Free, live football sites

[sligoman]

Anyone recommend any good, free football sites where I can see live streaming games from around the world?

EDIT: Preferably with commentary in English but any language will do I suppose:o :D

[Metrostars]

MLS: http://www.mlsnet.com/MLS/sights/

[thecorner]

posted this before
--------------------
Introduction

With the crazy technology these days, it is now possible to watch live football matches on your computer. No longer do you need sky, here you can see all the sky matches, and more!

In this document I will explain in detail exactly how to watch live football on your computer.

Firstly, you must have a broadband internet connection. If you don’t, feel free to try but it almost certainly won’t work.

There are two methods for watching football on your computer, firstly watching a stream and secondly using coolstreaming (more explained later). I shall explain in detail exactly what you need and how you can do this.

Internet Streams

Generally these can be found on the internet fairly easily.

You will need various things:
1. A broadband connection. 512k will be fine, but obviously the faster the better. To see what kind of speeds you're getting from your ISP then check your Internet Connection Speeds from this link – http://www.adslguide.org.uk/tools/speedtest.asp
2. Various media players.
Most streams require winamp. This can be downloaded from here http://www.winamp.com.
Other media players which would be very useful include Windows Media player (WMP) (download here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download) and Real Player (download here: http://uk.real.com/player/?&sr...uk.rp.rp.hd.def).

Internet streams are easily identifiable by there address name.

If the stream ends in .asx, the stream is a winamp stream. The address must be copied, winamp opened, file and open URL pressed, and the address must be entered in there. The stream should play. Winamp streams are by far the best! (eg http://people.freenet.de/yoshi7/streams/sxtv1.asx)

If the stream begins with mms., the stream is a WMP stream. The address must be copied, WMP opened, file and open URL pressed, and the address must be entered in there. The stream should play. (eg mms://61.139.33.106/espn-1my181999)

If the stream ends with .ram, or begins with RTSP. the stream is a Real Player stream. The address must be copied, Real Player opened, file and open URL pressed, and the address must be entered in there. The stream should play. (eg http://www.rts.co.yu/rts2live.ram)

The stream should now buffer. This will be in percent and will go from 0-100%. This is just the stream loading and buffering is quite a good thing.

If the stream doesn’t buffer, something is wrong. Either you have entered the wrong address, the server doesn’t exist or the server is full. This depends entirely on the message which is displayed.

What happens if your stream constantly buffers making the stream un watchable!
Buffering is generally caused by the load of users connected to that stream, in which the more users the not so good streaming will occur whereas the fewer users connected to the stream the less buffering you will get. This should not happen though if you're on a High Internet Connection such as 1 Meg + as this is a very high connection and anything from this and above you should be receiving really good quality of streams.
There are various things you can do to try and reduce buffering.
Winamp
Open winamp then options/preferences/input, then click on nsv decoder then configure. You can then adjust your buffer from there. Again, remember not all computers are alike, some put all 3 to 60,000, others don't go that high, adjust to what suits you.
Windows Media Player
Go to Tools, Options, Performance (Tab)
Connection Speed
Choose your connection speed: (This will be a connection below your current connection)
DSL/Cable (768kbps)
Network Buffering
Buffer 40 seconds of content
Many people have had different success with the different settings on this in which ideally you can play around with it to see what suits your connection best in which I would recommend something of around 40 as this is what I personally have and everything seems to go smoothly for me although I do get slight buffering at times.
After applying the above settings on the Performance Tab in Windows Media Player go to the Network Tab and make sure you have the below settings applied:
Multicast - Ticked
UDP - Ticked
TCP - Ticked
HTTP - Ticked
Use Ports - Ticked, 7000-7007 to receive data.
With these settings hopefully you can kick back open a Beer and watch the streaming of whatever you want to watch.
Real Player
Go to Tools, Preferences then Connection.
Do much the same as above!
But how do I actually find a stream
Quite often, a stream will be posted in Les’s match updates thread on a match day. But if it doesn’t work or you can’t find one, there are various options.
1. Free sites. There are loads of free stream sites on the web, one of which is run by BBSer CPFC Town http://www.livefootballfree.com/ This is a very good site!!. Unfortunately, the streams from free sites tend to be quite random, poor quality and unpredictable and they often don’t work. But you get what you pay for! These often operate mostly be stealing streams from pay sites. CPFC Town assures me that his site doesn't do this. I very much apologise for tarring him with the same brush as many of the others.
2. Pay sites. Sites such as www.freelivefootball.co.uk offer dependable, high quality streams. This costs just £2.99 for a whole 12.5 months to be a member of and the service is great.
Within the next few months, pay sites will be able to protect their streams. This will prevent stealing, and will give their members higher quality streams and make the free sites redundant.
The commentary is in Chinese, what should I do.
There is nothing that can be done about this unfortunately although the internet radio can be used.
Go to the BBC website and press “Live commentary”.
Open this up in Real Player.
The stream is likely to be about 3 minutes behind. This can easily be synched.
Using a stopwatch, time the lag between the radio and the stream. For example, when Alan Green says “ Ashley Cole clears for a Palace corner”, start the watch. When you see Ashley Cole clear for a Palace corner, stop the watch and note down the time.
In Real Player you can pause the commentary. Pause the radio commentary for the required length of time!
I recommend that you connect to the stream ideally 30 Minutes + before the game actually kicks off oh and don't forget if you have a firewall it may be a good idea to disable it as the firewall may be preventing your stream to work.
You might want to install DIVX Codec's, as they are very useful, you can download them from: http://www.divx.com/divx/download
Only install the Codecs not the actual DIVX Player if your wishing to continue using Windows Media Player, as this is what I've done and its pointless having the DIVX Player unless you want it. Basically the codecs allows the playing of certain files.

Coolstreaming

Coolstreaming is a program which you install on your computer. This program allows you to watch sports channels from around the world.

It works in a similar way to bit-torrent. The more people watching, the better the streams.

The image on here is usually very good quality but the video must be left for about 5-15 minutes to allow the stream to settle.

How to set up

Download coolstreaming from here http://coolstreaming.org/download.htm

Download VLC player from here http://download.videolan.org/pub/vi...0.8.1-win32.exe

VLC is another media player (similar to WMP) but it works really well with coolstreaming.

Install them both

Open coolstreaming

In cool streaming change the preferences (2nd icon from right shown as a hand with a piece of paper) so that the application to open asf files reads C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe

You will have a list of channels, scroll down and double click on ESPN and wait for it to open up in vlc player

Wait for 10 to 15 mins for the stream to sort itself out

You need a connection higher than the stream quality/bit rate. For example for the espn link to work (280k) u need a higher internet connection than that. Test sports (330k) will need a 1mb broadband or higher to work.

ENGLISH COMMENTRY NOW AVAILABLE ON ESPN
Double click on the speaker icon in your system tray, move all the way to the right and hey presto

FAQ

1. What is Coolstreaming?
CoolStreaming is a application layer streaming media transportation software. It lets viewers exchange buffer with each other. If you have experience with BitTorrent, you'll easily understand the advantage in dong this.

2. How to use it?
download the CoolStreaming, install coolstreaming, wait for a couple of minutes for channel list to appear. double click a channel to select that channel, wait for coolstreaming to buffer data. Wait for another couple of minutes. Media player or Realplayer will automaticly popup and play the channel.

[thecorner]

3. Why it's not working?
If you can not display channel list, check if there is firewall in use.(If your firewall only allow common port, CoolStreaming need to connect to non-common port.) If there is message say your time is wrong, check your time and timezone setup.
If have to use proxy for all your network operation, you might not be able use CoolStreaming now. No proxy support for now.
If there is message for popup player but no player was poped up, you can manually start Windows Media Player or Real Player. Open the link in the message box. (http://localhost...) If correctly setup windows media player but no player popup, check if there is a media player process running, kill wmplayer.exe, click play button on CoolStreaming again.
If windows media player poped up but say link error, check if IE had proxy setup, disable proxy on IE.
If windows media player poped up but say link error, check if you can reach localhost, if not, you can try http://127.0.0.1...
If correctly poped up windows media player/Rea Player, but can not play the program, please check if your player is the latest version. We need Windoes Media Player 9.0 and Real Player 10.0(Both software are freely
available.)

4. Why program quality is bad?
There are several reasons
(1) In the begining, usually CoolStreaming is looking for better source stream suppliers, wait for 5-10 Minutes, it would be better.
(2) If the quality is still not good after 10 minutes, please check status say "buffering xx%", it this number is low, that indicats your network condition is bad. Your network connection can not afford this high rate program, but you can still choose low bit rate program(e.g. radio).
(3) If it says "buffering > 80%" and the quality is still bad, it could be the source is bad.
(4) Quality column shows the average quality of all users. For example if the Quality is 95%, it means average can get 95% data. So you can determin quality from this number.(If the source quality is bad, users won't get a high quality number.)

5. Can I add more channels?
If you want to add channel, you need to install CoolStreaming Server.
But not all users have the ablity to install channel server. If you have good network connection(For
example, you are the network admin or you are providing streaming media service), then you propably can install CoolStreaming Server. See, http://www.coolstreaming.org/server.txt for more details about Server installation.

6. Why some channels could disapear?
Usually, the reason is coolStreaming Server is down or the source of the Channel had problem. The servers are not dedicated to CoolStreaming, and the streaming source could be contaminated. If you can provide stable source or server, please contact me. Your help would be highly appreciated by all the viewers.

7. How to watch CoolStreaming in a strict controled Intranet?
If there is strict firewall to restrict network ports, it is difficult for CoolStreaming to work. No good
solution yet. Hope to solve this problem in the near future.

8. How to help CoolStreaming?
You can (1) Provide stable streaming source, setup CoolStreaming Server.
(2) provide information about available stable link of streaming
source(better with relativly
low bitrate, more use can view it)
(3) tell more people about CoolStreaming

9. Will CoolStreaming hurt harddisk?
No. Some BitTorrent software will read and write harddisk frequently, some user worried that
CollStreaming have this problem. Actually CoolStreaming use main memory to buffer and exchange data with very few harddisk operation. Some user find reduced free harddisk space is because some media player(Real Player, etc.) will store temperary files on harddisk. Those temp file will be cleaned when the player closes.

10. Why there is delay on CoolStreaming?
There is about 1 minute local buffer. The total delay would be about 2 minutes. If you have a >5 minutes delay, you can restart media player/real player.

11. Which port is used by CoolStreaming? How to set firewall?
CoolStreaming use port larger than 1024. So the best way is to open all the ports >1024. Users inside a firewall may exerience worse quality than those who outside of firewall. Please set firewall to allow
connection to larger than 1024 ports.

12. I still have question, how to ask,
send email to cool@coolstreaming.org

[EnDai]

ENGLISH COMMENTRY NOW AVAILABLE ON ESPN
Double click on the speaker icon in your system tray, move all the way to the right and hey presto

Actually, to save people who don't know what they're doing some hassle...

In VLC player; Settings (I think) > Audio > Track 1.
The English commentary comes out of both speakers then aswell.

[thecorner]

also there is a new alternative to coolstreaming..its called pplive with a lot more stations

[thecorner]

Actually, to save people who don't know what they're doing some hassle...

In VLC player; Settings (I think) > Audio > Track 1.
The English commentary comes out of both speakers then aswell.


no its just audio and track 1..no need to go near settings

[EnDai]

Sorry, in work and trying to remember the names of what you have to press :)

PPLive is very good. Very high quality streams, and is ready to watch after about 30 seconds. :D

[Green Tribe]

thanks! :D

[Aberdonian Stu]

I watched the Metro Stars losing 3-0 to DC United. I was impressed by the way they compiled the highlights package.

It would be great if the el could offer an online facility like that. Especially with broadband meaning you aren't paying more to waste time watching football :)

[Metrostars]

I watched the Metro Stars losing 3-0 to DC United. I was impressed by the way they compiled the highlights package.

It would be great if the el could offer an online facility like that. Especially with broadband meaning you aren't paying more to waste time watching football :)

You picked a bad game to watch :p from a Metrostars fan point of view of course.

[eirebhoy]

Does PPlive work with an upload of 128kb?

[Galwayexile]

pplive is great apart from the chinese commentry, any way to change this or am i stuck with it,
i tried five live but the commentry is 1 minute ahead of the match in pplive
im not complaining though as the quality is the best i have seen yet