How to Make Sure You’re Ready to Stream March Madness

Mar 13, 2017

The NCAA Tournament is quickly approaching and so is the excitement for some of the best weeks in all of sports. Both casual and diehard fans tune in every year to follow along with all of the action to watch all the drama unfold.

March Madness is truly one of the most exciting events in all of sports, and thankfully there are multiple ways to stream the NCAA Tournament . Before the games begin, there are a few key things you’ll need to do to make sure you’re ready to stream the entire tournament. Here are some of the most important steps you need to take to get ready.

  1. Ensure a Strong Internet Connection
    When you stream anything, whether it be live TV or any of the popular on-demand streaming services, the most important thing to have is a strong internet connection. Before the tournament starts you should make sure you have a powerful enough internet connection, so it won’t interfere with watching the games live.
    There would be nothing worse than a big game coming down to the last seconds and you miss the final play because your     internet connection decides this would be the best time for a little buffering. You need at least 5mbps per stream if you want a solid connection, so the solution may be to only stream one thing at a time in your house. You can check your connection speed here to make sure you’re ready.
  2. The March Madness Live App Works for Cable Subscribers
    Anyone who still has a cable subscription can take advantage of the NCAA’s official streaming service for the tournament,     March Madness Live . You can download the app on a variety of devices and there’s an online website as well for watching on your computer. To get started, you just need to login with your cable subscription credentials.
    You can watch all of the games that come on the channels you already have in your cable subscription. This means if you have TBS, TNT, truTV, and CBS you can stream every game during the entire NCAA Tournament.
  3. No Cable? You’re Covered with Streaming Services
    The growing trend of cable cutting has not surprisingly resulted in a huge growth in services that offer the ability to stream live TV. These services don’t cost nearly as much as a cable subscription and can be incredibly helpful during the tournament.
    Sling TV         is one example and it has a starting price of either $20 or $25 per month. With this you can watch March Madness games on TBS, TNT, or truTV. Plus, you can watch free for a week with a free trial.

    Another great service that also lets you watch the games on TBS, TNT, and truTV is DIRECTV NOW. This is a newer service from AT&T that has a starting price of $35 per month. For the extra cost you do get a bunch more channels to stream and there’s also a free trial to test out the service for free. Get more details on DIRECTV NOW here .

    The one thing both services is lacking is the ability to watch CBS live. To do this, you can leverage CBS All Access. The service live streams whatever CBS is broadcasting in your area, so you can tune in to every March Madness game CBS broadcasts. Plus, it only costs $5.99 for an entire month, so this is a great add-on service to combine with one of the above.

  4. Get the Right Tools to Watch
    One of the other critical things to do is make sure you’re actual physical setup is ready for the tournament. This means if you want to stream March Madness on your TV, you’ll need a streaming device. These devices let you connect your phone, tablet, or computer to your TV and watch all of your streams on the big screen.
    Some of the most popular devices out there are Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV Sticks. These all are compatible with a majority of the services on the market, except Roku which DIRECTV NOW has not yet added compatibility for. No big deal, because you’ll have plenty of options to pick and choose from.
  5. Don’t Forget About Mobile Data
    Sometimes in the middle of a big game you might forget about some pretty important details, like the fact you’re streaming over mobile data. This is a huge thing to look out for, because before you know it you could be way over your data limit after watching just one game. The cost on data overages are outrageous and unless you’ve got a     great deal on unlimited data , this is something to certainly keep an eye on.

Hopefully, you take this advice and get yourself completely prepared for March Madness. It can easily be streamed, so just make sure you get set up correctly ahead of time and you’ll be able to enjoy every second of the action!

New Business Broadband Plans!

By Mike Pawlecki • 31 Mar, 2021
TOAST.net is excited to offer 4 new Business Broadband plans

New Fiber for Business Plans!

By Mike Pawlecki • 11 Mar, 2021
TOAST.net is excited to announce 3 new Business Fiber Plans

New Residential Fiber Plans!

By Mike Pawlecki • 12 Jan, 2021
TOAST.net has added two new residential Fiber Internet plans!

Switch to Universal Pricing

By Mike Pawlecki • 14 Aug, 2020
This coming Monday, Aug. 17th, we will be switching to universal pricing -- one price for all DSL speeds (around $65) and one price for Fiber (around $90). So if anyone is thinking they could use one of our basic service plans, now's the time to order. For example:  DSL - 12 Mbps for $43.95/month - Great for seniors on a fixed income. Plenty of speed for surfing the web, checking email, and streaming for 1 or 2 TVs. Fiber - 60 Mbps for $45.00/month - Awesome solution for just about any household. Note that fiber is a new technology and only about 20% of the country can get it.  Check your address to see what service you qualify for and order by Sunday, 8/16/20! This is your last chance to lock in the speed and price of a great DSL or Fiber plan before they are grandfathered! 
Google Meet for your home or office.

Google Meet

By Mike Pawlecki • 20 May, 2020
Google Meet is now free for everyone. Check out TOAST.net's blog that tells you more about Google Meet usage at your home or office.

Work from Home (part 2)

By Mike Pawlecki • 01 May, 2020
Google - Meet Meet is video conference software, similar to Zoom. To help businesses, schools, and people around the world navigate remote life, Google is making Meet free for everyone with availability rolling out over the coming weeks. See Google's blog post for details. SolarWinds - Take Control You may need to run applications off your PC or server at the office. In that case, SolarWinds makes makes an easy-to-use application that allows home users to remote desktop to their PC in the office. It's secure and doesn't require special hardware, a static IP, or VPN. We're offering this software free of charge for 90 days. Please contact us if interested.

Work from Home

By Mike Pawlecki • 20 Mar, 2020
This week we've taken quite a few calls from companies asking how their employees and staff can work from home (WFH). We're happy to offer several WFH solutions to help organizations mitigate health risks to employees and customers. TOAST.net understands how important it is to keep your employees connected, productive, and safe during this unprecedented pandemic. Here are the services we have to help your business through this difficult time : Business Portal is a 'home page' for your browser that improves communication and efficiencies within your organization. It's a private Intranet that features company news, announcements, links to vendors and cloud apps, an employee schedule, and more! We offer this at no charge to our customers. Visit https://start.toast.net Google's G Suite - TOAST.net is an authorized reseller of G Suite, a cloud-based collaboration tool featuring Email, Calendar, Chat, Hangouts (video conferencing), and Drive. You can create files, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with just your browser (no software to install) and share these with fellow workers, customers, and vendors. More info Remote Desktop - an easy-to-use application that allows home users to connect to PCs in the office. It's secure and doesn't require special hardware or a static IP. We're offering this free of charge for 90 days. High-speed Internet for Home - We provide residential Cable, DSL, and Fiber Internet service . So you can pay for your employee's Internet connection on your business invoice. Please contact us if you're interested in any of these services. B est wishes to everyone to stay healthy, safe, and upbeat as we socially distance ourselves for a quick end to this situation. Note: Our customer support team continues to work their regular hours. We operate support teams in multiple locations and, while there may be some disruption at certain locations for a limited time, overall we do not expect any significant change in access to support.

Cut The Cord With Unlimited Data

By TOAST.net Internet • 28 Jan, 2019
In the month after Christmas, we’ve seen a high demand for our Internet service with unlimited data. Much of it is from people wanting to use their new streaming device (Fire Stick, Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, etc.) to cancel their expensive cable TV service. This is commonly referred to as “cutting the cord.”

Fiber Expansion

By TOAST.net Internet • 17 Dec, 2018
TOAST.net is pleased to announce fiber Internet service in 12 new metro areas:

Start Page Updates

By TOAST.net Internet • 12 Dec, 2018
Moved Facebook link from top bar to the Popular Sites section. Added Yahoo Finance to the Personal Finance section. Yahoo Finance is one of the largest business news web sites in the United States by monthly traffic.
More Posts
Share by: