Friday, March 19, 2010

Watch March Madness On Demand with SageTV MS MediaCenter and Boxee

Most everyone can watch the NCAA Tournament on their TV sets these days thanks to their local CBS channel.  But what if you want to watch the game that isn’t being “focused on” by the CBS affiliate in your area?  Well one choice is to fire up the laptop and watch it on CBSOnline.com and choose the game of your choice to stream to the computer.  But what if you want to pick and choose the game for your TV set?  Well that’s possible with three of the leading HTPC software programs.

SageTV

SageTV has a very nice PlayOn add-on that gives you access to all of the online content available to PlayOn including the NCAA Tournament games.  You’ll need to get your free trial of PlayOn or purchase it, then install the free, SageTV PlayOn plugin and your set.

For more about the latest update to the PlayOn Plugin for SageTV head to the SageTV Forums.

 

SageTV March Madness On Demand

 

Windows MediaCenter

Windows MediaCenter also has a PlayOn plugin you can use VMCPlayit or tubecentric.tv to stream to your MediaCenter powered TV.  You can also use the “On Now” feature of Media Center with the “Sports Strip” described on Pete’s Windows Live Blog to check out the game scores.

Windows MediaCenter Sports Strip

 

Boxee & Plex

As of this month, Boxee has March Madness Live content streaming available as well.  Plex has had NCAA Tournament streaming since last year.

After witnessing thousands of readers interested in the NCAA Tournament Excel download, I have a feeling these HTPC March Madness features will be pretty popular as well.  Go Mizzou!