NOTE: This post is continually updated as the fight progresses. Working SOPCast Channels are in bold.

This post may have come too early, but Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao had been making all the necessary preparations for the fight. He started out training in the Philippines, then later moved on to US to continue the remaining weeks of his practice. He is now on the way to the next challenge of his life. He is about to face Miguel Cotto for the upcoming boxing fight this November 14.

The best and sure way to view these Manny Pacquiao fights real time is through HBO’s pay-per-view.

However, there are some occasional live feeds that are shown for entirely free (Justin.tv, UStream.tv, SOPcast, etc.) around the web for those who want to watch the show real time. These feeds may not be as reliable as the one with HBO especially if these fight takes long.

As of this time Justin.tv returns “we’ve reached streams for your country error”, and UStream.tv doesn’t have any live streams online yet. The only one that is ready is through the SOPcast channels.

How to setup SOPCast?

1. Download and install SOPCast software from the SOPCast website: http://www.sopcast.com/download/
2. Choose anonymous login to enter the client. If you have a personal firewall, you may need to disable that temporarily (which I did in my case).
3. View the fight by entering sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/24267 in the address box of the client.

That setup was tested on a PC using Windows XP 64-bit and a 1 Mbps internet connection.

Other SOPCast links to try:

• sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/69756
• sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/24267
• sop://broker1.sopcast.com:3912/6002
• sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/7524
• sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/69756
• sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/51813
• sop://broker1.sopcast.com:3912/77434

Unlike Justin.tv and UStream.tv, watching through SOPCast should get better as more people are viewing it. It works like torrents, in which the videos are “seeded” between several computers.

And check out these links, in case you can’t view SOPCasts!

http://ilemi.com/

UStream.tv ongoing fights

Hat tip to JorgeJee.