In recent weeks, college basketball teams from around the country have played against each other to decide who is better. Some teams shocked us all and went further than we could have imagined before the NCAA March Madness kicked off. Other teams acted together, performing like the winners we already knew. All the action will culminate in the Final Four this weekend, two games that will decide which college teams go home and which ones face off on Monday.
If you’re not near a computer for the activity, don’t worry. There are many ways to watch the Final Four on Windows laptops, tablets and desktops.
Downloading the March Madness App from the Windows Store
If you’re running Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system, your first stop should always be the new Windows Store. Apps downloaded from there are safe and both mouse and touch friendly. There is the March Madness app. Windows Store This offers everything Windows users will need for Final Four games.
Statistics breakdowns, matches and more are available inside the app. So are the games’ own live-streaming videos. Any game broadcast on CBS can be used without logging in with your cable or satellite provider’s username and password. Games on TBS, TruTV, and TNT require a cable subscription. As such, you’ll need a cable subscription to watch this Saturday’s games live on TNT. When the NCAA Men’s Championship airs on Monday, April 6, you can watch it for free with or without a cable or satellite subscription.
Watch Online on March Madness Live
Obviously, not all Windows PCs have access to the Windows Store. Windows 7 and Windows Vista users shouldn’t worry though. The March Madness app for Windows has an existing online companion here. Unfortunately, the same restrictions apply to broadcasts.
Watch Directly from CBS and TNT Apps
CBS is in the middle of launching its own app that lets users stream broadcast channels for $5.99 per month. The service is available in Baltimore, MD, San Francisco, CA, Chicago, IL, Los Angeles, CA, New York, NY, Philadelphia, PA, and a few others. If your city is in the full list available hereYou can watch without any problem. CBS All Access It normally costs $5.99 per month, but the company offers a free trial that should get users through the end of March Madness without any problems. CBS All Access has apps on iOS and Android.
TNT allows users to watch anything broadcast on any of the East and West Coast feeds online for free. the company calls it TNT Live and if you’re away from your Windows PC at some point, it’s available on the company’s website and in the iPhone and Android apps. TNT Live is not free in the sense that it has a special coverage fee. However, you do need a cable provider account to log in.
Watch Online with Sling TV
Finally, users can watch via Sling TV, the promising live streaming app that doesn’t require any cable subscription. In fact, Sling TV is billed as a complete replacement for cable, complete with bundles of affordable channels per relevance. Regardless of whether or not Sling TV can catch on, it remains one of the few live cable offerings in the United States available to just about anyone without any hoops.
At $20 per month, Sling TV users get access to a good range of channels. Because it’s CBS’s own service, you won’t be able to use it to watch the championship game next week, but this weekend all the action is on cable network TNT, which is part of the core Sling TV package. Sling TV does not have a dedicated Windows app, but is available via a web browser here.
Good luck watching March Madness on your Windows device this weekend and early next week. Remember, the first game this weekend starts at 6 PM Eastern Standard Time on the TNT cable network.
