8 ways to watch, hear, follow Phillies live

Many are the ways these days to follow Phillies games in progress. Now's a good time to review, with tonight's season opener scheduled for 7:10 p.m. in Atlanta. The fullest (and most obvious) experiences are listed first.

1. Go to a game. Home or away, a good place to start is the Phillies schedule. Click the T for tickets for a given date. Works for road games, too. Click on the asterisk for information about giveaways and other promotions.

2. Watch on your TV. This week alone the Phillies will be on PHL17, ESPN2, The Comcast Network (TCN), Comcast SportsNet (CSN), and the MLB Network. ESPN and Fox also get into the act this month. To figure out where to watch, see the Phillies broadcast schedule.

3. Watch on somebody else's TV. Here's a list of Philadelphia sports bars.

4. Watch ESPN and ESPN2 broadcasts on a digital device. If an ESPN channel is carrying the game, the game will be streamed online at ESPN.com or through the free WatchESPN app. As of today, the only Phillies games scheduled to be on ESPN were tonight's (on ESPN2), the 7:05 p.m. home game vs. the Mets on April 8 (ESPN), and the 8:05 p.m. home game vs. the Cardinals on April 21.

5. Watch on a digital device using Slingbox. Basically, Slingbox is a device that hooks up to your TV and forwards shows to PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones anywhere. The device costs $180 to $300, but there's no monthly fee, according to Slingbox.com.You'll need a cable subscription to view any cable programming.

6. Watch on MLB.TV while you're away or after a delay. Major League Baseball offers digital streaming video subscriptions, but local TV stations own the broadcast rights, so don't expect MLB.TV to let you watch the Phillies live, home or away, on computers or smartphones while you are in the Philadelphia market. Phillies fans who reside well outside the region, or are visiting another city, can see the games live. Those within the market can see the games on a device after a 90-minute delay. They can, of course, view games of other teams live. More on MLB.TV.

6. Listen on a radio. All games seem to be broadcast on both 1210 WPHT (AM) and 94 WIP (FM), with many also broadcast in Spanish on WTTM 1680 (AM). See Phillies broadcast schedule.

7. Listen on a digital device. The local radio broadcasts of games are usually blocked from their stations' online live streams. A $19.99 subscription to MLB.com Gameday Audio, however, gives access "to all 2,430 regular season games LIVE or on demand with no blackouts."

8. Follow box score updates online.  Many sports websites offer a free scoreboard service, where you can see results of every pitch, with a running compilation of notes and stats. Philly.com offers box-score updates for every game, plus frequent live chats. See Philly.com's Phillies page. For more teams, check out the likes of MLB's Scorebard page or ESPN's.

Know of another legal method? Contact staff writer Peter Mucha at 215-854-4342 or pmucha@phillynews.com.