How to watch the US Open Tennis without a Sky subscription in the UK

There is no terrestrial transmission of the US Open Tennis Tournament via the digital freeview service in the UK which makes it difficult to watch the tournament without a SKY subscription.

Sky are covering the tournament on Sky sports 4, but we don’t have Sky and it is too expensive for us as we don’t watch much television.

Watching US Open Tennis in the UK with the British Eurosport player

After a little investigation it turns out that British Eurosport have coverage of the US Open Tennis with the British Eurosport Player App.  The app is available on PC/Mac, iPad, iPhone, Xbox and  Android devices.

The app provides live streams of the tournament and also allows the live stream to be paused.  The website also says that you can reply any video streamed in the last three hours, but we were not able to do this.

I didn’t really fancy watching the tennis on the small screen of the iPad or iPhone but fortunately the app allows the video to be streamed via Airplay to any compatible device.  We have a Lenovo Q190 connected to our TV runing XMBC, which as well as being a great media player, also supports the Apple Airplay protocol, allowing us to watch the tennis on the big screen.

Of course the more obvious choice may be to stream to an Apple TV device or connect an AV cable to your iPhone/iPad and hook it up to the television.

British Eurosport Player App review

I’ve only tried the app on the iPad 2 and don’t have any complaints with it.  The quality of the live stream is very good (though I suspect that this depends on how fast the broadband is).  Overall the quality is similar to a high definition broadcast on Freeview, although compression artefacts are more obvious.

We’ve watched two full games on the service so far and have not had any problems with it – streaming matches to the TV, the battery on the iPad has only drained 20%.  There are rare moments when the stream has to buffer and pauses for a few seconds, but in general it has been excellent.

We do also have a Samsung TV and I’d be curious to know if the Android app can stream to Samsung Smart TVs via the Allshare system.

Some screenshots of the app in use:

British Eurosport Player app streaming the US Open Tennis

British Eurosport Player app streaming the US Open Tennis

Here is the app asking which Airplay device you would like to stream the video to:

The British Eurosport App asking for an Airplay target

The British Eurosport App asking for an Airplay target

So you can get an idea of the quality of the stream here is a photograph of the television showing the Rafael Nadal vs Ryan Harrison 1st round match:

 

The British Eurosport App streaming live to a Sony LCD TV

The British Eurosport App streaming live to a Sony LCD TV

 

British Eurosport App – a good value way to receive coverage of the US Open Tennis

From only £3.99 a month the British Eurosport App is a great way to watch the US Open Tennis Tournament, the quality is good and the app is easy to use.  Much cheaper than a SKY subscription, although I am sure that is undoubtedly a great way to watch the tournament also.

Well done Rafa – a nice first round win! Keep going!

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