From the Home Office in Durham, USA
The problem:
As many of you know, I’m not exactly a huge fan of some of the larger TV networks (both in the US and abroad) who block access to TV coverage of the sports that we all love. In the United States, NBC/Universal Sports handles the broadcasting rights and have opted to block the online stream through the FIBT’s YouTube channel, choosing instead to stream the races through their own website. You can only view the races there if you have a package on your cable/dish subscription that has Universal Sports, leaving the majority of people without to watch the races live.
As I’ve stated on Twitter and Facebook, this kind of blocking makes it very clear where NBC/Universal Sports is concerned: Money. Not about growing the Olympic sports they care about for the 3 months leading up to the Olympics and then promptly forget about for another 3 1/2 years, not about the athletes, but just about making sure that they protect something that nobody else is trying to get. I fully understand that they have an investment in the Olympic coverage, and I fully understand that they want to protect that investment, but how limiting who can watch these sports (that they will show live on TV maybe once or twice all year) instead of opening up their website to all changes how their investment is protected is beyond me. If I could watch all the races through Universal’s website, I would. But I’m not about to buy into more subscriptions of TV channels I don’t want because Universal Sports says I have to and won’t open things up to those who don’t pay for their TV station. I’d rather spend my money elsewhere, which is what I’ve done.
A solution:
To get around the regional content block that Universal has through the YouTube channel of FIBT, you’ll need a VPN provider that has servers in other countries. I’ve chosen to use PureVPN. Once you have paid for ($9.99/month) the program, you’ll get an email within a half hour with installation instructions, a username and password. Once you install the program (it’s pretty straight-forward), you can put in your username/password, pick a location you want to pipe through (any US/CAN/GER/RUS location will not work, the NED and IRE servers have worked well) and connect. Once connected, YouTube and any other program will think you’re connecting from that country and not the US, and should allow you to stream the content. If you want to test your connection speeds, you can use Speedtest.net to test. Then go over to the FIBT’s YouTube page here and check out the races: http://www.youtube.com/user/bobskeletv
If you have any questions about picking a VPN program or anything, feel free to email me using the contact form on the website or message me on Twitter (@TheKenChilds).
