A school from the state of North Carolina is headed to the Final Four today, as ACC rivals Duke and NC State battle it out in the Elite Eight. It’s the third time they’ve played this month, with Duke handedly winning the first one but NC State getting revenge en route to the ACC tournament title.
The game is starting very soon, at 5:05 p.m. ET today, and will be televised on CBS. But if you want to watch March Madness online, we have several different ways you can watch a live stream of the game for free.
Paramount+ is the simplest way to watch a live stream of NC State vs Duke. Though it’s a streaming service mainly known for its library of TV shows and movies, you can also watch your local CBS channel live if you sign up for the “with SHOWTIME” option.
There are actually two different ways you can get Paramount+ with SHOWTIME for free. The first and most obvious is through the Paramount website or app. The second is through Amazon Prime Channels, which ultimately gives you all the same live and on-demand content, but you watch on the Amazon digital platforms instead. Both of these options come with a separate seven-day free trial.
Options No. 3 through 5 are all live-TV streaming services. YouTube TV (“Base Plan”), DirecTV Stream (“Entertainment” plan or above) and Fubo (“Pro” plan) all include CBS live in most markets (as well as ESPN and ABC if you also want to watch the women’s Elite Eight games today and tomorrow), and they all let you watch for free when signing up–Fubo for seven days, and YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream each for five days.
Our last option–the sixth different way you can watch NC State vs Duke for free–is the March Madness Live app/website. Every tournament game streams live here, and you can watch for free for three hours before you’ll need to sign in to a cable provider to keep watching.
All of those streaming services are only going to work if you’re in the United States, unless you use them with a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN can hide your IP address/location and connect you to a digital server in the United States (or most other countries), making it seem as though you’re physically located there. This then lets you access content that would otherwise be blocked due to your location.
NordVPN would be our recommendation. It’s by far one of best VPN services you can get, and while there’s no free trial, you can still try it out risk-free thanks to their 30-day money-back offer.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.