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Monday, July 8, 2013

Watching EVE Online With The Roku

Over the long weekend I finally cancelled my satellite TV service and bought a Roku to put in my home office.  For those unfamiliar with the Roku, it basically turns your internet connection into a cable TV service, albeit with a lot less choice.  Then again, I didn't really watch a lot of TV anyway, which made satellite TV a waste of money.

So after setting up my initial channels like Hulu Plus, Pandora and the BBC, I started looking for a way to watch Twitch on my television using my Roku.  The Alliance Tournament is due to start on 20 July and in past years I've found that trying to watch the tourney and play EVE at the same time just didn't work.  I figure that streaming the tourney on my TV is a better option.

I think I found a solution.  Called Unofficial Twitch, the Roku application allows a viewer to watch correctly configured Twitch streams.  I was unable to view TheMittani.com's Twitch stream, but much to my delight Mad Ani's Twitch stream works just fine.  So I spent long stretches of the weekend with Mad Ani's music providing some background noise and every so often I'd look over.  I saw Black Legion pile into the CFC's staging system of B-DBYQ on Saturday and a CFC Caracal fleet playing games with a Nulli Secunda/NCDot Muninn fleet on Sunday.  Good stuff.

I should add that at 720p (I have an old TV) the stream looks really good, although sometimes it looks like it reverts to 360p for brief periods.  And occasionally the stream does stop and a loading screen pops up, but that's quickly solved by clicking on the up arrow on the remote and then hitting the "OK" button to select play.  That issue is probably a result of my internet connection and nothing to do with Twitch.

So with any luck the Alliance Tournament stream will be Roku compatible and I can keep using the set-up I'm using for Mad Ani's stream.  I think the probability is high since I was able to see Seismic Stan's on Sunday when he was playing around with live streaming on Twitch.
Gameskinny's Mat Westhorpe Live Streaming EVE
So for anyone interested, the link to get the app is https://owner.roku.com/add/TwitchTv.

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