Will Roku or Chromecast allow me to watch the Olympics this summer?

April 21, 2016 3:28 PM

I have no cable. I do have a rooftop antenna that gets me about 5 PBS channels only. I don't understand how Roku or Chromecast work--I'm really dumb in this area. I have a TV with an HDMI port. I really want to watch the Olympics this summer. Will either device allow me to watch Prime Time Olympics for free or even at a cost?
posted by luvmywife to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

Are there truly no NBC affiliates in your area? Are you sure your antenna isn't simply out of alignment? TV Fool will show you what a given antenna setup should give you.
posted by Seeking Direction at 3:57 PM on April 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Probably not. Most Roku channels (including NBC Sports Extra, which is what televises the Olympics) require a cable subscription to access content. The way around this is to "share" a login. For example, we use my mom's U-Verse for cable channels, and my mother-in-law's Amazon Video. If you don't have access to one, you might still be able to watch highlights, but no full or live events.
posted by kevinbelt at 3:59 PM on April 21, 2016

An antenna might give you access to your local NBC affiliate, but the Olympics will be broadcast across the entire NBC family (NBC Sports, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, etc.), so you'll only get a small fraction of the events.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:03 PM on April 21, 2016

CBC will apparently have more than 2000 hours of live Olympic programming online this summer (link). A VPN or service like unblock-us would probably make those accessible to you by making you appear to be coming from Canada. Do you have a android or iOS phone? You could probably just cast the feed to your Chromecast. (I'm canadian, so i'm familiar with the CBC. Maybe NBC is similar, but I dunno.)
posted by cgg at 4:40 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

TunnelBear is a pretty good VPN, and is very easy to use- turn it on, set the tunnel to the UK, open the BBC iPlayer in your browser, and lie when it asks you whether you pay for a TV license. I expect this will work for the CBC too.

This is easy to do on a computer, but still pretty fiddly to do on a TV. If you have a laptop with an HDMI port, you can connect it to your TV with a cheap HDMI cable.
posted by BungaDunga at 5:29 PM on April 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Chromecast won't work when you're using a VPN to get around geofencing. If you're going the VPN route then using your computer's video-out is pretty much the only way to get that video on your TV.
posted by clorox at 7:05 PM on April 21, 2016

(Aside regarding Olympic coverage: If you have the option to watch literally any coverage other than NBC's, I strongly urge you to do so.)
posted by clorox at 7:07 PM on April 21, 2016

Chromecast won't work when you're using a VPN to get around geofencing. If you're going the VPN route then using your computer's video-out is pretty much the only way to get that video on your TV.

There is one way: you can get an Android box that plugs into your TV. It's like a Roku, but it runs ordinary Android. They're pretty fiddly to use- you need a Bluetooth keyboard+trackpad. You can use an Android VPN and Chrome (or an Android app) to stream region-blocked content to the device, which displays through your TV.

But if you have a laptop that you can just plug in, do that first.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:12 PM on April 21, 2016

If you know someone willing to "share" their cable, you can plug in a slingbox at their home and stream all of their channels it over the internet to a Roku or even just a web browser. It's not the cheapest option but it'd give you access to all the other channels (olympics and otherwise) too, in perpetuity.
posted by R a c h e l at 3:45 AM on April 22, 2016

Last Olympics my kids wanted to watch all the equestrian and fencing, two sports that get very little coverage in the US. So I VPNed into England and they watched on their PCs via BBC - and it was fabulous. Much better coverage than we get in the US. I may do it again this year just for the higher quality coverage. BBC actually shows the sports, and not 18 hours a day of filler.
posted by COD at 7:45 AM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]