NBA League Pass Arrives on Apple TV In Australia
After spending a year or so staring at the MLB & NHL apps on my Apple TV wishing there was an NBA equivalent, the NBA has finally released an NBA Apple TV app.
Watching NBA League Pass on a computer, tablet or mobile is great but often it restricts the use of that device and chews up major battery usage…plus it can be a pain to connect and disconnect everytime.
The new NBA app on Apple TV is ridiculously easy to use so lets have a look at what it does (bare with me these photos are from my phone).
Start up your Apple TV and you should notice the new NBA app next to the NHL & MLB Apps.
Once you click the app you are taken to the welcome screen with options to watch:
- Todays Games
- Standings
- Game Highlights
- Settings
The ‘Todays Games’ section contains Live and archived games from the current season with scores which you can turn off.
Watch out though as they are in US time so the games shown as today are really tomorrows games (it is one day in front of our time).
Its a bit hard to show the quality but I personally feel it is much better quality and much more reliable than streaming via Airplay from laptop or tablet.
Apple TV automatically uses the best stream available so I am unsure if there is anyway to lower the quality if you are worried about bandwidth.
You can view the conference standings and team scores at any time via the ‘Standings’ menu option.
…and watch highlights, press conferences and more at any stage via the ‘Hiighlights’ menu option.
I’m not sure if I did something previously but this all just worked automatically for me. Perhaps it was because I have the NBA Game Time app on both my iPhone and iPad with my full League Pass subscription.
Either way I was stoked when I saw this and have already watched 2 full games with no problems.
Let us know what you think of the app and if you had any problems getting it setup below.
Click here to get Apple TV now
Click here to get NBA League Pass
Click here to get the NBA Game Time Apps
Store
Andy, this sounds too good to be true. I know nothing about this so can you answer a few questions:
1. I currently just watch league pass on my laptop and thats all I have (no iphone etc.). To watch it on appleTV can I just buy the apple TV unit, plug it in to the TV, and that’s it, it will work? How do you sign in to league pass though?
2. Is there any ongoing cost to this, or is it just buying the unit?
Hey Jarrad.
Yep just buy Apple TV, plug it in, login with your itunes account.
Once it is setup you just open the NBA app and login with your League Pass info and bam..instant 24/7 NBA goodness!!
Thats it no ongoing costs or anything.
Just make sure that your TV has a spare HDMI to connect the Apple TV with.
Slight correction here, you don’t actually log in using your iTunes account, rather your League Pass username & password.
I’ve also taken the stand against watching games live anymore (as much I love watching live sport). I CANNOT stand watching those ads for the All-Star game and NBA cares repeat over and over and over throughout the live broadcast. I’m switching to watching the archived game, which is a real shame to be honest.
thanks Andy
excuse my ignorance, I am not tech savy at all, have a few more simple questions.
1) you say to log in with your itunes account, I don’t have one. So I assume I would set one up (any cost to this?), but how does this connect up with my league pass subscription? Do I need to connect them in some way?
2) obviously there’s no keyboard here so how does that work?
3) when you’re watching it, is it easy to fat forward through parts of the game etc.?
Thanks mate
The quality on Apple TV is amazing for live games in HD quality…..However, when you want to watch replays, some archived games are very poor quality. It doesnt say anywhere on the ATV, but the quality looks to be at the lowest quality which is 400Kbps.
I can’t find the option to change quality which is very frustrating. I’m sensing that the quality is changed automatically and cannot be adjusted. When i log back into my laptop the quality is fine, but I do not want to connect my laptop to the TV all the time.
Only reason why I bought Apple TV was for the NBA.