TVNZ's streaming URLs for the Olympic Games
Now that the Olympics have actually started my lingering disquiet about China-as-host has submerged under the sheer tsunami of spectacle that is the Games these days. I just want to watch it and damn the politics.
And bless good old TVNZ: at long last they’ve found something that they can go all out for on the Internet. And they have, much much more than they managed for the last World Cup.
There are four streaming channels of goodness at two different bit rates, 128k and 700k. I’ve found the latter is perfectly acceptable at full screen on my MacBook. Apparently these are available to NZ viewers only – although how this is accomplished and whether it works is another question – I’d be interested in comments from readers outside NZ.
[UPDATE: see comments from Koz and another below. These streams work in New Zealand ONLY.]
Unfortunately, to get to them you have to wend your way through their slow and bloated website. And streaming video within web browsers on the Mac is not that great at the best of times, especially when people insist on using Windows Media. To view this sort of media at all Mac users must install Flip4Mac so that QuickTime can handle the Windows Media streams… and even then the TVNZ experience is not helped by a circular redirect page bug that affects Safari when loading a video page, and Mac Firefox’s flickery rendition of the video.
In this case I do what I always do: nick the URLs from the host pages and open them directly in QuickTime’s “FileāOpen URL…” dialog.
So I shouldn’t make you wait any longer for these, should I?
The hosted coverage (the same as is showing on free to air TVOne):
- “Standard” 128K: http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_video/windows/one_sport/ws_oly_liveone_128k.asx
- “High Quality” 700K: http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_video/windows/one_sport/ws_oly_liveone_700k.asx
Live Sport Extra (the extra channel that’s also on Freeview):
- “Standard” 128K: http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_video/windows/one_sport/ws_oly_livesportextra_128k.asx
- “High Quality” 700K: http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_video/windows/one_sport/ws_oly_livesportextra_700k.asx
TVNZ3 (an online-only channel):
- “Standard” 128K: http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_video/windows/one_sport/ws_oly_livetvnz3_128k.asx
- “High Quality” 700K: http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_video/windows/one_sport/ws_oly_livetvnz3_700k.asx
TVNZ 4 (another online-only channel):
- “Standard” 128K: http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_video/windows/one_sport/ws_oly_livetvnz4_128k.asx
- “High Quality” 700K: http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_video/windows/one_sport/ws_oly_livetvnz4_700k.asx
In addition to the above, you can find a page for a day by day schedule, and another for today’s programmes.
Oh, and these URLs should work perfectly well in Windows Media too (Linux users: sorry, I have no freaking idea).
sue
10 August 2008, 02:07 #
you are my internet guru
Koz
10 August 2008, 02:10 #
Sadly I can confirm that the streams don’t work from overseas. Or at least not on my mac with my french ISP.
hjfkjk
10 August 2008, 05:05 #
they dont work form the states either
Antonio
10 August 2008, 08:28 #
Yeah…it’s just bad when content providers can’t, at least, create stuff that Flip4Mac can deal with. It’s not a stretch at all…just make it standard wmv compatible…what’s the big deal?
Mike Riversdale
10 August 2008, 09:55 #
Firefox on Ubuntu streamed them quite happily (randomly clicked on a few)
Mike Riversdale
10 August 2008, 10:54 #
This might help those outside NZ: http://www.webtvhub.com/how-to-watch-beijing-2008-olympics-online-legal-pirate-methods-for-free-live-action/
sue
10 August 2008, 16:33 #
each country has it’s own stream
since koz = uber coder
sounds like doing a proxy thingy with your browser and using the channel 7 channel from Australia.
One thing about Australia they do sport coverage well
Hamish MacEwan
10 August 2008, 18:42 #
The .asx files appear to resolve to URLs of the form:
mms://live.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz1-live_300k
(which you can feed to mplayer (and others) under Linux).
live.tvnz.co.nz resolves to 202.7.5.12, an anycast address that is advertised only at APE & WIX, and has no transit access.
What our non-multilateral peering market dominant ISPs have done to arrange their customers get what they paid for, I don’t know.
But it has the effect of geographically limiting distribution (tunnels and proxy tricks not withstanding).
Alan
10 August 2008, 21:59 #
I’m on ihug broadband in Wellington – and only 60ms away from live.tvnz.co.nz via APE. Works for me! Although that’s not your point.
In any case, these URLs are:
Hadyn
11 August 2008, 09:03 #
I’ve been watching the games all weekend (ALL weekend!) and I’m watching it again from work. There seems to be a problem with watching it in Firefox, but it works really well in IE9.
I am still annoyed that ex-pats can’t watch the streams. Seems like that would be one your main selling points. (Try and watch the feeds on NBC.com)
Also I have used up a LOT of my monthly cap now.
Alan
11 August 2008, 09:34 #
Yeah, the data cap thing will be interesting.
Yesterday I hooked up the Mac to the TV so I could show the fourth channel to the girls. Nearly two hours of the women’s gymnastics later, and they’d steamed through about 1.5Gb of data. Lucky we have a 20Gb cap!
jay
11 August 2008, 15:47 #
Hey Alan.. I have 256k speed and trying to watch the coverage direct through WMP. I am only getting still pictures with good sound.. any thoughts?
Alan
11 August 2008, 16:03 #
I suspect your “broadband” connection is too slow. :-)
Alex
11 August 2008, 20:08 #
On Debian Linux (Etch) the default Totem plugin didn’t work. Using the URLs with VLC media player works good for mms://live.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz1-live_300k
Even though it works, VLC shows the following error messages in the message window:
main error: Connection to live.tvnz.co.nz port 1755 failed: Connection refused
access_mms error: failed to open a connection (tcp)
main error: Connection to live.tvnz.co.nz port 1755 failed: Connection refused
access_mms error: failed to open a connection (tcp)
access_mms error: cannot connect to server
access_mms error: cannot read data
main warning: buffer is 55121 in advance, triggering downsampling
main warning: late picture skipped (223143)
main warning: late picture skipped (183177)
main warning: late picture skipped (143181)
But it works, so I can live with that. However when I try the 700k URL…
main error: Connection to live.tvnz.co.nz port 1755 failed: Connection refused
access_mms error: failed to open a connection (tcp)
main error: Connection to live.tvnz.co.nz port 1755 failed: Connection refused
access_mms error: failed to open a connection (tcp)
access_mms error: cannot connect to server
access_mms error: cannot read data
access_mms error: error: HTTP/1.0 400 Bad Request
access_mms error: cannot start stream
main error: no suitable access module for `mms://live.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz1-live_700k’
Does the 700k work for others?
I’m on Orcon if that helps.
Alan
11 August 2008, 21:07 #
Alex: it may be a VLC thing – on my MacBook, I get exactly the same results when trying to use VLC to view those streams.
Can you try MPlayer instead?
Alan
11 August 2008, 21:29 #
OK. Having just downloaded and compiled MPlayer (using MacPorts) I can confirm that the higher quality streams do work (although I am getting a few dropouts – maybe I have to experiment with different compile-time switches… but on the other hand, QuickTime is working fine for me :).
So on Debian you should have no trouble with MPlayer either… in theory.
Alex
12 August 2008, 01:17 #
Thanks Alan. MPlayer worked fine (both speeds) after I set the correct video_out (-vo) device in MPlayer preferences.
abf
12 August 2008, 10:52 #
I don’t know about in NZ but here in the US Mac users are again shut out from all Olympic videos unless they have an Intel processor and are using system OS 10.4.8 or higher. This is just shameful! Shame on M$NBC!
gravey
12 August 2008, 14:37 #
Works from Australia using an AAPT connection
NFORSA
12 August 2008, 15:32 #
I can confirm that I can watch them in AUSTRALIA via your links in media player, but if I go onto the TVNZ site I cannot choose other channels apart from watching only channel 1, so thanks heaps.
Michael
12 August 2008, 20:09 #
vlc for Linux plays them extremely well.
geoff
13 August 2008, 18:08 #
The websites seem to be inaccessible from Aust. today but were working yesterday…. anyone else having problems ??
tt
13 August 2008, 23:28 #
Invalid URL in Quicktime ???
Adrian
14 August 2008, 04:58 #
Any idea why us ex-pats can’t even watch the highlight package videos on the TVNZ site? Let alone the live stream…
Everything was available on Monday from the UK, but its all restricted now.
Alan
14 August 2008, 07:54 #
Perhaps TVNZ have cottoned on to the fact that people outside New Zealand were able to see the videos. As I understand it, each country’s broadcaster gets the Olympics licensed for their country only, and are not allowed to let it be seen elsewhere. It’s all about the $$$$$ for the IOC, I suspect.
Jack
14 August 2008, 19:52 #
I get the same problem with the 700k streams in vlc. Anyone found a solution for this yet?
Alan
14 August 2008, 21:11 #
If you are on Linux, try MPlayer. That’s about all I can suggest – if you are on Windows or Mac you already have some obvious alternatives to VLC.
sue
15 August 2008, 00:21 #
yup i’m getting the ‘invalid url’ popup on quicktime now as well
ho hum
Alan
15 August 2008, 08:04 #
Sue: I’m not getting this problem on any of the streams I tried. Which one gives the invalid URL? And what time of the day did you try it? (I wonder if this might be related to load – here, at 7am, everything is working fine.)
Donovan
15 August 2008, 15:32 #
the default mms port is 1755 which is what vlc is trying to connect to, but it seems the 700k streams are on port 80 which vlc is not trying. Mplayer trys 1755 and then 80:
Connecting to server live.tvnz.co.nz[202.7.5.12]: 1755…
connect error: Connection refused
Connecting to server live.tvnz.co.nz[202.7.5.12]: 80…
Cache size set to 7730 KBytes
Cache fill: 19.46% (1540096 bytes)
ASF file format detected. etc…
I tried to get vlc to connect to 80 as per the help:
mms://ip:port/file MMS URLit connects but doesn’t seem to stream (VLC media player 0.8.6e Janus on hardy) apparently it works in 0.9.0
…
hope that helps clear some questions up :)
Donovan
15 August 2008, 15:37 #
should work in vlc 0.9x
$ vlc mms://202.7.5.12:80/tvnz2-live_700k
Simon
15 August 2008, 17:22 #
I am living in Switzerland and yes, TVNZ have blocked access. However, I have a friend who graciously allows me to tunnel through his Debian box to get the Olympics. A tunnel needs to be set up TVNZ address (e.g. media3.tvnz.co.nz). The tunnel was not the difficult part, the tricky part was routing only TVNZ traffic on my home PC. I tried iptables, VNC, but settled for rinetd. See my question here for the details:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5590090
And yes, it works fine with Totem. I have yet to try the hires, but will look into it. I seem to have enough difficult with streaming the 128k video, so I think the 700k stream will choke.
Simon
15 August 2008, 17:32 #
Doh! I meant VPN not VNC!
sue
17 August 2008, 14:05 #
Well for some reason quicktime hates all the streams but vlc does not
go vlc
Simon
18 August 2008, 17:56 #
Is anybody having trouble connecting to the TVNZ.co.nz website? It seems to be down from overseas.
Martin
28 August 2008, 13:20 #
Cheers for the streams. Ive ripped some of the stuff that I wanted using VLC, do you know if its possible to make the ASF files it creates seekable? Or if I can convert them into something else that will be?
Alan
28 August 2008, 13:27 #
Sorry, I have no idea.