t working just come back and try it again later.

Please bear in mind that the streams may not always be online and may not work when matches are being played. Please do not contact us asking for sources of specific games or technical support on the streams as these emails will not be responded to.

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