Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 1:30 PM PT

 

Where to Watch March Madness

Your bracket’s done and you’ve handed in your requisite $10 to the guy running the office pool. Now it’s time to set your online presence to “busy,” fire up the browser and kill the rest of your day watching the March Madness NCAA basketball tourney (while your IT crew prays the network stays up). CBSsports.com and Joost are both streaming the whole shebang for free.

The CBS Player works pretty well, although it makes you stand in a virtual line (and reminds you how much closer you’d be to the action had you signed up for VIP access). The line moves quickly though, and once you’re in, you can hop from game to game. The video quality isn’t the best, and it stutters, but hey, it’s free, and I’m supposed to be working anyway.

cbs_march_madness.jpg

Speaking of not working — there’s also Joost.

Joost wasn’t working when I tried it, which I did multiple times. Joost’s VP of engineering already warned us that the company expects it to break (mission accomplished!). If you have it installed, you can check, but if you don’t, I’d suggest sticking with CBS.

joost_march_madness2.jpg

If neither of these options float your boat, then build your own. The NCAA launched a Developer Platform, offering different logos and code you can place on your page to link directly to the player window or even to a specific game. Or, create your own “Shining Moment” once the highlights are up, with the CBSSports mashup tool.

 

Sphere
Topic: Networks, Online Video
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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. The Loss of Service ( LoS ) is a known problem on Joosts end , Joost’s operationss people told me today and they are working around the clock to fix it .

    I have 2 PCs running Joost Live and early on the stream was great but later in the day I suppose as more viewers got online the service started to fail .

    I’ll update tomorow if it gets better or not.

    Matt_ on March 20th, 2008 at 5:47 pm - Permalink

  2. Hi Matt,

    Definitely let us know how it goes.

    Chris Albrecht on March 20th, 2008 at 7:55 pm - Permalink

  3. I was hoping to catch i t on Joost too, but when I logged in, I couldn’t even find the March Madness link. I guess its better to have too many visitors than not enough.

    Davis Freeberg on March 20th, 2008 at 8:06 pm - Permalink

  4. There’s also the Slingbox… No fighting for access (well maybe with your spouse) and you’re not limited to a PC - stream to a phone as well. Which is what I’ll be doing today while “supervising” the movers.

    So far, I’m semi-respectable12-4 in the brackets but my crazy picks including a Notre Dame v Miami championship game are yet to come (hey, my sports roots are 80s college football ).

    -DZ, Sling Media

    Dave Zatz on March 21st, 2008 at 2:35 am - Permalink

  5. @ Davis you might need the latest version of Joost , make sure you upgrade especially if your on a Mac .

    Matt_ on March 21st, 2008 at 3:41 am - Permalink

  6. Joost live is better today so give it another try …maybe by the finals they might have everything working :)

    Matt_ on March 21st, 2008 at 11:20 am - Permalink

  7. The quick and easy way to find March Madness live is, of course, through http://rsslivetv.com (some more shameless self-promotion).

    I tried to sign up for the VIP Club many times and it kept saying something like “unable at this time.”

    Why am I not surprised that Joost is having problems? My 3 year old PC can’t handle it. Perhaps the RSSLiveTV model will prevail - simply a guide that points to all of the many and various media in the many and various players and formats.

    rsslivetv on March 21st, 2008 at 11:29 am - Permalink

  8. More ways for me to totally ignore basketball.

    Give ‘em both 100 points and play for 1 minute.

    Brian Andrews on March 21st, 2008 at 10:26 pm - Permalink

  9. [...] Maybe the MLB needs to hire the crew that built CBS’s March Madness player. [...]

    MLB.TV Whiffs the Start of Baseball Season « NewTeeVee on April 3rd, 2008 at 12:49 pm - Permalink

  10. [...] proberen ze meer videocontent partners te strikken. Ze streamen momenteel de NCAA basketbal wedstrijden maar moeten meer interessante videocontent zien te krijgen. Anders [...]

    Problemen bij Joost: kan zinkend schip Joost nog wel worden gered? | zoomz - Alles over internetvideo on April 7th, 2008 at 5:01 am - Permalink

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