USER GUIDE TO HOOPZ-1

WELCOME AND A BRIEF HISTORY
HOOPZ-1 is your 24-7 source for links to Internet sites that have links for downloading completed NBA games and that have links to live NBA game streams. This User Guide is absolutely essential is if you want to cut down on the large amount of trial and error learning otherwise necessary for watching games. In other words, you will save yourself a lot of time and a lot of grief if you absorb the information in this guide.

Hoopz-1 began in 2007 as the economy melted down and the depression settled in. We wanted to share a little of the magic of the Internet and to provide some basketball fans and players with links to streams of NBA basketball games at no additional charge beyond what they have already paid for their computer, their internet connection, their electricity, their rent, their mortgage, and so forth, At one time, believe it or not, all television was free in the United States, and the networks were satisfied with the huge amounts of money they got from advertisers. But now the greed of huge corporations is off the charts and so there isn't enough free television any more.

Hoopz-1 does not mess around with anything less than links to sites that have full, complete games either live or downloadable, so this is a site for serious basketball fans and players only. We don't due mixtapes and outtakes. Those are a dime a dozen, but if you are serious about basketball, you need to watch a whole game or at least a half of a game from time to time, especially playoff games, which we give top priority to.

In 2007 and 2008, many, many hours were spent in trial and error drudgery fashion, in ignorance of the "overall reality," to try to provide useful links in a well organized presentation. In the early months, we grossly overestimated the quality of other people's work in this area and so we grossly underestimated how much we would have to do to fulfill the mission of Hoopz-1. More and more it was revealed that things were not working the way we assumed at first they would. It turns out for example that there are many sites that appear at first to be helpful for watching NBA games but turn out to be nothing more than worthless advertising sites.

We thought at first we could provide direct links to games but later we realized that (a) that would be doing what everyone else does and (b) that often multiple links are needed for watching a game and that there is no such thing as enough or too many links. The solution was obvious: Hoopz-1 would become the site that links to all the links that exist. No single site has all the links, but Hoopz-1 is the closest thing to that because we link to all the different sites that have links that actually sometimes work.

In the early months of Hoopz-1 it was thouoght that it was going to be possible to provide links to click and play streams for completed games. It turns out this is not possible for multiple reasons. If you want to watch a completed game in full, the one and only reasonable way you can do that is to download the game to your hard drive.

2010 CHANGE OF FOCUS
2009-10 was a very tough year for watching live games; it was more difficult than ever, although it was still often possible to watch live games if you were determined to click as many dozens of times as necessary using the resources here at Hoopz-1. But given the high level of irritation and the huge amount of "clicking around" that is necessary to watch a game live, we decided in May 2010 to give Hoopz-1 a dual editorial focus. From now on Hoopz-1 will provide about as many resources for downloading completed games as we do for watching live games.

If you want to avoid all the frustrations of trying (and only usually succeeding rather than always succeeding) to watch live games, you can instead download games. You should download a game as soon as possible after it is played, since files are going to be removed due to inactivity sooner or later. Rarely will files be removed due to copyright, however, which makes downloading games a reasonable objective.

In summary, Hoopz-1 will going forward have a dual focus: watching games live and downloading completed games.

HOOPZ-1 SOLVES BIG PROBLEMS THAT COME UP FOR WATCHING GAMES LIVE
(1) We link to every obscure and hard to find diamond in the rough website that we can find that offers streams of live games and links for downloads of completed games. We are always on the lookout for new sites because we know that the sites we have found sometimes have the goods and sometimes don't. And the sites themselves will come and go.

(2) We keep up with the constant changes in the sites where you can watch games, including sites disappearing completely.

(3) Because the situation changes literally from week to week, Hoopz-1 will not have the time to post instructions on how to use every site or program, and nor will we very often have time to give extremely detailed descriptions on what each site offers. However, we will as time permits give you instructions on how to use certain extremely important sites and programs. And we will, by listing the sites in rank order, give you our best opinion on which are the most important and best sites and programs.

(4) We provide you with access to more than one stream choice for many games, meaning that you can choose a different stream if one is stopping and starting too much, if one is not a sharp enough picture, or if a stream is overwhelmed with pop-up and other ads so you can't really dig through the ads to get to the game. Streams sometimes simply stop right during the game! So for numerous reasons, you need Hoopz-1 to make sure you have a backup in case your original game watching plans turn to garbage.

(5) We have NBA scores, schedule and standings widgets so that you don't have to go elsewhere to see what games are on tap and what the latest scores are.

MORE REASONS WHY YOU REALLY, REALLY NEED THE RESOURCES HERE AT HOOPZ-1
With links to basketball streams you can forget about reliability. Sometimes links to games work and sometimes they don't. When you click on a link, the odds that you will actually be able to watch a game in full with that single link are no more than roughly 25%. For the majority of games, you need more than one link to be assured of watching it, the more the better. Hoopz-1 indexes most of the different links that exist.

Roughly one half of links lead to nothing at all either because (1)the stream is not up and running as planned, or because (2)any of dozens of possible technical problems, or because (3) the stream has been terminated by site moderators or administrators acting on behalf of the NBA, which wants you to pay big money to watch streams of games.

And the problems do not end when you click on a link and it happens to be one of the roughly 1/2 of such links that lead to a stream that appear at first to be working. Often you will at first think you have a working stream but you will find out soon that you don't really have one. Then there will be streams that simply terminate before the game is over.

So with basketball game streams there is no quality control and no one is responsible if a stream does not work well or does not work at all. Very few streams are high quality. Streams often stop for buffering so much that they are close to or actually worthless. Yet another problem is picture quality. It is rarely good, and sometimes the stream picture is so blurry that it is not really worth it to watch a game using that stream. you can still listen to the audio though.

Another problem is that even when you have a watchable stream you may not be able to see the whole game. Often a game simply stops playing during the game. This will often be in the 1st half, but can also happen in the 2nd half, and even in the 4th quarter. Obviously, this is a huge frustration, especially if you don't have a backup from here at Hoopz-1 to watch the rest of the game with.

NUMERICAL BREAKDOWN OF GAME LINK RELIABILITY
--Roughly 50% of links appear to be working at first
--Roughly 50% of links are completely dead right from the start

AMONG STREAMS THAT APPEAR AT FIRST TO BE WORKING
--Roughly 20% are unwatchable because the stream is overwhelmed by numerous advertisements. Geeks and nerds now have the capability to ccompletely overwhelm streams with advertisements and some of them do just that.

--Roughly 20% are unwatchable due to lagging (continual buffering)

--Roughly 10% are unwatchable due to extreme blurriness of the picture (you can't really see much of anything)

--Roughly 50% are usable

AMONG USABLE STREAMS
--Roughly 20% terminate before the end of the game.

--Roughly 80% last for the whole game.

SUMMARY CALCULATION
The odds that one single link will enable you to watch the whole game are roughly:

.50 X .50 X .80 =.20

So there is only roughly a 20% chance (one in five) that a single link will be enough to watch a game. Also, you can calculate that the average number of links needed to watch a game is roughly three.

THE SOLUTION TO THIS MESS
The solution is obvious: you need multiple links for the same game. Games typically have anywhere from two to twenty links for them (with more for playoff games) and the more you have the better. But since no single site has all the links, Hoopz-1 is very necessary. Go to the applicable directory area of Hoopz-1 and use the links there as many times as necessary to be able to actually watch a game. Keep a window to Hoopz-1 open during the game for when your stream goes down so that you can get another one up and running.

OTHER PROBLEMS HOOPZ-1 SOLVES
Most of the Internet sites that have links to streams and/or the streams themselves of live NBA games appear and disappear in just a few months or at most a few years time. Hoopz-1 promises to keep our directory updated on the out with the old and in with the new principle.

In the 2009-10 season, a new major problem with basketball streams appeared. Some streams are so "infested" with advertisements that the ads literally overwhelm the stream and you can't really watch the game with that stream. You have to go through half a dozen or more pop up ads and close several other ads embedded in the screen before you can see the stream at all. And then you find you can not go to full screen because every time you try to go to full screen another pop up ad comes up. In other words, full screen has effectively been disabled. If you see this, GIVE UP and come back to Hoopz-1 to find a real way to watch the game. You can not watch a basketball game when the stream has been saturated with that much advertising!

LIVE BROADCAST PROGRAMS AND PLUG-INS
Aside from trying to watch NBA games live using Internet streams, another way to watch a basketball game is with a downloaded peer to peer broadcast program. The majority of these programs are Chinese and you will often, but not always, end up with the actual Chinese broadcast of the game (with the announcing in Chinese) if you watch a game this way. In this scenario you can turn the sound off and pick up the free NBA audio of the game.

A LARGE NUMBER OF PROGRAMS AND PLUG-INS
There are many Chinese live broadcast programs that you can download and one notable American one called Veetle. Most American live broadcasts do not require you to download a program because they are directly streamed on the Internet and will play in Flash Player. However, the American ones may require you to authorize an "active X control" or possibly some other type of "browser plug-in". Overall, the sheer number of Chinese programs and American browser plug-ins you are asked to download can make your head spin. Everyone seems to want to stream basketball games (and everything else) using a different broadcasting application.

The biggest and most reliable broadcasting applications often have enough staff that they sooner or later implement and enforce a ban on live basketball games due to the NBA enforcing its copyright. The Chinese Sopcast operation did this during 2009, which ended Sopcast being an excellent source of live NBA games. Now you will seldom be able to watch a live game on Sopcast.

Every year, there seems to be at least a couple of new "program flavors of the moment" which are either supposedly or actually necessary to watch games. The problem is that you don't know in advance which is which. Some programs will not produce watchable games and some will. These are going to be (mostly Chinese) programs that you have never heard of before. But then if you download one or more programs you never had before, you often find:

(a) they don't work right in the first place and/or

(b) they are partially or even completely abandoned as ways to broadcast NBA games long before the season is over and/or

(c) the number of games available on that particular program turns out to be very small

Hoopz-1 recommends that you limit yourself to at the most two programs for watching basketball on a computer at a time. Uninstall programs that are not giving you few or no games. Hoopz-1 currently recommends Veetle and PPLive. There are links to these in the Programs Directory section of Hoopz-1. Other programs are generally less needed and, in any event, we can not assure you that other programs do not import some kind of spyware and/or adware onto your computer, whereas we are reasonably certain that Veetle and PPLive do not import anything bad onto your computer PROVIDED you are careful to say no to any optional toolbar or anything of that sort when you are installing these and other programs. (Never rush a program installation because if you do you might miss something that amounts to adware that you needed to refuse but you didn't because you were in too much of a hurry.)

HOW TO USE THE HOOPZ-1 DIRECTORY TO SOURCES OF LIVE GAMES
This Directory is one of the very most important components of Hoopz-1. Each site in the Hoopz-1 Directory to Sources of Live Games has a different mix of types of sources. Also, each site linked to has a different pattern of quantity and quality (reliability).

In general and all in all, trying to watch something on your computer is much more difficult stuff than most people would think. Whether or not they intended it, geeks and nerds always end up with an overall situation that is more complicated than it needs to be. If you don't know what you are doing, and/or if you don't have a large number of possible sources at your disposal, you are not going to be watching many games, that's for sure.

BEST TYPE OF LINK: SIMPLE CLICK AND PLAYS
The best type of link is one where you simply click it and the game stream comes up (using a Flash Player that you almost certainly already have on your computer). In general, the more you have to do other than "click and play", the lesser the reliablity and the greater the risk of damage to your computer system.

NEXT BEST TYPE OF LINK: CLICK AND PLAYS REQUIRING A BROWSER ADD-ONIn some cases a "plug-in" or "active-x control" is required in association with a click and play. Those are known as types of browser add-ons. These are generally safer and more reliable than full scale programs. But these are not completely safe by any means.

LINKS THAT ARE NOT AS RELIABLE AND NOT AS SAFE: SPECIAL PROGRAMS REQUIRED
In some cases a program is needed to view the game streams. Always remember that if you install a program it may or may not work and also remember that the program may possibly come with spyware, adware, or even possibly malware. Moreover, many of the programs are Chinese and are very difficult to use if you don't know the Chinese language.

Again, click and play links are preferable to links that require a special program to be installed on the computer.

UNRELIABLE AND UNSAFE LINKS -- MARKETING GIMMICKS
If you come on some kind of marketing gimmick where you are supposed to pick something to sign up for, I would immediately move on. I would not participate in anything like that if I were you. Whether or not any of the offers are really worth anything or are nothing more than scams, by the time you "complete the offer, the game will be half over or whatever. Moreover, there is a good chance that the game will not actually play even if you do complete one of the "offers".

ABSOLUTE WORST TYPE OF LINK TOOLBAR INSTALLATION REQUIRED
Anytime you are bribed to install a toolbar you are likely looking at spyware or malware. Never install a toolbar you have never heard of because you have been promised some reward (like being able to watch a game). If you fall for this, you probably will have spyware or malware, and you probably will not ever be able to watch the game!

LINK SOURCES VERSUS LIVE STREAM BROADCASTING SOURCES
The listings of links can not and are not organized by type of source but rather by the two main types of sites that have the links to sources. One type of site, which we call "Link Sources", consists of sites that provide links to streams scheduled to operate for particular games. (But always remember that often scheduled streams will not turn out to be actual streams, thus the need for multiple possibilities).

The other type of site, which we call "Live Stream Broadcasting Sources", consists of live broadcasting sites in general, which sometimes have live streams to games. You have to use the search functions at those sites to try to find live game streams. The two big problems with these types of sites are (1) often the search does not work well and it is very difficult to determine whether there is a game or not somewhere on the site and (2) when you go to a "broadcast" of a live game, there is often just a static ad rather than a stream. If the ad claims there is a game and you follow that link, very often there will not be a game but just more ads and possibly a scam operation and/or spyware of some type.

For each of the two listings the rank order is according to our best estimation of how useful each site is. But this is an art and not a science and, moreover, the situation changes from week to week if not even by day to day. Therefore, do not consider the rank order as all that important.

Link sources very recently discovered are considered unreliable until proven and so are not listed. But we do separately list both proven and "long-shot" broadcast stream sources (since those are social sites and you might possibly get lucky by finding someone who is actually streaming a game).

Always remember, true reliability, as discussed in the introduction, is not available anywhere, but in general, the following listings are from greter reliability to lower reliability.

YOU NEED TO STRONGLY CONSIDER DOWNLOADING RATHER THAN WATCHING LIVE
Given all the problems and so given the sheer amount of work it is to successfully watch a NBA game live and also given as a result that you will often miss at least some of the game, everyone needs to strongly consider downloading completed games. As stated above, Hoopz-1 beginning May 2010 is going to be working as hard on providing resources for downloading completed games as we are on providing resources for watching games live.

There are three main places to hunt down the downloads:

1. Look for "readers" on the main page. Readers are panels with links that are in white letters. When you click on any of the entries, a short description appears. You click the title again and then the place where you will find the download appears. Since the description is redundant in this case, you can bypass it by clicking the icon to the right of the title, which will also take you to the place where the download(s) will be.

2. Go to the "Download NBA Basketball Games" page. This is where the directory to all reasonably good sources of links to downloadable games will be. Hoopz-1 however will not link to anything which has more than a trivial probability of providing adware, spyware, and/or malware along with or instead of the games. For example and most importantly, links to sites that provide torrents will NEVER be in the directory because torrents carry by far the highest risk of adware, spywere, and malware. So in fact the purpose of the directory is to provide as many links as possible but to not include links to sites where the risk is just not worth it.

3. Check out the blog posts. We might from time to time directly post links for downloading games right in Hoopz-1 blog posts. We will do this mostly for playoff games and just once in a great while for regular season games. We do NOT have the resources for complete coverage even for playoff games. We probably will be able to provide direct links for downloading the NBA Championship though.

Also in blog posts every once in a while there might be links for downloading basketball videos other than completed games. We might ocassionally have basketball movies and basketball documentaries.