Where can I watch the Oscars online?

February 27, 2005 9:04 AM

I need to find an a site that streams/broadcasts the Oscars live.

I'm in the uk and for the first time since I can remember the BBC are not broadcasting the Academy Awards live. It seems Sky Movies have the exclusive rights to the live broadcast which casts doubt on my yearly ritual of staying up late and reporting in sick the next day.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? A site that can stream the Oscars to my computer. I'd even be willing to pay a sign up fee if that is the case.

posted by Po0py to media & arts (10 comments total)

http://www.academyawards.com/

It's right there on the frontpage!
posted by CKZ at 9:40 AM on February 27, 2005

Wow, I'm stupid, the live video is only the red carpet.
posted by CKZ at 9:41 AM on February 27, 2005

It seems a lot of websites, including ABC.com are streaming pre ceremony red carpet shows. But so far I've not found any that broadcast the actual show. :-|
posted by Po0py at 10:08 AM on February 27, 2005

I'm guessing there's big money in securing the broadcasting rights to the Oscars and insuring that the eyeballs are in front of the tube, and thus nowhere to see the event online (legally, anyway).
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 10:31 AM on February 27, 2005

what PST said. I can't imagine they would allow it (as of now--in 5-10 years it'll probably be pay-per-view streaming or something)
posted by amberglow at 11:31 AM on February 27, 2005

Can't offer any help but I share your pain. I'm in the UK as well and this will be the first year that I can't watch it.

Maybe it will be available on torrent tomorrow..
posted by gfrobe at 12:32 PM on February 27, 2005

This is a great shame and a new low for british terrestial television. Thanks for all you input anyways.

I'll grab the torrent tomorrow or at least wait for the edited terrestial version. It's not gonna be the same from watching it live. :\
posted by Po0py at 12:44 PM on February 27, 2005

It seems like there's gotta be a home-grown solution to this... basically hook up with someone in the US with a Win/TV-card. Have them either point a camera at their tv and video-conference that to you with Skype serving the audio, or somehow set up their video conference software to send Win/TV's video source across the net instead of their camera's output (I'm not sure how one would do it but it seems like it could work).

Actually, I think I just thought of a way to do this. Rather than a web cam, I used to use a regular DV-cam as a webcam. This worked with a particular piece of software I found that I can't remember the name of at the moment, but it was designed for security use. It looks like this program might work. Now, my DV-cam has a video-in port on it... so I imagine I could plug my tv signal into that, and the webcam software wouldn't know the difference...

I'm not sure about this, just kind of thinking out loud. Maybe someone else can riff off of these ideas... but it's probably more effort than you're willing to go through for not-great video quality.
posted by edlundart at 1:12 PM on February 27, 2005

I'm pretty sure the software I was referring to earlier is Trackercam.
posted by edlundart at 1:20 PM on February 27, 2005

I'm in the US, but no longer have a tv & was vaguely wondering if I'd be able to catch some of the action online, but it's probably just as well that the best I'll be able to do is watch the commentaries come out as elitist nerds respond on the internets... go elitist nerds.
posted by mdn at 3:56 PM on February 27, 2005