As an experiment I decided to see if I could stream the game yesterday. A fan website I visit mentioned First Row. I had no knowledge of this site so I decided to check it out.
Originally, the only site I knew of that streamed games was Justin TV. So this was my first experience with First Row. Not the best experience, but not awful either. Picture quality varied, & there was some buffering, & finally straight out freezing that caused me to quit the site & go to my TV.
Here's the thing. This site, like Justin TV is illegally streaming NFL games. But at the same time the stream includes all network commercials. Heck ESPN 3 doesn't even show commercials. When there is an ad break, it shows trivia questions.
The question is of course, why doesn't Fox & CBS simply stream the games? It's not the NFL banning streaming because NBC streams the Sunday game & ESPN streams MNF. CBS also refuses to stream college games, while ESPN streams every game they broadcast, which is dozens of games over the course of a weekend.
Yes there is more money to be made by exclusivity, but again, why do NBC & ESPN stream the single NFL game they have, but the main networks don't? Is it simply too many games? I doubt that because that's not a problem for ESPN.
See, I will stick to watching over the air, because the illegal streams, well, they suck. ESPN & NBC when it was streaming the Olympics, had no buffering or freezing problems. I guess they invested in enough high quality servers to handle the load.
Since the networks stream every prime time show, I wonder if they just don't have an interest in having a sports section on their site. I would really like to know what the actual reason is. Mind you, SpeedTV doesn't stream F1 races either, nor do the local regional cable channels stream the local baseball teams games.
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