Watch London Olympics 2012 with Sopcast

Excited about upcoming olympic games on London? Don't have Comcast or U-Verse subscription to watch through NBC? Don't despair! There is a guy in China who can watch it all on his TV, well maybe even more than one guy. And what he does is he is streaming it to the web for all to see.

This is what's behind the technology called SOPCast. It is like bittorrent only for life streams. You can read on how to install it at sopcast.com. Once you install the program click search to find the right TV station. It looks like CCTV-1, CCTV-2 and Shanghai Sports to be offering live Olympics coverage.

How To Download Video Streams to Watch Later

There is a very good post on Lifehacker on how to download the stream to watch later. They talk about Youtube, Hulu and even Netflix. One solution they recommend specifically for Hulu is to use RTMPDumpHelper and RTMP Dump Toolkit.

All you need to do is download two zip files: http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/download/rtmpdump-20110925-git-6230845-win32.zip and http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/rtmpdumphelper.zip then unzip to the same folder somewhere on your computer (Windows only). After that you just run the Run the RTMPDumpHelper.exe and go to the page you want to stream. It will save the file to the folder on you disk, that's it!

Finding a Legal Movie to Stream Online

If you know a title that you are dying to watch but are too tired to scout the web for the right place to stream it, try http://www.gowatchit.com/ It's a free service that tells you if the movie is available on Hulu, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, iTunes. It also covers subscription services like Netflix and DVD rentals like RedBox. Even better, if you register a free account, it will notify you when the movie becomes available.

Accessing What is Left of TV Shows After Recent Events

Recent raids have closed down many file exchange websites, most notably megaupload.com Icefilms.info is still going as a strong choice for movies and tv shows and they seem to rely on rapidshare now as their primary storage. There is also letmewatchthis.name and watchfreemovies.ch. Of course if you are less pirate-bound there are now more than ever legal opportunities. Amazon offers a lot of movies for $3.99 a pop and some of them are free with their Prime membership. There is still Netflix, Hulu (free with commercials) and the networks/shows websites, like www.thedailyshow.com