Last year we gave you a heads-up about the poor quality of NBA League Pass Broadband, the NBA's shady auto-renew system for its online video offering, and the league's non-existent customer service. Has the league finally gotten its act together for this season's edition? After several weeks of attempting to use the service, we can conclusively answer: nope. It's slightly improved To its credit, the NBA has attempted to respond to the criticisms in past years. For the first time, viewers can choose between home or away broadcast feeds, and national broadcasts are no longer blacked out in the archive. The national games in particular are a huge deal, because even if you can't watch them live, the national games have many of the best matchups, and being blacked out in perpetuity was just the dumbest thing. But it still sucks The biggest knock against LPBB is that, often, it simply doesn't work. In fact, LPBB has somehow managed to get worse at letting subscribers watch games live, in both availability and reliability. The web-based player's streams regularly freeze and require reloading. This happens particularly often when watching in picture-in-picture mode, but with regularity no matter what you're doing. The player itself continues to lack even basic functions MLB.tv and NHL GameCenter have had for years. Both of those services have the ability to navigate through a game to find particular plays; LPBB has a slider that will fling you off some random amount of time into the past or present—or more likely just freeze your feed and force you to reload. (It's even more infuriating when the skip-back-10-seconds button does this, and it does, constantly.) And don't get us started on why the entire navigation bar goes away when you bring up the Games interface. The permanent blackouts of your local market remain. This means that, despite paying for the NBA's service, you're still unable to watch your home team play live if you don't have cable or satellite—at which point, you would would likely not have League Pass Broadband. This remains insane, as LPBB is conceived in large part for fans who don't have cable but want to watch the NBA. Blacking out every game from the team (or teams, if you live in a market with more than one) most users want to see is idiotic. And even if you have cable, and just want an archive of your home team's games, you'll have to torrent them or buy a fleet of TiVos and record them yourself. Unlike MLB, the NHL, and MLS, the NBA separates broadband from mobile. This is a very special brand of stupid. It means, if you do not have cable, but want to be able to watch NBA games on both your computer and your phone, even on Wi-Fi, you've got to buy both packages separately… which add up to $5 less than buying the TV package that includes all three. All this, and somehow the NBA has the nerve to raise the price for LPBB. For the Premium full-season package you'll pay $200, up from $180 last year. Oh, and if you select the "Five Easy Installments" plan, it's $225, because fuck you. (The price for the five-team package is $140/$155.) Oh, and it just straight up doesn't work correctly (or at all) on a bunch of devices it's supposed to work with. Part of this is because, quietly, League Pass suggests you shouldn't use LPBB with wireless-only devices. (This probably implies inferior caching technology on their end, but that's another story.) For you, this means common devices like Apple TV and Roku (and, um, laptops that aren't plugged into Ethernet) will suffer many, many frozen streams. That is, if the streams work at all. Many users of the Roku set-top box who expected the product to "work" as it has in previous years found the following message upon attempting to log into the service this season: I own four Roku boxes, and all four are incompatible with the new version of NBA Game Time. (MLB, NHL, and MLS packages continue to be rock-solid on Roku.) Maybe that's for the best, as Roku forums are flooded with complaints about this season's edition, and attempting to watch live games last year mostly resulted in things like this: On the other hand, the NBA has added a PS3 app. It's fairly spartan and violates pretty much every UI guideline from Sony, but it works. Wait, no, it doesn't. Either broadcasts look like this: Or—somehow even more often than with other devices—it just won't load at all. I have yet to successfully watch an entire live game this season on the PS3. Apple TV users have been tweeting at us all season about issues on that platform, too, which isn't surprising given how many problems plagued that app in previous years. So don't buy it—unless you just have to The thing is, it doesn't have to be this way. In fact, there's a better solution already on the market for the NBA. International NBA League Pass Broadband is a separate product offered by a separate company, and most of the above has never applied to it. We'd suggest the NBA/Turner cut ties with their current system, and move everyone to the international brand. Or you could go the other way and just get the TV package. For a few pennies more, you can subscribe to the televised version of NBA League Pass and get the broadband and mobile versions along with it. Unless you're a cable-cutter, there's zero reason to buy NBA League Pass Broadband on its own; you're missing out on the mobile package, after all. If you are a cable cutter and want to watch the NBA, though? Well, you're screwed. You may as well just jump on a pirated stream, because while the quality will suck, it'll probably be more reliable than the LPBB feed. Whatever you do, you should let League Pass know you're not happy about it. A word from the people Just for the hell of it, here are some things people on Twitter are saying about NBA League Pass Broadband: To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @bubbaprog.
Related Posts
According to a recent report from Tuttosport, Inter Milan are currently leading the race to try and sign Brescia midfielder Sandro Tonali. It should come as no surprise whatsoever to learn that Inter are going after the signing of Tonali, considering they’ve noted their interest in the past – and also considering the fact that they’ve been interested in the majority of top European stars under the sun over the course of the last six months.
There’s quite clearly a mission objective in place for Antonio Conte and his men which starts with a surge for the Serie A title. Whether or not they’ll be able to knock Juventus off of their perch this season seems questionable, but even with that being the case, the immediate future for the club looks a whole lot brighter th…
David Villa believes Pep Guardiola can lead Manchester City to Champions League success after hailing the Spanish manager.
Former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss Guardiola lifted the trophy twice during his time at Camp Nou, most recently in 2011.
Guardiola failed to go all the way in three seasons with Bayern, however, and has fallen well short in his three full campaigns at the Etihad Stadium.
City were eliminated in the last-16 stage in 2017 and have failed to progress beyond the quarter-finals in the last two years, but Villa is convinced Guardiola can guide them to glory.
For all the coaches and all the big clubs, it s normal to focus on the Champions League, because it s the best tournament you can play with a club, he told The Mirror.
…
Best Odds: 4/7
Bookmaker:
Turning their attention back to EFL Cup duties on Tuesday night, Chelsea will travel to the Riverside when they meet Middlesbrough for their semi-final first leg.
Middlesbrough
Starting with the hosts, while Middlesbrough might have opened up the 2023/24 campaign with their sights set on punching another play-off ticket, Michael Carrick’s men do find themselves at the heart of an extended rut. Suffering FA Cup heartbreak over the weekend as they fell to a late 1-0 loss at the hands of Premier League high-flyers Aston Villa, the ex-Manchester United coach will be bracing himself for another stern examination here. Putting in a nightmare display on New Year’s Day as they opened 2024 with a 3-1 drumming at home against Coventry, Middl…
Bayern Munich interim coach Hansi Flick expects Jerome Boateng to remain at the club despite strong links with Arsenal.
Boateng, 31, has been at the club since joining from Manchester City in 2011 and was first-choice at the back for the first few years.
But fitness problems began to have an impact in 2015-16 and he is yet to play more than 20 Bundesliga matches in a single season since.
This term Boateng has featured in nine of a possible 17 league matches and, with Bayern looking more towards young players in most areas of the team and Arsenal in need of defensive reinforcements, the experienced centre-back has been linked with a departure.
Flick has doubts about him leaving, however.
— FC Bayern English (@FCBayernEN)
Jerom…
Best Odds: 7/10
Bookmaker:
Two free-scoring sides who are looking to book their spot in the final of this year s extended Europa League, Inter Milan and Shakhtar Donetsk will meet at the Merkur Spiel-Arena on Monday night.
Inter Milan
Starting with Inter Milan, while Antonio Conte s men might have been left heartbroken to have missed out on lifting their first Serie A title since 2010 by a one-point gap this summer, I Nerazzurri have enjoyed a stunning end to the year. With the mood in their camp at a real high and coming past Bayer Leverkusen thanks to a 2-1 win in a one-off quarter-final last time out, the former Chelsea boss finds his side in the midst of a five-match winning run across all competitions and with a growing reputation for their displays in the…
Best Odds: 3/5
Bookmaker:
Desperate to claim a Premier League boost on Thursday night, Manchester United will travel to Molineux when they meet Wolves.
Wolves
Starting with the hosts, while Wolves might have opened up the 2023/24 campaign tipped as a potential relegation contender, Gary O’Neil’s side have continued on a remarkable domestic flurry this season. Extending on their FA Cup adventure last weekend following a fiery 2-0 victory away at bitter local rivals West Brom, the former Bournemouth boss should find the mood in his camp at a red-hot high. Signing off 2023 with a statement on home soil as they secured a 3-0 romp against Everton, Wolves have lost just one of their previous 10 appearances across all competitions. Skyrocketing their way up the Pr…
Former England international Jack Rodwell has joined A-League side Western Sydney Wanderers for the 2021-22 season.
The 30-year-old ex-Everton and Manchester City midfielder had been without a club since being released by Sheffield United in June.
Rodwell, who only made two appearances in his 18 months with the Blades, spent a fortnight training with Wanderers and on Thursday signed a one-season deal.
This move is really exciting for me, I ve been looking at the opportunity to play in Australia for a couple of months and with my wife being from Western Sydney, the Wanderers was the perfect destination, said Rodwell.
Australia is like a second home to me, it s my favourite country on Earth, it s where my wife and her family are from; we love the pla…
Manchester United are extremely reluctant to consider their immediate future without Paul Pogba. Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer recently tried to play the speculations around the midfielder down by saying that Pogba would be a part of that future, but according to , the 20-time English champions will be forced to enter negotiations about a potential sale.
The Spanish outlet claim that the 2018 World Cup winner has already made his mind up and wants to leave Old Trafford for Real Madrid this summer. He has apparently already instructed his agent Mino Raiola to find a way for the move to happen and wants to be a Real player by July 1st. Pogba did recently say that playing for Real Madrid would be a dream for any player.
United, on the other hand, will have learned a lesson…
Arne Slot hit back at critics following his first defeat as Liverpool head coach but is relishing his first Champions League game in charge of the Reds against Milan.
After starting his Liverpool tenure with three wins from three, Slot s side were beaten 1-0 by Nottingham Forest last weekend upon their return from the international break.
It marked the Dutchman s first loss since replacing Jurgen Klopp, with Forest securing their first triumph at Anfield since 1969.
Slot named an unchanged team for the fourth consecutive game since taking over at Liverpool against Forest, with many questioning his decision to do so.
But speaking ahead of their encounter at the San Siro on Tuesday, Slot doubled down on his selection policy during his early tenure…
Nottingham Forest will leave 97 seats empty when they face Liverpool in the FA Cup on Sunday in tribute to the fans who died as a result of the Hillsborough disaster.
It was Forest who were Liverpool s opponents in the FA Cup semi-final at the home of Sheffield Wednesday in April 1989.
Those who lost their lives after a crush on the over-crowded Leppings Lane terrace were supporting Liverpool that day.
It remains a tragedy that touches both clubs, and the victims will be remembered when the sides meet for the first time in 23 years.
Two-time European Cup winners Forest have been outside the top flight of English football since 1999, meaning the once great rivalry that existed between them and Liverpool has gone cold, but the chance to reach a cup semi-…