• Wired, Friday, June 9, 2006 10:32 AM

Yesterday we talked about how ESPN would be streaming 52 of the 64 World Cup soccer games live on ESPN360, the Disney unit's broadband video channel. That report neglected to mention that ESPN360 is only available to small handful of broadband providers--the majority of which could be classified as "local." Verizon is the largest national provider that makes the list, but no Cox, no Comcast, and--sorry, New York area folks--no Time Warner cable. Luckily, Wired is telling die-hard fans how to see the games on the Web. Ironically, the world has Chinese hackers to thank for "almost exclusively" pirating WC streams and rerouting them through servers in Israel. One shouldn't expect the commentary to be in English, however. Here's what you could do (of course, we don't recommend that you do this): download a P2P streaming player from Football Streaming Info, such as TvAnts, which is mostly in English. Once that's installed, a detailed schedule of the games and where they can be viewed can be found at BoxtoBox. To see BBC broadcasts--which purists who prefer English commentators will enjoy--GHacks.net offers a way to use public proxies to fool the BBC into thinking you're in the U.K. That's hearsay--actually, all of this is cause I haven't tried any of it--but Wired didn't try this method either. Wired mentions that it's unclear whether any of this is illegal in the U.S., but FIFA--the soccer's world governing body that's responsible for the massive show--would certainly "frown upon" it. Just in case, MediaPost doesn't recommend that you try this.

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