You can watch Al Jazeera on their own website and on YouTube. But if you own a Roku box, you can also stream Al Jazeera live to your TV:

Roku, the streaming video player company, has added the live feed of Al Jazeera to its offerings. For mostly political reasons, US cable companies are reluctant to offer the Qatar-based news network. But the crisis in Egypt has shown Al Jazeera to be an excellent news organization, and many people are now calling upon their cable providers to add it. Simply put — Al Jazeera is proving the best coverage of the Egypt crisis. Stepping into the fray comes Roku, which is now offering Al Jazeera for those who have their player and are interested in the service.

Man, I love my Roku. It frees me from having cable, and the New York Times Decoder blog does a very fine job of explaining why cable companies deserve to die by asking the 10 biggest providers in the U.S. why they don’t carry Al Jazeera:

DirecTV: “We have no plans to carry Al Jazeera English on DIRECTV at this time.”

Dish Network: “We don’t carry Al Jazeera English. We do carry Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera Sport in our Arabic packages. We have no announcements about carrying any new Al Jazeera channels at this time. We always evaluate how we can enhance our line-up.”

Time Warner Cable: “We don’t have a carriage agreement with Al Jazeera English, but our customers can view this programming for free online. We remain willing to talk with them, or any other programming provider, for carriage of their network.”

Fuck those guys.

12 replies on “Want to Watch Al Jazeera?”

  3. After this season of Big Love is done I am killing my cable and just using the internet. There is so damn little I watch on cable anyway.

  5. Only problem is, the web site times out after a few minutes watching. You have to move the mouse around to prevent it from timing out.

    MicroATX Win7 system with HDMI & a 50′ HDMI cable, rendered useless.

  6. I watched it streaming live online. I did call comcast locally to ask if we had it and ask why we didnt have it as an option. AT&T U-verse in Detroit has it, but of course they have a huge middleastern expat community there.

  7. Is Al Jazeera shown in Canada yet? I know Al Jazeera was in the works trying to get it available to the canadian public.

    Watching on the web is great but not that great if you have a 4 or 5 year old computer.

  8. Never forget that both Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera English are impeccably conscious of audience.

    Al Jazeera English is aiming hard at the educated Arabic expatriate, but also at the BBC and NPR audiences. And they do a fantastic job with affect, which is why you think their coverage is invaluable.

    Then there’s original Al Jazeera. It rabble-rouses, hones in on the expected biases and ignorance of its audience, and exploits it mercilessly. It has serious problems with “facts” and “research.” (Also, look up the relationship it has with “science.”) It’s the Fox News of the Middle East.

  9. @8 Anything humans produce will have a slant, probably culturally biased, and maybe even deliberate misinformation. But I want to decide, as a reasonably rational person, what I see and hear. Cable companies feed us slop because they think we’re pigs. And if you gobble up that slop, they’re correct.

  10. Thank you Cable, for helping everyone else realize you’re irrelevant. Everything worth watching can be found on the internet, one way or the other.

  11. So glad I dumped my cable several years ago. Now if the TV is ever on, it’s either DVDs or Roku box. Life is much better without the local “news” too.

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