Where to watch the 2009 presidential inauguration online

Want to watch Obama get sworn in live on Tuesday but won’t have access to a TV? Here’s a listing of some places you can watch online. I’m listing a bunch of options, since some of them may not properly anticipate demand and you may have to try multiple sites before you get a working feed. All of these streams require Flash, unless otherwise noted. If you don’t know what Flash is, you probably have it.

Obama will be sworn in around noon Eastern time on January 20th, but the broadcasts will begin hours before that, so tune in whenever you want.

If you’re reading this after the event and are looking for archived video, I’m sure you can find it on many of the same sites listed below. Obama’s YouTube channel is also probably a good place to look.

The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies
This feed will be closed captioned.

Hulu

CNN
Their player wanted me to install some Octoshape plugin when I tested it; it took a while and even crashed Safari on my Mac. It did work after restarting my browser though. There’s no direct link to the feed available yet, so I’d recommend going to their video page and then clicking on “Live Video” at the top of the screen.

Ustream.TV
You can also watch on your iPhone. (requires WiFi)

Joost

C-SPAN
Windows Media (Flip4Mac works)
RealPlayer

Current

MSNBC

Thanks to CNET for a bunch of the links.

My plan? I’ll be bringing in my antenna to work and hauling our game room’s HDTV into a larger conference room so we can watch in HD from one of the local networks. In case the antenna doesn’t cooperate, I’ll have my laptop connected to the TV as well, ready to turn to one of the above sites as a backup.

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