TORONTO — In partnership with Yare Media, the Canadian Football League (CFL) announced on Friday that an international livestream of the entire 2017 regular season will be made available. Fans in more than 130 territories outside of the TSN, RDS, ESPN and BT Sport footprint will be able to access this streaming service to follow regular season contests, playoff action, and the 105^th Grey Cup presented by Shaw.

http://intl.cfl.ca/packages.php

This is exactly the kind of service I'd be more than happy to pay for, but is it available in Canada???  No probably not.

1 hour ago, Noeller said:

Jesus...I never even attempted the Calgary to Vancouver drive.....unreal.

It's not so bad if the weather is nice and people aren't being ******* and getting into accidents that close the highway for hours upon hours (or bridges wash out).

But if the weather is less than perfect no thank you. I drove from Vancouver to Calgary 2 summers ago in some pretty heavy rain and it was not the most fun drive, saw 2 separate vehicles flipped over cause apparently people don't know that when there's water on the road it can be slippery and you should probably slow down going downhill around corners. 

14 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

It's not so bad if the weather is nice and people aren't being ******* and getting into accidents that close the highway for hours upon hours (or bridges wash out).

But if the weather is less than perfect no thank you. I drove from Vancouver to Calgary 2 summers ago in some pretty heavy rain and it was not the most fun drive, saw 2 separate vehicles flipped over cause apparently people don't know that when there's water on the road it can be slippery and you should probably slow down going downhill around corners. 

Not surprisingly the further you travel away from the Alberta border the safer BC roads become.  I wonder what the correlation is???

 

Oh right...MORONS in big trucks.

10 minutes ago, Throw Long Bannatyne said:

Not surprisingly the further you travel away from the Alberta border the safer BC roads become.  I wonder what the correlation is???

 

Oh right...MORONS in big trucks.

you forgot:

Towing gigantic ski boats.

12 minutes ago, Mark F said:

you forgot:

Towing gigantic ski boats.

This is so true, and pisses me off so much, for a couple reasons.....blarrrgh. #LundForLife

I've only driven the West once.  Drove from Thunder Bay to Vancouver, took about a week to do it.

Anyway, my wife and I drove Kicking Horse Pass in fine weather with light traffic in my Mazda3, which corners pretty well for a compact sedan.

I still white-knuckled the whole pass. Damn there are some gnarly stretches in there ... that hairpin turn west of Banff must have claimed more than a few vehicles over the years.

Edited June 22, 20178 yr by johnzo

It's an easy trip all the way from Winnipeg all the way to Tofino. Mostly good roads. Mostly good drivers.  

Try Vancouver (All the way down the west coast, across the country to Corpus Christi, TX then south)  to Merida Mexico if you and a gnarly drive, especially after you cross over into Mexico. Federales with 50 cal machine guns pointing at your car, while they search it. Topes (Speed Bumps) in the middle of highways that are 8" to a foot high, square, not rounded, with no signs to tell you where they are and their could be 8 or 10 of them in a row. (Gotta slow down to 10 KMH to go over them without scraping the bottom of your car) Roundabouts with no lines on them that the locals make into 3 or 4 or 5 different lanes depending on the amount of traffic. Few, if any, signs unless you're on a big highway. Tons of fun!

4 hours ago, Noeller said:

Jesus...I never even attempted the Calgary to Vancouver drive.....unreal.

 

3 hours ago, Mark F said:

 done wpg to vancouver island many times. dined in every subway and tim's on the way.

also wpg to LA twice. That was a lot of fun, and very interesting. Daughter said "whatever you do, don't get lost in Compton"  Went straight there like an arrow lol.

saw a home there surrounded by razor wire.

Its a beautiful 12 hour drive.

1 hour ago, johnzo said:

I've only driven the West once.  Drove from Thunder Bay to Vancouver, took about a week to do it.

Anyway, my wife and I drove Kicking Horse Pass in fine weather with light traffic in my Mazda3, which corners pretty well for a compact sedan.

I still white-knuckled the whole pass. Damn there are some gnarly stretches in there ... that hairpin turn west of Banff must have claimed more than a few vehicles over the years.

I don't know when you last took that trip but that section just East of Golden has been pretty much cleaned up and should be 4 laned completely within a few years.  Much safer now but less interesting.

Edited June 22, 20178 yr by Throw Long Bannatyne

17 hours ago, Mark F said:

 done wpg to vancouver island many times. dined in every subway and tim's on the way.

also wpg to LA twice. That was a lot of fun, and very interesting. Daughter said "whatever you do, don't get lost in Compton"  Went straight there like an arrow lol.

saw a home there surrounded by razor wire.

you might say you got... straight outta Compton...

 

I'll show myself out 

25 minutes ago, bearpants said:

you might say you got... straight outta Compton...

 

I'll show myself out 

It is difficult for us sheltered Canucks to appreciate how scared the Americans are of each other and the world in general. Lots of money to be made off that fear though.

19 hours ago, johnzo said:

I used to hang out with a Scottish exchange student when I was at Lakehead U .. he could not believe that our nearest big city was eight hours away. 

North America is so huge and empty once you get west of Sault Ste. Marie.  I've driven the width of Ontario twice and it's astonishing how big this province is.

Manitoba alone is 7 times bigger than Scotland.  With 1/5 of the population.  Crazy.

I roadtripped from Wpg to Fernie 2 summers ago, and had a great time. Stayed with buddy's cousin in Regina night #1, provincial park night #2, buddy's on-the-ranch job south of Pincher Creek night #3 and the rest in BC.   Only disappointment was not having enough time to make it all the way out west.

1 hour ago, Jimmy Pop said:

Manitoba alone is 7 times bigger than Scotland.  With 1/5 of the population.  Crazy.

I roadtripped from Wpg to Fernie 2 summers ago, and had a great time. Stayed with buddy's cousin in Regina night #1, provincial park night #2, buddy's on-the-ranch job south of Pincher Creek night #3 and the rest in BC.   Only disappointment was not having enough time to make it all the way out west.

But we don't have haggis or sheep that stampede at the sound of zippers.

1 hour ago, tracker said:

It is difficult for us sheltered Canucks to appreciate how scared the Americans are of each other and the world in general. Lots of money to be made off that fear though.

If you want to see the real USA, you have to travel the regional highways and stay off the Interstate.  In a lot of places it's on the verge of becoming a third world country, Canada looks absolutely homogenized by comparison.

Yeah, I haven't done a road trip like that, but if you read Paul Theroux's Deep South you can get some idea.

18 minutes ago, johnzo said:

Yeah, I haven't done a road trip like that, but if you read Paul Theroux's Deep South you can get some idea.

Hell you don't have to go that far, Wash. State has some pretty run-down border towns.

4 hours ago, bearpants said:

you might say you got... straight outta Compton...

went into a nearby homedepot, got directions, and on our way.

LA is actually pretty easy to get around, much easier than Seattle Tacoma.... which is a nightmare.

Quote

Washington State has some pretty run-down border towns.

boy is that the truth. sad stuff....  beaten down, poor people.

Edited June 22, 20178 yr by Mark F

1 hour ago, Throw Long Bannatyne said:

Hell you don't have to go that far, Wash. State has some pretty run-down border towns.

Holy **** is that ever true, drove back to Calgary from Seattle last summer through washington and man it's just such a massive difference between biggers areas and smaller ones. 

4 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

Holy **** is that ever true, drove back to Calgary from Seattle last summer through washington and man it's just such a massive difference between biggers areas and smaller ones. 

True throughout the entire mid-west, nothing but crumbling infrastructure and boarded up buildings, all money flows to the big centers.

Hey to get back on topic, I've got a solid yaretv stream through my VPN. Turned it on just in time to see Kevin Glenn's characteristic fourth-quarter pick.

And yeah, there is a massive divide in the USA between the urban areas and the boonies.

And Mark is right, the Puget Sound area is indeed a nightmare to drive in ... we have okay north-south routes but our east-west routes are all messed up by our many urban lakes and waterways and gnarly hills.  They've beautiful to have but damn do they screw up traffic.  Add to that a rapid transit system that only serves about 150K of our 3.5MM urban population, and then consider that 50 people are moving to King County every day (Amazon alone is hiring about 500 people a week).  You wind up with the fourth-worst traffic in the USA.

 

 

The yaretv stream was beautiful, watched the whole fourth quarter in 720p, didn't buffer once.  Pumped!  I've been waiting for this service for years....thank you CFL, from this pretend Dutchman.

I'm overseas for a good chunk of the season this year, I'll definitely be using these Livestreams. I'll report back after the first game (assuming my wifi connection is fast enough)

watched Calgary/Ottawa with nary a bump.  this service looks solid.

Just finished a python script to download VOD games so I can save them locally (mostly so I can skip commercials...the supplied player lacks a +30s button, mysteriously!)

if anyone is a deep nerd and wants to see the source, lemme know.

On 6/20/2017 at 9:38 PM, johnzo said:

VPN = Virtual Private Network.

When you have VPN software running on your computer, all of your network traffic is encrypted and routed to a computer somewhere else.  That computer decrypts your traffic and forwards it onto the Internet, then encrypts the responses and forwards them back to you.

This has two benefits:

1) your ISP can't tell what you're doing, so they can't snoop your user data and sell it, they can't filter or throttle or narc your torrents or streams, and they can't tell if you're a Chinese dissident looking up information on Falun Gong.  VPNs are very popular in China and with business users who are travelling away from their home offices.

2) this is the good part for you and me: all your internet traffic appears to be coming from the country where your VPN server is located.  My VPN server is in Rotterdam, so when I turn it on  and connect to the CFL streaming site, what they see is a Dutchman who likes niche sports instead of me, the Canadian in America who doesn't want to pay for a cable subscription just for five months of ESPN a year.

I use ExpressVPN (https://www.expressvpn.com) although I didn't shop around much so I don't know if it's the best. Getting it running wasn't too hard.

It works! It works! It totally works!!!

Paid $100 US for the Express VPN for 12 months and $80 US for the all CFL team pass which includes video on demand for game replays.  I don't see why a  CDN. credit card couldn't be used as it will just add the exchange rate.

Now I just have to figure out how to broadcast this to my SmartTV.

Thank you Johnzo!

On ‎6‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 1:19 PM, Mark F said:

funny isn't it?

I used to know a guy from Sarajevo. He was quite amazed that I would get in the car, and drive from wpg to Vancouver Island, without even thinking about it.

 

We don't have to pass thru a dozen countries to get there. That's probably why. No border hassles.

30 minutes ago, Throw Long Bannatyne said:

It works! It works! It totally works!!!

Paid $100 US for the Express VPN for 12 months and $80 US for the all CFL team pass which includes video on demand for game replays.  I don't see why a  CDN. credit card couldn't be used as it will just add the exchange rate.

Now I just have to figure out how to broadcast this to my SmartTV.

Thank you Johnzo!

great to hear! 

I'm pretty sure a Canadian card will work, I don't think the CFL cares about where the money is coming from, just about where the video is being shown, so Canadians abroad like yogi should be okay.