Streaming Hockey TV Broadcasts (legal links only)

Loosie · Post by **Loosie** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 1:44 pm

I know the CBC HNIC games are streamed as well http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/

Post by **archibalduk** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 9:11 pm

archibalduk wrote:https://europe.espn360.com/sport/NHL.aspx

ESPN360 is now available worldwide except Russia, Italy and the Middle East. This is great news for people outside of North America as it will enable you to watch live and archived NHL games throughout the season.

What is ESPN360?

https://europe.espn360.com/help.aspx?he ... #general_5

ESPN360 delivers the most comprehensive video coverage of North American sport in Europe. With free access to highlights, news and analysis from a diverse range of sports including Baseball, College Football, Basketball, NHL and MLS there's plenty of action to choose from. There's also a premium section featuring live streaming of NHL and NCAA matches, as well as all your favourite ESPN shows, from Pardon The Interruption to Around the Horn. Plus you get a fully interactive experience with real time news ticker, extended press conferences and more. ESPN360 will change the way you watch sports online.
Basically, it will let you watch the NHL on your computer. They're charging £6.99 for a one day pass and £69.99 for the entire season (that's over 1000 live NHL games). I'm definitely very tempted to subscribe for the year but I think I'll try the £6.99 one day pass just to see how good the quality is (I'm not paying all that money for a low-quality, laggy stream!). I'll let you know how I get on...

Btw, I know this belongs in the TV streams topic but I thought I'd post it separately for those of you that don't normally look in that topic. I'll merge this into the main topic in a few days time...

Thanks to Raymondo's info, I've decided to go ahead and subscribe for the season. First, however, I have to apply for a MasterCard so that I can pay for it. So now I play the waiting game...

Post by **archibalduk** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 7:15 pm

Hooray I've subscribed to ESPN360!

I have to say the quality isn't bad (750kb/s) - certainly watchable on fullscreen. But I'd have thought that what with many users having a decent speed broadband connection these days, they could provide a higher quality stream. Still, being able to watch any NHL game I want live (as well as an archive of all NHL games played so far this season) more than makes up for it - particularly now that I can watch every Bruins game and I'm not limited to one game per week (by the way, it looks like Channel Five are starting to show the NHL again - starting from tomorrow night, iirc).

What's even better is that I don't have to wait until my fiancee finishes watching what she wants on the TV - I can watch it whenever I want on my laptop instead

Raymondo316 · Post by **Raymondo316** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 9:06 pm

archibalduk wrote:Hooray I've subscribed to ESPN360!

I have to say the quality isn't bad (750kb/s) - certainly watchable on fullscreen.

The archived game quality is at 750kbs but you will find the live stream are far better quality!! more closer to 1500kbs

People on HFboards were complaining to ESPN why we didnt get same 1500kbs quality like Center Ice Online in the states etc then suddenly the quality improved a lot

As long as you at least have goodish connection you shouldn't have any problems with buffering/freezing

Post by **archibalduk** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 1:32 pm

Ah I see. Sadly because of the time difference, I won't be able to watch many live games. However, most weekends there are games that start earlier in the day in the US (= evening in the UK) so I'll be able to catch some of the higher quality streams. It's a shame they couldn't increase the quality of the archived games when there aren't any live games being streamed (i.e. when they have some bandwidth spare) - if it was just a little higher quality (i.e. 1000kb/s) then it would be so much better to watch.

Post by **archibalduk** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 8:48 pm

Raymondo, are you getting any lagging issues with ESPN360 at the moment? Friday and Saturday the streams were flawless with absolutely no pausing for buffering. However, yesterday the video would pause every 4 or 5 minutes to buffer and right now it is even worse.

Raymondo316 · Post by **Raymondo316** » Tue Nov 11, 2008 1:27 am

archibalduk wrote:Raymondo, are you getting any lagging issues with ESPN360 at the moment? Friday and Saturday the streams were flawless with absolutely no pausing for buffering. However, yesterday the video would pause every 4 or 5 minutes to buffer and right now it is even worse.

Very weird that i didn't have any problems yesterday or today, im presently watching Tampa/Washington live & its running smooth as anything no buffering/freezing

You aint left any torrents open or downloading anything why watching ?? You tried speaking to there support people ?? Ive only had lagging problems once a few weeks back when pretty much every team was playing at same time (server overload i imagine) lasted for awhile then back to normal

Other then that ive had no problems whats so ever with the service

Post by **archibalduk** » Tue Nov 11, 2008 7:34 pm

Nope I wasn't running or downloading anything other than watching an archived stream. I spoke to the support people on their live chat page and determined that it seems to be a problem with my ISP. They directed me to a page that tests your bandwidth ( http://www.testmy.net/dl-97 ) and I found I only had about 0.2mb/s bandwidth.

I just tried to watch the live Philadelphia game and have encountered the same problem. Again, the bandwidth testing site says I only have about 0.2mb/s. I'm going to phone TalkTalk (my ISP) and see what's going on. Clearly something at their end has been restricting since Sunday.

Post by **archibalduk** » Wed Nov 12, 2008 8:44 am

My ISP have pointed me in the direction of a more reliable speed test: http://www.talktalkmembers.com/speedtest

They have asked me to run the test this morning, again at noon and then in the evening to see what my line speed is. If my speed is poor then they will give me more bandwidth to remedy the issue. By coincidence I have a day off work to wait for a delivery (a new router as our old one decided to stop working - lucky I had a spare cheap modem in the meantime) so I can run the tests today.

I tried last night when I wanted to watch the PHI v NYI game and I had a connection of 360kb/s which is nowhere near the 8mb/s connection I'm supposed to have. I've just tried it this morning and it says it's 7.209mb/s which is much closer to what I expect. Perhaps TalkTalk cannot cope with the peak internet usage in the evening anymore. However, it used to work fine...

crosby87 · Post by **crosby87** » Wed Nov 26, 2008 4:43 pm

I was going to pay for ESPN360 back in England, but then I moved.. and found <link removed - Archi>

Post by **Shadd666** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 11:36 pm

crosby87 wrote:I was going to pay for ESPN360 back in England, but then I moved.. and found <removed>

Not 100% sure this one is legal... Maybe, maybe not... I'm not a lawyer ^^ However, i use it for a while and it has a very good quality

Franck · Post by **Franck** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 11:48 pm

crosby87 wrote:I was going to pay for ESPN360 back in England, but then I moved.. and found <snip>

That one is definetly not legal.

Not saying it is illegal either though as online streaming is pretty much a grey area as far as I know.

Post by **archibalduk** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:03 pm

Sorry, I've removed that link due to its questionable legality.

I don't know any specific law relating to television but I studied contract law as part of my law degree. When you buy a DVD, CD, computer game, or subscribe to television, you are not purchasing the actual film, music, game, TV show, etc, but you are purchasing a right to view/listen/play the material. Thus the author maintains ownership of the game/show/film/music and you just have a licence to use it. In other words, when you buy a computer game, you don't own the code, you just have the right to install the game and play it. Thus if you stream video over the internet without a licence from the TV company, it is unlawful and they may sue you. Whether it is illegal (this is not the same as being unlawful) depends on whether the country has any criminal law governing reproducing TV shows, music, etc. As far as I'm aware, many European countries and North America have laws governing this.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I'm not comfortable about allowing users to produce links to sites that stream hockey games without a licence from the relevant league (e.g. NHL) or TV company (e.g. ESPN, Fox, BBC).

I'd highly recommend people check out www.espn360.com - it provides lawful streams of every single NHL game. It is provides good, watchable quality, isn't laggy, and has an archive of the season's games. It's only £60 for the entire season and so it's darn good value.

If you're looking for free streams, www.nhl.tv (run by the NHL) provides a fantastic highlights service. It shows all of the key moments (not just goals, but also hits, shots, fights, etc). Also, there are several Canadian Junior teams that provide free live streams of their games.

Post by **archibalduk** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:08 pm

Hmmm seems ESPN360's archived games for the past 48 hours aren't up yet. I try clicking on the links but it comes up with an error saying that it can't find the video ("Windows Media Player cannot find the file"). All archived games from before Calgary at St Louis (6 Dec @ 2am CET) work, though.

I want to watch the Bruins game

deathknot · Post by **deathknot** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:56 am

looking for european links

Post by **archibalduk** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 10:18 pm

Today I renewed my season's subscription for NHL Center Ice on ESPPN 360. They have improved the design of the site and will be offering higher quality feeds from this coming season. Last season the quality was good enough to view full screen but it wasn't great. Hopefully the increase in quality will make a big difference to the picture.

Another piece of good news for those of us that subscribe is that they're going to be making the on-demand archived games available within three hours after the game has finished (last season it could take up to 48 hours). This means I can watch games the following evening UK time.

The only bad news is that the price has gone up from £59.99 to £69.99. But it's still good value for over 1000 NHL games live and on-demand!

Reynaldo28 · Post by **Reynaldo28** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 12:09 am

Leafs @ Penguins on now http://mapleleafs.nhl.tv/team/console.j ... 6&id=46703

Post by **archibalduk** » Sat Oct 10, 2009 11:40 am

ESPN 360 is big improvement over last season. The quality of the streams last year were watchable but not great. This year they have really improved the quality and now the colour is a lot better and you can see more detail. I believe the quality has increased from 1mb/s to 2mb/s so presumably it has doubled. I connected my laptop to my 37" LCD HDTV and the games looked very good (not quite broadcast quality but still very good). I tried doing the same thing with last years games but it was unwatchable when stretched to such a size. This year it probably looks better on my 37" screen that my laptop screen. Oh, and the sound quality is much much better.

They seemed to be encountering problems in the first week or so with putting the games in their on-demand archive. However, it seems they have this fully working now and the games appear to be available on demand within three hours of the game being completed. I've only watched a couple of live games so far; I haven't tested out their on-demand archive yet.

I was pretty happy with ESPN 360 last season but this year I'm even happier! Now if they could just increase the picture quality some more then it'd easily rival TV coverage.

Reynaldo28 · Post by **Reynaldo28** » Sat Oct 10, 2009 1:01 pm

I do like it, except the console is not as good, it keeps freezing my browser, and I'm still having trouble finding all sorts with it.

Marsac · Post by **Marsac** » Sat Oct 10, 2009 1:54 pm

I picked up a ESPN360 package for this season and I'm loving it. In fact I prefer to watch games on my laptop via ESPN360 over watching them on TV via ESPN America now. The picture quality is acctually better for most games and I can watch any game I want, when I want, as many times as I want. What you do miss out on is the intermission shows but I think I can live without those.

I'm so pleased that I'm considering canceling my TV subscription all together, I rarely watch TV beyond hockey anyway. I'd gladly recommend it to anyone having to deal with poor broadcast quality on TV or anyone wanting to follow their favourite team(s) as opposed to whatever happens to be on your TV channel of choice for the night.

Reynaldo what browser are you using? I haven't had any troubles in Firefox even when using Flashblock.

Post by **archibalduk** » Sat Oct 10, 2009 2:18 pm

I find on my laptop that it can take a moment for the console to load up. I get the impression that it's initially a little resource-hungry. Reynaldo - have you tried closing background programmes, anti virus software, etc to free up some resources?

I agree, Marsac, it really is very good. I think what with most people being on relatively high speed connections these days, they could increase the bitrate further. I suppose, though, that costs more money.

Reynaldo28 · Post by **Reynaldo28** » Sun Oct 11, 2009 12:11 am

I'm annoyed that we can't watch the adverts aswell, I liked laughing at the cheesiness

Post by **archibalduk** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 10:55 am

My brother told me yesterday that ESPN have lost the international broadcast rights for the NHL. This means that ESPN360 no longer shows the NHL.

The rights have been bought by a Swedish company who have been trying to auction off the rights to the highest bidder. There're not a broadcasting company and so they cannot broadcast the games themselves; instead they're trying to sell the rights to lots of broadcasting companies in order to make a fortune. From what I understand, nobody has sought to buy the rights from them. So this means that nobody is in a position to broadcast/stream the NHL games to places such as Europe.

Thankfully the NHL have come to the rescue and have lifted their restriction on Europe (except Italy and Russia) accessing NHL Game Centre Live. Apparently the service is very good and the quality is the same as ESPN360. It costs £100 per season whereas ESPN cost roughly £95 (£70 for the regular season and roughly £25 for the Playoffs IIRC). £100 feels like quite a lot of money to spend and so I haven't yet decided whether I'll subscribe this season...

Post by **archibalduk** » Sat Oct 15, 2011 9:21 pm

I couldn't cope with the thought of not watching hockey for a season and so I ended up subscribing to GameCenter Live (paying £13.50 per month for eight months). I'm really impressed with it - it's a big improvement over ESPN360. The video/audio quality is as good as (or possibly better than) ESPN360. It also has extended highlights/recaps of each game (they're normally roughly 10-15 mins per game) which is something I've always thought was missing from ESPN360. The site is better organised and easier to use than ESPN too.

It's nice to see that something positive has come from that Swedish company destroying the international broadcasting rights to the NHL. I just hope the NHL continue to allow Europe access to GameCenter.

grazza · Post by **grazza** » Sat Nov 26, 2011 12:55 am

I just subscribed tonight to the NHL vault. A great system it costs $4.95 which is around £3.20 a month. It is basically centre ice but you don't get games live. You get highlights (10 to 12 mins a match) more less as soon as they are up and can get access to archived full matches after 48 hours being able to watch any full game for the last 3 or 4 years. Also there is a huge selection of classic games with hundreds of games to choose from 1960 up until the present day. Each full game lasts about 1 hour and 40 mins so cuts out breaks etc. This is ideal for me I'm not really one to often stay up late and catch a game I will when its near the end of regular season or the play offs but this system means I can watch a couple of games a week when I feel like it. It is pretty easy over here to dodge the scores though maybe trickier come the Stanely cup finals. Not entirely sure but think that there is no contract with this so can probably cancel with a bit of notice but as long at they keep to this price it seems like a good deal might even be worthwhile during the summer for a hockey fix watched archived matches.

Streaming Hockey TV Broadcasts (legal links only)

Re: ESPN360 / NHL Center Ice - Now available worldwide

Re: Streaming Hockey TV Broadcasts (legal links only)

Re: Streaming Hockey TV Broadcasts (legal links only)

Re: Streaming Hockey TV Broadcasts (legal links only)