Cycling on USA TVs, desktops, laptops, and handheld devices

[Carols]

Re: Re:

I was on the"Dish" website, that you have. They have a product called "Dish Anywhere". It is where you get the programs over the internet rather than a satellite dish. They say it is free, but don't come right out and say it -- do you know, is it offered ONLY to the persons that have a Dish Satellite package? I mean, do you know if they offer it by itself? They don't seem to want to give too many details about it.

Dish Anywhere is included with your DISH subscription and allows you to watch any show currently playing on a included channel on any device anywhere. So if NBCSports is showing the Tour and you're at the airport you can log into your DISH account and watch it on your phone or tablet. It's very handy and has worked flawlessly whenever I've used it.

That's what I suspected, but was hoping not. I'm not going to get mixed up again with anything tied to a "mainly" cable or satellite TV outfit again. They get their hooks into you and then keep raising rates at will. I'm staying with ONLY internet delivered service, and was wondering if that is what it is. There are others that I need to check out.

LOL they can get their hooks into you but after a couple years when it goes up you just call in and say I'm a loyal customer for X years and they give you a loyalty credit. In year 3 & 4 I got $10 off per month, but last year (#5) I got $30 off per month for 2 years . Yes I can do better money wise from other companies, but DISH provides a great service; 16 concurrent recordings and I can record from the DVR to a dvdr and from Youtube to a dvdr though their receiver. I haven't been able to find that anywhere else!

 

[Koronin]

Re: Re:

I was on the"Dish" website, that you have. They have a product called "Dish Anywhere". It is where you get the programs over the internet rather than a satellite dish. They say it is free, but don't come right out and say it -- do you know, is it offered ONLY to the persons that have a Dish Satellite package? I mean, do you know if they offer it by itself? They don't seem to want to give too many details about it.

Dish Anywhere is included with your DISH subscription and allows you to watch any show currently playing on a included channel on any device anywhere. So if NBCSports is showing the Tour and you're at the airport you can log into your DISH account and watch it on your phone or tablet. It's very handy and has worked flawlessly whenever I've used it.

That's what I suspected, but was hoping not. I'm not going to get mixed up again with anything tied to a "mainly" cable or satellite TV outfit again. They get their hooks into you and then keep raising rates at will. I'm staying with ONLY internet delivered service, and was wondering if that is what it is. There are others that I need to check out.

LOL they can get their hooks into you but after a couple years when it goes up you just call in and say I'm a loyal customer for X years and they give you a loyalty credit. In year 3 & 4 I got $10 off per month, but last year (#5) I got $30 off per month for 2 years . Yes I can do better money wise from other companies, but DISH provides a great service; 16 concurrent recordings and I can record from the DVR to a dvdr and from Youtube to a dvdr though their receiver. I haven't been able to find that anywhere else!

Hmmm.....I need to call and see about this loyal customer discount. TY. Sounds like you have the hopper? I have a lower model DVR so can only record 2 shows at the same time, however you can move stuff to an external hard drive for later viewing. However, they did let me keep my old DVR at no cost because it was obsolete by the time I upgraded. Granted it's now nothing more than a "DVD" player as it can only be hooked up to TVs, but it also meant that I got to keep the races I had recorded on it, which included a stage from the 2014 Vuelta, a stage from the 2016 Giro, two Fleche Wallones, and an Liege. One of my biggest reasons for having gone with Dish was they have the best sports package.

 

[Koronin]

Paris-Nice is on NBCSports in the middle of the night. The typical 1 hour show the end of the stages.

 

[Escarabajo]

You can probably stream it if you have apple TV or similar. Should be OK. No need to wait for the diluted 1 hour show.

 

[Koronin]

Re:

You can probably stream it if you have apple TV or similar. Should be OK. No need to wait for the diluted 1 hour show.

My problem is I'm usually either sleeping or working during the actual race. However you're right there should be places to find a "replay" of it that isn't the diluted 1 hour show.

 

[Nacho]

Re:

Paris-Nice is on NBCSports in the middle of the night. The typical 1 hour show the end of the stages.

Yeah, that is what I posted here:

viewtopic.php?p=2337322#p2337322

Any way they can stick it to us! Show that it is in real time on their GOLD product, and give mere pittance when most everybody else is snoozing away. That is the same time of the day as they show the paid advertisements! I wish NBCSN would bow out of their cycling assets and let somebody else take them up. Could anybody else do worse (except for the ToF)?

 

[Koronin]

Re: Re:

Paris-Nice is on NBCSports in the middle of the night. The typical 1 hour show the end of the stages.

Yeah, that is what I posted here:

viewtopic.php?p=2337322#p2337322

Any way they can stick it to us! Show that it is in real time on their GOLD product, and give mere pittance when most everybody else is snoozing away. That is the same time of the day as they show the paid advertisements! I wish NBCSN would bow out of their cycling assets and let somebody else take them up. Could anybody else do worse (except for the ToF)?

Except no one else wants it. When BEin sports stopped showing the Italian races that ended any TV coverage in the US of the Italian races.

 

[Nacho]

I wasn't aware that there was no coverage (this year) for Italian races. Bummer.

I wonder how 5G is going to fit into all of this. In the USA, it won't this year, and maybe not even next year. But late next year and then after it should be in at least the US metropolitan areas. I would think it would be a direct competitor to satellite TV systems, but maybe not fiber-optic cable systems yet. I haven't heard any prices yet ... but I've heard prices should go down over 4G, and bandwidth not be an issue. But, they'll probably initially price it to where nobody can afford it.

Some European countries have a start on it. Maybe we can look to them to see how it works out. AT&T is laying a fiber-optic cable in my back-alley. Yeah! I'm hoping they will be a competitor to the local cable TV company. That company has been awarded a non-competitor city franchise for at least 40 years.

These bike races need to get more to the "providing a commodity to the broadcast companies that want to pick it up" model than "getting every last penny out of the broadcast rights" model. A lot of the sports can still demand those costly rights, but some sports practically give them away.

 

[Koronin]

Italian races haven't been on TV at all since BEin stopped showing those races after the 2016 season.

Here's the problem with streaming, you have to have internet somewhere and then HOPE your internet company doesn't throttle the bandwidth or charge extra for anything over a certain amount of data.

That's the same as F1 coverage in the US. ESPN currently has it and I'm sure they aren't paying much for it. Not only that they're just showing the British broadcast of the F1 races.

 

[Nacho]

Re:

Italian races haven't been on TV at all since BEin stopped showing those races after the 2016 season.

Here's the problem with streaming, you have to have internet somewhere and then HOPE your internet company doesn't throttle the bandwidth or charge extra for anything over a certain amount of data.

That's the same as F1 coverage in the US. ESPN currently has it and I'm sure they aren't paying much for it. Not only that they're just showing the British broadcast of the F1 races.

Yeah. I agree. That is why you need either a cable TV broadband (they're mostly fiber-optic now) connection or an upcoming 5G connection. 4G won't get it because there is still limited bandwidth. 5G looks mostly to get us out of limited bandwidth/data. 5G is not going to be limited to cell phone systems. It can be used for TV and straight internet.

My cable TV broadband connection comes with unlimited data. My TV takes a surprisingly small (reasonable) amount of that. Yet we still use approaching a terabyte of data a month. I don't -- my son uses most of it, and I have no idea how he does that. That same capability will be there when 5G comes out.

They may initially try to limit 5G data to what your present telephone contract is for 4G/4G-lite, but that will be an artificial limitation and they won't be able to sustain that limitation if they want to move into TV programming. There is already a big dent into the people that still use local cable TV and/or satellite TV. They are shedding customers left-and-right. Some people are going back to straight broadcast TV, or at least somewhat to supplement internet TV systems.

5G has the potential to be the death-knell for cable TV, depending on the cost. In the end, the cable TV systems might retain a bunch of internet only customers as they already have their infrastructure/investment in place. 5G will take a new equipment/broadcast station investment.

 

[Koronin]

Re: Re:

Italian races haven't been on TV at all since BEin stopped showing those races after the 2016 season.

Here's the problem with streaming, you have to have internet somewhere and then HOPE your internet company doesn't throttle the bandwidth or charge extra for anything over a certain amount of data.

That's the same as F1 coverage in the US. ESPN currently has it and I'm sure they aren't paying much for it. Not only that they're just showing the British broadcast of the F1 races.

Yeah. I agree. That is why you need either a cable TV broadband (they're mostly fiber-optic now) connection or an upcoming 5G connection. 4G won't get it because there is still limited bandwidth. 5G looks mostly to get us out of limited bandwidth/data. 5G is not going to be limited to cell phone systems. It can be used for TV and straight internet.

My cable TV broadband connection comes with unlimited data. My TV takes a surprisingly small (reasonable) amount of that. Yet we still use approaching a terabyte of data a month. I don't -- my son uses most of it, and I have no idea how he does that. That same capability will be there when 5G comes out.

They may initially try to limit 5G data to what your present telephone contract is for 4G/4G-lite, but that will be an artificial limitation and they won't be able to sustain that limitation if they want to move into TV programming. There is already a big dent into the people that still use local cable TV and/or satellite TV. They are shedding customers left-and-right. Some are going back to straight broadcast TV, or at least to supplement internet TV systems.

5G has the potential to be the death-knell for cable TV, depending on the cost. In the end, the cable TV systems might retain a bunch of internet only customers as they already have their infrastructure/investment in place. 5G will take a new equipment/broadcast station investment.

My current internet is through the cable company because the phone company's high speed internet is SLOWER than a 56K modem. So yeah, I use the cable company for internet while having a satellite dish for TV. Where I live you literally CAN'T get over the air TV without a HUGE antenna on the top of your house. We're literally too far away from 2 of the 4 TV stations towers. Over the air TV isn't a exactly a great option in some areas of the country. Here's the thing they will limit it and make you pay a lot more to go over a certain amount of data OR make you pay for different sites unless there are laws preventing it. These companies will do anything to get more and more money. My cable internet is currently unlimited, BUT I've read articles of come cable companies starting to put data limits and making unlimited a lot more expensive.

Europe is so far ahead of the US in this stuff it's really sad.

 

[Nacho]

Re: Re:

Italian races haven't been on TV at all since BEin stopped showing those races after the 2016 season.

Here's the problem with streaming, you have to have internet somewhere and then HOPE your internet company doesn't throttle the bandwidth or charge extra for anything over a certain amount of data.

That's the same as F1 coverage in the US. ESPN currently has it and I'm sure they aren't paying much for it. Not only that they're just showing the British broadcast of the F1 races.

Yeah. I agree. That is why you need either a cable TV broadband (they're mostly fiber-optic now) connection or an upcoming 5G connection. 4G won't get it because there is still limited bandwidth. 5G looks mostly to get us out of limited bandwidth/data. 5G is not going to be limited to cell phone systems. It can be used for TV and straight internet.

My cable TV broadband connection comes with unlimited data. My TV takes a surprisingly small (reasonable) amount of that. Yet we still use approaching a terabyte of data a month. I don't -- my son uses most of it, and I have no idea how he does that. That same capability will be there when 5G comes out.

They may initially try to limit 5G data to what your present telephone contract is for 4G/4G-lite, but that will be an artificial limitation and they won't be able to sustain that limitation if they want to move into TV programming. There is already a big dent into the people that still use local cable TV and/or satellite TV. They are shedding customers left-and-right. Some are going back to straight broadcast TV, or at least to supplement internet TV systems.

5G has the potential to be the death-knell for cable TV, depending on the cost. In the end, the cable TV systems might retain a bunch of internet only customers as they already have their infrastructure/investment in place. 5G will take a new equipment/broadcast station investment.

My current internet is through the cable company because the phone company's high speed internet is SLOWER than a 56K modem. So yeah, I use the cable company for internet while having a satellite dish for TV. Where I live you literally CAN'T get over the air TV without a HUGE antenna on the top of your house. We're literally too far away from 2 of the 4 TV stations towers. Over the air TV isn't a exactly a great option in some areas of the country. Here's the thing they will limit it and make you pay a lot more to go over a certain amount of data OR make you pay for different sites unless there are laws preventing it. These companies will do anything to get more and more money. My cable internet is currently unlimited, BUT I've read articles of come cable companies starting to put data limits and making unlimited a lot more expensive.

Oough. That's a bummer too!

I moved into my house 35 years ago and put an antenna in the attic. Cable systems were just getting started, with just a few channels. But after a few years when they got more channels, I went with them and unhooked the antenna. I even had satellite for a few years. So, just 2 years ago I finally got rid of cable TV and went with Sling (internet) TV, and looked at the digital antennas everybody was saying you need for the (new -- in the interim) digital broadcast TV, to get local stations. As an afterthought I got up in my attic and hooked back up that 30 year old antenna, and it works perfectly. So, a person doen't need an antenna specific to digital broadcasts. I was also surprised at all of the extra channels that going to digital broadcast gave us. We only have 4 MAIN channels here locally: NBC CBS ABC Independent (and PBS), and that is how it was when I left broadcast TV years ago. But now with digital broadcast TV, each of those channels have sub-channels, usually 4, that are associated with them. And they have some pretty good programming, though most is old series reruns, which I really enjoy.

But, I live in a city that is about 200,000, and the broadcast antennas are less than 15 miles from my house. I guess I might be lucky to have good options. If you have to rely on satellite or cable TV for local/regional stations, that's got to be the pits, and limits your options somewhat.

 

[Koronin]

Re: Re:

Italian races haven't been on TV at all since BEin stopped showing those races after the 2016 season.

Here's the problem with streaming, you have to have internet somewhere and then HOPE your internet company doesn't throttle the bandwidth or charge extra for anything over a certain amount of data.

That's the same as F1 coverage in the US. ESPN currently has it and I'm sure they aren't paying much for it. Not only that they're just showing the British broadcast of the F1 races.

Yeah. I agree. That is why you need either a cable TV broadband (they're mostly fiber-optic now) connection or an upcoming 5G connection. 4G won't get it because there is still limited bandwidth. 5G looks mostly to get us out of limited bandwidth/data. 5G is not going to be limited to cell phone systems. It can be used for TV and straight internet.

My cable TV broadband connection comes with unlimited data. My TV takes a surprisingly small (reasonable) amount of that. Yet we still use approaching a terabyte of data a month. I don't -- my son uses most of it, and I have no idea how he does that. That same capability will be there when 5G comes out.

They may initially try to limit 5G data to what your present telephone contract is for 4G/4G-lite, but that will be an artificial limitation and they won't be able to sustain that limitation if they want to move into TV programming. There is already a big dent into the people that still use local cable TV and/or satellite TV. They are shedding customers left-and-right. Some are going back to straight broadcast TV, or at least to supplement internet TV systems.

5G has the potential to be the death-knell for cable TV, depending on the cost. In the end, the cable TV systems might retain a bunch of internet only customers as they already have their infrastructure/investment in place. 5G will take a new equipment/broadcast station investment.

My current internet is through the cable company because the phone company's high speed internet is SLOWER than a 56K modem. So yeah, I use the cable company for internet while having a satellite dish for TV. Where I live you literally CAN'T get over the air TV without a HUGE antenna on the top of your house. We're literally too far away from 2 of the 4 TV stations towers. Over the air TV isn't a exactly a great option in some areas of the country. Here's the thing they will limit it and make you pay a lot more to go over a certain amount of data OR make you pay for different sites unless there are laws preventing it. These companies will do anything to get more and more money. My cable internet is currently unlimited, BUT I've read articles of come cable companies starting to put data limits and making unlimited a lot more expensive.

Oough. That's a bummer too!

I moved into my house 35 years ago and put an antenna in the attic. Cable systems were just getting started, with just a few channels. But after a few years when they got more channels, I went with them and unhooked the antenna. I even had satellite for a few years. So, just 2 years ago I finally got rid of cable TV and went with Sling (internet) TV, and looked at the digital antennas everybody was saying you need for the (new -- in the interim) digital broadcast TV, to get local stations. As an afterthought I got up in my attic and hooked back up that 30 year old antenna, and it works perfectly. So, a person doen't need an antenna specific to digital broadcasts. I was also surprised at all of the extra channels that going to digital broadcast gave us. We only have 4 MAIN channels here locally: NBC CBS ABC Independent (and PBS), and that is how it was when I left broadcast TV years ago. But now with digital broadcast TV, each of those channels have sub-channels, usually 4, that are associated with them. And they have some pretty good programming, though most is old series reruns, which I really enjoy.

But, I live in a city that is about 200,000, and the broadcast antennas are less than 15 miles from my house. I guess I might be lucky to have good options. If you have to rely on satellite or cable TV for local/regional stations, that's got to be the pits, and limits your options somewhat.

Where I'm at you can get NBC with an indoor home made digital antenna (which we do have). You can also semi sort of get Fox. You must have a more powerful one in the attic if you want CBS and if you want ABC you're going to have to put a huge one on the roof other wise the ABC towers are just too far away. I live in a military city of around 75,000 people. We have zero local channels. I think we also semi get a PBS channel. By semi I mean with some interference.

Where I grew up we first got cable in mid '80's due to our house being right between two hospitals and all the interference with the reception. Unfortunately the TV we currently have doesn't have enough of the connections needed to be able to hook up the antenna. Just so we can have the Dish, the Ruko, chrome cast, and the DVD player hooked up we had to buy a switch due to how few connections the TV has.

 

[Carols]

Re:

You can probably stream it if you have apple TV or similar. Should be OK. No need to wait for the diluted 1 hour show.

The only usefulness of the 1 hour show is it has the best parts and when I make a dvd for later viewing it is great not to have to sift through hours of coverage to get the great moves and good parts. Lets face it cycling has hours of boring sections every day! I can reduce P-N to 2 hours of relevant action later quite easily while watching the full stage coverage on line daily.

 

[Carols]

Re: Re:

I was on the"Dish" website, that you have. They have a product called "Dish Anywhere". It is where you get the programs over the internet rather than a satellite dish. They say it is free, but don't come right out and say it -- do you know, is it offered ONLY to the persons that have a Dish Satellite package? I mean, do you know if they offer it by itself? They don't seem to want to give too many details about it.

Dish Anywhere is included with your DISH subscription and allows you to watch any show currently playing on a included channel on any device anywhere. So if NBCSports is showing the Tour and you're at the airport you can log into your DISH account and watch it on your phone or tablet. It's very handy and has worked flawlessly whenever I've used it.

That's what I suspected, but was hoping not. I'm not going to get mixed up again with anything tied to a "mainly" cable or satellite TV outfit again. They get their hooks into you and then keep raising rates at will. I'm staying with ONLY internet delivered service, and was wondering if that is what it is. There are others that I need to check out.

LOL they can get their hooks into you but after a couple years when it goes up you just call in and say I'm a loyal customer for X years and they give you a loyalty credit. In year 3 & 4 I got $10 off per month, but last year (#5) I got $30 off per month for 2 years . Yes I can do better money wise from other companies, but DISH provides a great service; 16 concurrent recordings and I can record from the DVR to a dvdr and from Youtube to a dvdr though their receiver. I haven't been able to find that anywhere else!

Hmmm.....I need to call and see about this loyal customer discount. TY. Sounds like you have the hopper? I have a lower model DVR so can only record 2 shows at the same time, however you can move stuff to an external hard drive for later viewing. However, they did let me keep my old DVR at no cost because it was obsolete by the time I upgraded. Granted it's now nothing more than a "DVD" player as it can only be hooked up to TVs, but it also meant that I got to keep the races I had recorded on it, which included a stage from the 2014 Vuelta, a stage from the 2016 Giro, two Fleche Wallones, and an Liege. One of my biggest reasons for having gone with Dish was they have the best sports package.

You need a Hopper,I love my Hopper Call and whine about how long you've been with them and the price going up and they should do something for you! Indeed I switched to Dish when there was Universal, NBCSports both showing cycling, and then BEin. It was the only place to get All cycling on TV. Now there is only NBCSports and Olympic Channel on TV .

 

[Koronin]

Re: Re:

I was on the"Dish" website, that you have. They have a product called "Dish Anywhere". It is where you get the programs over the internet rather than a satellite dish. They say it is free, but don't come right out and say it -- do you know, is it offered ONLY to the persons that have a Dish Satellite package? I mean, do you know if they offer it by itself? They don't seem to want to give too many details about it.

Dish Anywhere is included with your DISH subscription and allows you to watch any show currently playing on a included channel on any device anywhere. So if NBCSports is showing the Tour and you're at the airport you can log into your DISH account and watch it on your phone or tablet. It's very handy and has worked flawlessly whenever I've used it.

That's what I suspected, but was hoping not. I'm not going to get mixed up again with anything tied to a "mainly" cable or satellite TV outfit again. They get their hooks into you and then keep raising rates at will. I'm staying with ONLY internet delivered service, and was wondering if that is what it is. There are others that I need to check out.

LOL they can get their hooks into you but after a couple years when it goes up you just call in and say I'm a loyal customer for X years and they give you a loyalty credit. In year 3 & 4 I got $10 off per month, but last year (#5) I got $30 off per month for 2 years . Yes I can do better money wise from other companies, but DISH provides a great service; 16 concurrent recordings and I can record from the DVR to a dvdr and from Youtube to a dvdr though their receiver. I haven't been able to find that anywhere else!

Hmmm.....I need to call and see about this loyal customer discount. TY. Sounds like you have the hopper? I have a lower model DVR so can only record 2 shows at the same time, however you can move stuff to an external hard drive for later viewing. However, they did let me keep my old DVR at no cost because it was obsolete by the time I upgraded. Granted it's now nothing more than a "DVD" player as it can only be hooked up to TVs, but it also meant that I got to keep the races I had recorded on it, which included a stage from the 2014 Vuelta, a stage from the 2016 Giro, two Fleche Wallones, and an Liege. One of my biggest reasons for having gone with Dish was they have the best sports package.

You need a Hopper,I love my Hopper Call and whine about how long you've been with them and the price going up and they should do something for you! Indeed I switched to Dish when there was Universal, NBCSports both showing cycling, and then BEin. It was the only place to get All cycling on TV. Now there is only NBCSports and Olympic Channel on TV .[/quote]


I probably do need a Hopper at some point, but for now this one will work. Probably need the Hopper more for storage than for actually needing to record things at the same time. It's very rare we want to record two things at once let alone more than that. Yeah, I wish BEin would get the Italian races back. NBC bought Universal and basically turned it into the Olympic Channel. I remember when it had those. Also until recently you could watch pretty much any college sports event on the local channels and now so many of them are blacked out it's crazy.

 

[christopherrowe]

Re:

Italian races haven't been on TV at all since BEin stopped showing those races after the 2016 season.

FloBikes shows almost all of the Italian races.

 

[Koronin]

Re: Re:

Italian races haven't been on TV at all since BEin stopped showing those races after the 2016 season.

FloBikes shows almost all of the Italian races.

They do and it also costs around $120 a year and is streaming not TV. Thus comment is still correct that the Italian races are not on TV in the US.

 

[Carols]

Re: Re:

Italian races haven't been on TV at all since BEin stopped showing those races after the 2016 season.

FloBikes shows almost all of the Italian races.

They do and it also costs around $120 a year and is streaming not TV. Thus comment is still correct that the Italian races are not on TV in the US.

You are correct, it is not on TV. Flobikes is $150 per year (or $30 per month) but does have all the RCS races.

 

[Koronin]

Re: Re:

Italian races haven't been on TV at all since BEin stopped showing those races after the 2016 season.

FloBikes shows almost all of the Italian races.

They do and it also costs around $120 a year and is streaming not TV. Thus comment is still correct that the Italian races are not on TV in the US.

You are correct, it is not on TV. Flobikes is $150 per year (or $30 per month) but does have all the RCS races.

I thought it was $120. $150 makes it even harder to afford.

 

[Nacho]

Re: Re:

Italian races haven't been on TV at all since BEin stopped showing those races after the 2016 season.

FloBikes shows almost all of the Italian races.

They do and it also costs around $120 a year and is streaming not TV. Thus comment is still correct that the Italian races are not on TV in the US.

You are correct, it is not on TV. Flobikes is $150 per year (or $30 per month) but does have all the RCS races.

I thought it was $120. $150 makes it even harder to afford.

Not only that, but most streaming services are easily set up on internet/Roku(or others, I say Roku cause you mentioned you had one), and are on a month-to-month basis. You can easily subscribe to it, and easily stop it. Meaning, a person could subscribe to it only the months that the races they wanted to see took place.

 

[Potomac]

It looks like only fubo or flobikes for MSR.

 

[Carols]

Re:

It looks like only fubo or flobikes for MSR.

Yep, no RCS races on NBC stations.

 

[Koronin]

Re:

It looks like only fubo or flobikes for MSR.

Yep, same for Flanders.

 

[Broccolidwarf]

I'm thinking americans should be able to access the Eurosport player, with a decent premium VPN service (most of the free stuff doesn't work, and is often unsafe)?

They broadcast every world tour race (and even some the level below), and have very competent commentators in most european languages..... I think it's 6-7 dollars a month, for two channels broadcasting all major (in the european market) sports 24/7.

I know I can access a lot of US channels (incl. premium ones) through my VPN service, so I am thinking it works both ways.

- You DO need broadband though, or similar speed.

Disclaimer (we ARE talking America, after all ): I obviously haven't tried it, not being a US resident..