Technologies

NBA Streaming 2022: How to Watch, Livestream All the Christmas Day Games

From NBA League Pass to ESPN, TNT and more, you can catch every game during the 2022-2023 NBA season without cable.

The NBA’s annual all-day Christmas Day marathon has arrived. Five games, starting with the Sixers and Knicks at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) and running through Suns and Nuggets at 10:30 p.m. ET (7:30 p.m. PT). Whether you are looking to break away from the family or just relax and bond with some hoops, ABC and ESPN will have you covered. Here’s the full schedule for Christmas Day:

Philadelphia 76ers at New York Knicks, 12 p.m. ET (9 a.m. PT) on ABC, ESPN and streaming on ESPN Plus
Los Angeles Lakers at Dallas Mavericks, 2:30 p.m. ET (11:30 a.m. PT) on ABC and ESPN
Milwaukee Bucks at Boston Celtics, 5 p.m. ET (2 p.m. PT) on ABC and ESPN
Memphis Grizzlies at Golden State Warriors, 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT) on ABC and ESPN
Phoenix Suns at Denver Nuggets, 10:30 p.m. ET (7:30 p.m. PT) on ABC and ESPN

While all of these games should be easy to find even if you don’t have cable (thanks to the simulcast across both ABC and ESPN), watching and streaming the NBA is a bit more complicated the rest of the year.

Here is everything you need to know about watching and streaming the NBA this season with or without cable.

What you need to know about watching and streaming the NBA

NBA fans looking to follow the drama and stream their team’s games throughout the year will need access to a few channels to catch every second of game time. In addition to your regular regional sports network, you’ll also need ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV for nationally televised contests.

All out-of-market games will continue to air on NBA League Pass, which is a great choice if you follow a team in a different city from where you live. This year the service even got a price cut that brings the starting price for the full season (with the NBA TV channel included) down to $100. The NBA has also worked on revamping its NBA app for phones, tablets and TVs to stream games closer to real-time and cable feeds this year.

With the season in full swing, the price for regular League Pass has dropped to $70 for the remainder of the season while League Pass Premium (which allows two streams at once) is now $90.

It’s important to note that local fans aren’t able to watch their team play on League Pass, as broadcasts of these contests air exclusively on regional sports networks. National games — including playoff games on ABC, ESPN and TNT — are similarly blacked out.

While you absolutely don’t need cable to watch basketball this year, it still might be the easiest and cheapest choice depending on where you live.

Live TV streaming services vs. cable

Die-hard sports fans are beholden to regional sports networks, or RSNs, that carry the majority of the games for their local team. These RSNs are usually included in local cable packages, so most cable subscribers never have to worry about gaining access to the broadcasts on these channels: They can simply turn on the TV and watch the game.

Cord-cutting basketball fans have a tougher path. Because of rights agreements, most live TV streaming services like YouTube TV or Hulu with Live TV don’t carry many RSNs. DirecTV Stream is the exception. It has nearly every RSN, particularly the Bally Sports channels (formerly Fox Sports) offered by Sinclair, but you’ll need to spring for its $90-a-month Choice plan.

Ultimately, depending on your location, getting a cable subscription that includes ESPN, TNT and the local RSN might actually be cheaper and easier than streaming — especially if it’s bundled with the home internet you’ll likely be getting anyway.

NBA League Pass, NBA TV and blackouts

For NBA fans looking to watch a ton of out-of-market basketball, a subscription to NBA League Pass has a lot to offer. You can get the whole NBA slate for $70 for the remainder of the season, with commercials and one device, or $90 for the season with in-arena feeds instead of commercials, and the ability to watch on two devices at once. Those interested in following only a single team can buy a Team Pass for $60 for the remainder of the season.

The catch here is «out-of-market.» Most fans are in-market, meaning they follow the local team, and unfortunately for them RSNs have broadcast exclusivity in the region that they cover. That means local NBA games are blacked out on NBA League Pass.

If you’re living in Los Angeles, for example, you won’t be able to watch Lakers or Clippers games on NBA League Pass. The same goes for Knicks or Nets fans in New York, Bucks fans in Milwaukee and so on. The only way to watch most of those home team games in your home market is to get a service that has the local RSN, namely Spectrum SportsNet, Bally Sports SoCal, MSG Network, YES Network or Bally Sports Wisconsin.

Services like NBA League Pass use IP addresses to block out games in viewers’ regions — you’ll just get a black screen or message telling you it’s unavailable if you try to watch those games. That’s why League Pass is ideal for those who want to follow one or more of the teams based in cities other than their own, aka out-of-market teams, but for local fans it’s not as useful.

Some RSNs, particularly some Bally Sports networks, will allow you to pay for their channel without signing up for cable.

Bally Sports Plus: Best local alternative, if your team is included

Bally Sports Plus launched in September and offers users in its coverage area a way to stream Bally Sports channels without cable. The service costs $20 a month or $190 a year for your local Bally Sports channel, including NBA and NHL games (plus MLB games in certain areas). In markets where you normally have two different Bally Sports channels, you can choose to only buy one, or you can bundle them together for $30 a month.

Bally Sports Plus uses your billing ZIP code to determine which channels are available to you, though you’ll be able to log into your channels from anywhere in the country.

DirecTV Stream: Simplest for fans of the local team at $90 for Choice package

For those determined to watch their local basketball team without a cable or satellite TV subscription, a live TV streaming service is the best bet. While it is pricey, DirecTV Stream is the best option for most people, particularly those where the local games air on Bally Sports networks.

DirecTV requires its $90-per-month Choice package to get RSNs, though this option also includes ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV, so you should be all set for basketball. If you live in a Ballys area, you could pair a Bally Sports Plus package with something like YouTube TV and save a few bucks per month.

It’s worth noting that the Choice package will be increasing by $10 and will cost $100 per month starting in January.

YouTube TV similarly includes all the major national channels and normally runs $65 per month, while Ballys — as mentioned above — generally runs $20 to $30 per month depending on your area. While in some cases this will be $5 per month cheaper than DirecTV, you will need to switch between different apps to stream everything.

Below is a chart of all of the NBA teams in the US and their corresponding RSNs.

Note: None of the (US-based) services carry the RSN for the Toronto Raptors. Fans in the US looking to watch Pascal Siakam and co. need to use NBA League Pass to get all the games that are not either on your local RSN or on a US national broadcast.

Some key takeaways:

The RSNs above are typically only available to local subscribers. Refer to the individual service’s details below to find out if you live in a place where you can receive a particular RSN.
DirecTV Stream’s $90-a-month Choice package includes NBA TV and all of the RSNs for basketball, with the exception of NBC Sports Philadelphia. Sixers fans hoping to watch Joel Embiid pulverize the competition will have to look elsewhere.
They could jump over to FuboTV, Hulu Plus Live TV or YouTube TV, which all carry NBC Sports Philadelphia, but fans of other teams will mostly be out of luck. FuboTV only offers 10 RSNs for basketball, while Hulu Plus Live TV and YouTube TV only have six. Sling TV doesn’t offer a single RSN.

One other note: If you don’t recognize the name of some of these channels, don’t worry. What were formerly Fox Sports RSNs have been rebranded as Bally Sports, because the channels are no longer owned by Fox but Sinclair, which partnered with casino group Bally’s to rename them.

Best options for nationally broadcast games

Aside from DirecTV Stream, the odds are long that a live TV streaming service carries the RSN for your local team’s games, which makes the other four services better bets for watching nationally televised games.

Each live TV streaming service offers a free trial, allows you to cancel anytime and requires a solid internet connection. Looking for more information? Check out our live TV streaming services guide.

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Technologies

You Can’t Trust Your Car’s Driving Assistance System Yet, AAA Report Finds

Both hands-on and hands-off systems required human intervention to avoid accidents in this study.

Technologies

Google’s AI Mode Is Getting New Agentic Features for Restaurant Reservations and More

AI Mode can now do most of the work to find dinner reservations for you.

Google’s AI Mode is getting new agentic capabilities and expanding to 180 new countries and territories around the world, Google announced Thursday. AI Mode allows you to ask questions directly to Google and it’ll kick off a series of searches on your behalf. From there, it will surface relevant information to your query without the need to do any of the deep research yourself. It changes the way you search for things online, and it’s getting even smarter with this latest rollout.

Powered by DeepMind’s Project Mariner, the latest additions bring us further into the agentic AI future we’ve been promised for some time, directly from a search box. Instead of just finding things for you, AI Mode can now do things for you, like finding dinner reservations, flights or concert tickets. The update also brings personalized recommendations and link-sharing capabilities for easier collaboration with friends and family.

Most of the new features are either limited to premium AI subscribers and tucked behind an experiment in Google Labs, but it might not take long before they’re a standard part of your future search experience.

Google did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for further comment.

Restaurant recommendations

Instead of searching for restaurant reservations and then clicking on a specific website to make a reservation, AI Mode surfaces everything you need to complete the action right there. Since it’s contextually aware, you can add specificities to your query that a typical Google search wouldn’t handle well.

You can add the type of cuisine, number of people, time and location to a single query, and AI Mode will get to work and display real-time restaurant reservation time slots to choose from.

Google says it’s partnered with OpenTable, Resy, Tock, Ticketmaster and several other companies to make finding and doing what you want easier, since you won’t have to put in the legwork yourself.

This feature is currently rolling out to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US who have enabled the specific experiment in Labs.

Personalized recommendations

Another experiment that’s currently available in the US (that also needs to be enabled in Labs) is personalized recommendations. Google says it’s starting with dining-related recommendations, which implies more options will be on the way in the future.

The experiment will use your past conversations with AI Mode, places you’ve interacted with on Search and Maps to provide suggestions tailored specifically to you.

Share AI Mode links with others for collaboration

If you’re planning a vacation or a party, you can now share your research directly with others with a new link-sharing feature built into AI Mode. People who interact with the link will be sent to the last response sent by AI Mode and can continue the conversation on their own to do more exploration on the topic. The original sender of the links can manage them and delete them at any time.

For more, don’t miss everything Google announced at its Pixel 10 event.

Technologies

IPhone or Android, Here’s How to Finally Escape That Endless Group Chat

Done with a group chat? Here’s how to ghost it on any service.

One reason people prefer group chats in Apple’s iMessage or RCS texting is the extra control and security these platforms provide. If everyone in your group is using iPhones, or if you’re on Android chatting through RCS, you’ll get features like typing indicators, high-quality media sharing, and the option to mute or leave a conversation when you need fewer notifications.

The biggest advantage is privacy. Both iMessage and RCS group chats offer end-to-end encryption, so your conversations stay secure. The only time that doesn’t apply is when a thread includes a mix of iPhone and Android users, which limits encryption support.

Knowing these differences can help you manage your chats more effectively, whether you’re keeping up with friends, planning events, or just looking for a little more control over your notifications.

And with RCS support with iOS 18, group chats that include a mix of iPhone and Android participants have more features than ever — but it’s not at the level you’ll experience when a conversation is fully on iMessage or Google Messages. «Green bubble chats» from an iPhone to an Android phone can now include typing indicators, higher-quality media and easier group chats.

However, RCS conversations between the iPhone and Android phones don’t include encryption now, but it should be added in a future update. This will hopefully give these conversations a similar level of privacy that we expect when using chat services like iMessage, WhatsApp or Signal.

Regardless of how you’re in a group chat with others, you can leave a chat. Here are the steps to leave any conversation from your phone’s texting app, regardless of whether it’s happening on iMessage, RCS or as a mixed MMS chat.

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Leaving group chats on an iPhone

You can leave group conversations on your iPhone in two ways. You can either mute a chat,which keeps you in a conversation but you no longer receive notifications about it, or you can outright leave and no longer have access to the chat.

On an iPhone, open Messages and go to the chat thread you want to leave. At the top of the screen are conversation controls, a group of icons with the participants. Tap this to open a pop-up menu. As long as your conversation has four or more participants, iOS gives you the ability to tap Leave this Conversation with red text. If your chat has three or fewer participants, though, the option is grayed out, but you can tap Hide Alerts to prevent the conversation from notifying you further. Tapping Hide Alerts also allows you to mute a conversation, letting you keep access to a chat without necessarily leaving it. These steps apply to both iMessage conversations and to those over RCS.

Hide and block MMS chats on an iPhone

Although you can’t officially leave MMS group chats, you can hide or block the conversation. It’s not as good as outright leaving a conversation (other participants will still see you as in it), but you at least have no personal evidence of the conversation continuing.

On an iPhone, visit the group chat and tap the conversation controls. Instead of seeing Leave this conversation, you will see the option to Delete and Block this conversation. If you’d rather just mute the conversation instead of deleting and blocking it, you can hit Hide Alerts to mute it.

Leave group chats on an Android phone

On an Android phone using Google Messages, visit the chat thread you want to leave. Tap the conversation’s name to bring up the Group Details menu. Within this menu is the Leave Group button. Unlike with iMessage, you can leave chats with as few as three participants.

If you want to just mute notifications, tap Notifications on the Group Details screen to bring up a window with notifications controls. This includes options to make the conversation stay Silent to prevent it from ringing your chat, and if you tap Lock Screen, a pop-up menu will give you the option to prevent notifications. Tap Don’t show notifications at all to enable.

Hide and block MMS chats on an Android phone

On an Android phone with Google Messages, follow the same steps to access options for controlling notifications. This includes visiting the MMS chat thread and then tapping either the name of the conversation or the names of the participants at the top to bring up the Group Details menu. You won’t see a Leave Group option like you did with an RCS thread, but you do get the same ability to tap Notifications to access controls for hiding the conversation. This includes the same options for turning the conversation to Silent and to select Don’t show notifications at all.

SMS vs. MMS vs. RCS

SMS stands for Short Message Service and debuted in 1992. Text messages are limited to 160 characters. MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service and supports sending photos, videos or other files and messages longer than 160 characters. MMS supports a group of people chatting in a single conversation thread, while SMS can text multiple people at once but is sent as individual messages to each person. RCS, which launched 15 years ago, is short for Rich Communication Services and can show typing indicators, read receipts and has end-to-end encryption.

While cross-platform chat apps like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram have better controls for conversations, encryption and privacy, regardless of the type of phone participants are using, they don’t support SMS, MMS or RCS. That’s why the default messaging app on most phones is still widely used, even if it means that a group chat is on a less feature-filled, unsecured standard like MMS.