NBA League Pass Advice

MellowRose · Post #1 » by **MellowRose** » Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:31 pm

I'm thinking about getting NBA league pass this season. Has anyone tried doing any of that VPN stuff to avoid blackouts?

Was initially gonna go with ballstream, but looks like they'll be down for a while since they can't find anyone to help them with credit card transactions. Any opinions on the recent League Pass, primarily for PC and apps?

Big A All Day · Post #2 » by **Big A All Day** » Tue Oct 27, 2015 8:58 pm

Also, can you start the games on LP without them showing the score? I had LP about 4 years ago and hatred that. Thinking of re-upping myself

NEM · Post #3 » by **NEM** » Tue Oct 27, 2015 9:50 pm

League pass is a waste of money, especially with so many games being on tnt, NBA tv, ESPN, and abc.

Ballstreams is cheaper ($40/3 months and you can freeze your account). You can watch it on your computer or stream to your tv and its HD. It'll be back up and running soon enough.

MrOrlando · Post #4 » by **MrOrlando** » Tue Oct 27, 2015 11:29 pm

MellowRose wrote:I'm thinking about getting NBA league pass this season. Has anyone tried doing any of that VPN stuff to avoid blackouts?

Was initially gonna go with ballstream, but looks like they'll be down for a while since they can't find anyone to help them with credit card transactions. Any opinions on the recent League Pass, primarily for PC and apps?

LP is free this week, give it a shot and see how you like it. You might want to make sure your bandwidth can handle their streaming, and see if their streaming holds up at all. Try it on WiFi and at home.

Post #5 » by **Bensational** » Tue Oct 27, 2015 11:46 pm

NEM wrote:League pass is a waste of money, especially with so many games being on tnt, NBA tv, ESPN, and abc.

Ballstreams is cheaper ($40/3 months and you can freeze your account). You can watch it on your computer or stream to your tv and its HD. It'll be back up and running soon enough.

Is that a legit site (as in, legally legit)? I've never heard of it before.

League Pass is ridiculously priced in Australia. $390AUD (which is $290USD with the current exchange rate). I'd imagine they price themselves out of a lot of business in Australia, especially since we're the world's worst nation when it comes to piracy, torrents and the like.

tooler · Post #6 » by **tooler** » Tue Oct 27, 2015 11:57 pm

Nah Ballstreams is grey market / black market. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

ezzzp · Post #7 » by **ezzzp** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 12:09 am

Does Ballstreams work reliably?

Post #8 » by **eyriq** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 12:15 am

Ballstreams isn't down. Maybe they aren't accepting new users?

Orlwillbeback · Post #9 » by **Orlwillbeback** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 12:26 am

eyriq wrote:Ballstreams isn't down. Maybe they aren't accepting new users?

Thats what it told me.

MagicFan101 · Post #10 » by **MagicFan101** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 12:42 am

If I still lived in Orlando I doubt I would use it, but I have enjoyed League Pass each of the past 5 seasons as a rebuilding Orlando team doesn't see much TV love in Texas.

I'm not sure how getting an entire season for basically the cost of attending a single game (with half decent seats) is wasting money. I'm sure there are plenty of cheap (or even free) alternatives out there, but if the difference between playing within the law and not for a year is only $200 I'm happy to pay.

Big A All Day · Post #11 » by **Big A All Day** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 3:42 am

I'd like to go with ball streams but it seems as if my account that was created a few months ago no longer exists? Guess I'll just try the LP free trial and see of BS gets it together within that time if not LP will be the only option as the games start while I'm still at work

MellowRose · Post #12 » by **MellowRose** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 12:36 pm

Big A All Day wrote:I'd like to go with ball streams but it seems as if my account that was created a few months ago no longer exists? Guess I'll just try the LP free trial and see of BS gets it together within that time if not LP will be the only option as the games start while I'm still at work

yea, i could've sworn I made an account with BS a while back, but no signs of it ever existing, according to them. (Never bought anything with the account, so maybe that's why?)

kreativethien · Post #13 » by **kreativethien** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 1:22 pm

Here is my opinion as a new league pass user and previous Ballstream user.

I love Ballstream setup, it's wayyyyy cheaper, you get features that NBA league pass doesn't offer. The way I would watch Ballstream would be, wait till the game was half way over, then start the game at the beginning so I can fast forward through the commericals. League pass doesn't have this option (I think). BUT the huge downside for me was the buffering/streaming issues. At first I thought it might be because my HTPC wasn't fast enough, so I used that excuse as a reason to build a new one. Same freaking issue, the streams were choppy for me. I did everything their tutorials suggested for helping the site run but still no luck. Currently they are having billing issues, these issues have been going for atleast 2 or 3 weeks now. I really didn't want to miss any games and got tired of waiting so I looked into league pass.

WTF NBA, how the hell can you have a product for true basketball fans when I as an Orlando Magic fan living in Orlando can't watch the damn games. Obviously I knew I had to go with the VPN route, decided to give this a shot, after I had everything setup I found my Plex server would not work remotely. I tried everything and just couldn't figure it out. Then I found this article from Unotelly about league pass, it's not a true VPN, does some DNS stuff, decided to give it a try. This thing works perfectly, also it tells you how to get league pass at the lowest international rate.

http://help.unotelly.com/support/solutions/articles/31901-how-to-watch-nba-league-pass-without-blackouts

kreativethien · Post #14 » by **kreativethien** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 1:25 pm

BTW, any league pass users know how long it takes before they archive a game. I typically don't watch a game live and rather watch it around 10 or 11.

Flannerz · Post #15 » by **Flannerz** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 1:28 pm

I've got league pass due to being in the UK. I didn't watch it much last year as I didn't want to watch game highlights when we'd lost! Annoyingly there's no PS3 app so I need to get an adapter to connect my ipad to my tv which is £40!

rcklsscognition · Post #16 » by **rcklsscognition** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 1:49 pm

I finally bit the bullet on the Orlando Magic pass on League Pass. Only Magic games. Many are blacked out here in Orlando but I got a VPN and tested during a blacked out preseason game and it worked great. I'm using Private Internet Access as the VPN. Speeds are great. I set up a VPN wifi signal for my house broadcast from my computer that gives every device in the house access to the internet via the VPN so I can watch LP on my FireTV, PS4, etc without having to do any VPN or proxy stuff on the device themselves.

Having the ability to pause and replay the games at a later date is a big plus for me. I don't have cable so I have no game access other than first row which is getting old for me.

darthcheech2000 · Post #17 » by **darthcheech2000** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 1:59 pm

Went with LP this year only because the NBA Gametime app now supports chromecast. The one team option of $120 makes it better than Ballstream when you consider the app performed near 100% last season. Any TNT or ESPN broadcasts can stream via chromecast as well, provided that you have credentials, your own or a friendly relative wink wink... All you have to worry about are local blackouts.

And I seriously considered BS.

darthcheech2000 · Post #18 » by **darthcheech2000** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 2:29 pm

kreativethien wrote:BTW, any league pass users know how long it takes before they archive a game. I typically don't watch a game live and rather watch it around 10 or 11.

Pretty sure most of our westcoast games were archived the next morning by 5-6am EST when I took my bus to work, I'm sure they were up way before that but atleast you know its not more then a few hours. Just my experince, hope it helps.

Post #19 » by **ChosenSavior** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 3:02 pm

NEM wrote:League pass is a waste of money, especially with so many games being on tnt, NBA tv, ESPN, and abc.

Ballstreams is cheaper ($40/3 months and you can freeze your account). You can watch it on your computer or stream to your tv and its HD. It'll be back up and running soon enough.

This. Ballstreams works perfect for me whether I'm streaming directly from my PC or on my Roku or doing both at the same time. They had a special on the yearly subscription so I took advantage of that and with the ability to freeze your account, I basically will be able to watch next year without paying again.

kreativethien · Post #20 » by **kreativethien** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 3:08 pm

ChosenSavior wrote:
NEM wrote:League pass is a waste of money, especially with so many games being on tnt, NBA tv, ESPN, and abc.

Ballstreams is cheaper ($40/3 months and you can freeze your account). You can watch it on your computer or stream to your tv and its HD. It'll be back up and running soon enough.

This. Ballstreams works perfect for me whether I'm streaming directly from my PC or on my Roku or doing both at the same time. They had a special on the yearly subscription so I took advantage of that and with the ability to freeze your account, I basically will be able to watch next year without paying again.

I've tried Ballstreams on multiple computers and also different networks and still have laggy/choppy streams :banghead:

So far I'm happy with international league pass, it's a shame Magic fans in Orlando have to jump through some many hoops to get legal streams.

BTW, has the subscription issue on Ballstream been fixed yet? That is what made me jump ship.