Last night I, like over three million others, was shut out of the Oscars … and least for the beginning. ABC chose to pull it’s WABC signal from Cablevision in our area due to stalled contract talks. This, I thought, was the perfect time to test live streaming on the net. Could we watch a show that wasn’t officially being streamed. And why would we call off the friends that were coming over to watch? ‘Of course you can stream one of the most popular shows on TV, right?’ Well, sort of.

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED

1. First, for kicks, I tested the antenna that came with my lovely Pioneer plasma (with a built in digital converter). Would I get a “free” signal. Hmmm … no dice. Without a larger antenna and a longer cable to reach outside, all I got was hash. Frankly, I was more interested in testing the live stream than running antenna cable across my living room.

2. Next up, lugging the mac downstairs, and the cable modem. Yes, I could get a wireless signal from our home wireless system, but for streaming HQ video it’s obviously better to have a direct connection I thought. I opted for the VGA in on the plasma, essentially making it a huge monitor. Yes, it’s not the best quality, but I was going for ease of use. Many PC desktops and laptops have various video outs as well … so hooking up a computer should be easy for practically anyone.

3. Now … finding a live stream. Um, not so easy. Neither ABC or The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences apparently wants to risk the numbers of what it is the second most watched broadcast of the year … the “Female Superbowl” as it’s known. Plus, the Academy is notorious for protecting their brand and going after anyone illegally using their footage or their images … so any “legal” stream is out of the question.

So suddenly, to watch this broadcast, I’m turned into an internet criminal, finding someone willing to pirate the stream live so I can benefit. But even that proved difficult. Mostly, our search for Oscars turned up sites that promised but didn’t deliver, or worse, we’re trying to sell you something or give you a virus. Unsafe territory.

4. After much fruitless searching, I decided to try on of the “stream live TV” software packages available. I went with SatelliteDirect.com, recommended by a friend. Online they say it works with the mac. So I downloaded and paid for the service (a one time fee of 29.95 if you work their system to get a lower rate) … and, what’dya know, it didn’t work on my mac. SO, down comes the PC, and voila … hundreds (not thousands as they say) of channels are now accessible on my PC, streamed live, including 18 so-called “ABC” stations. Great! But hold on … most are Australian “ABC” stations, and the three that are the American ABC stations we find out later don’t carry the ABC primetime feed. $29.95 down the drain (at least for watching the Oscars … perhaps we’ll be wanting to watch Australian ABC later).

5. So, with a room full of friends and no Oscars, we were desperate. We actually considered calling family members in Wisconsin to hold their webcam up to their TV and Skype the Oscars to us! Then we found twitter to the rescue. Our repeat search of “Oscar live stream” turned up a livestream.com illegal feed of ABC. We felt so dirty, but we had our Oscars, for 3 minutes. Then the feed died. But another Twitter link, and then another better quality link proved successful.

Literally four minutes into our streaming we got a text from a friend: “ABC-Cablevision settle. It’s back on TV!” So we missed the opening number and the monologue, but it was back on. A quick switch and we were back in business in HD.

I felt successful that I had tamed the beast and captured a live stream, but was certainly glad to get back to an HD signal. Honestly, I was quite surprised how difficult it was to find a live stream of a broadcast that didn’t want to be streamed. It was doable, but not without risk, and not something that most typical users would do. One impressive takeaway, in this day of internet video ubiquity, it’s still possible to protect your brand … to a point.