EHM The Blue Line

Yes, I love NHL Vault too!

I'm subscribed to the Game Centre Live so I have access to the live games in addition to the Vault. Owing to the obvious timezone differences, I never watch a live game other than the occasional afternoon game. However, I use Game Centre Live to watch the full length archived games as they're streamed at 3,000kbps whereas on the Vault they're streamed at 1,600kbps. I watch the games on my 37" TV and so the increased bitrate makes a huge difference. At 3,000kbps it's almost standard TV quality - there is plenty of detail in the picture and the framerate means relatively little judder when the screen pans. The only downside is that the on demand recordings don't cut out the commercials (but there is a useful skip 10 seconds forward button which helps).

Having said that, I watch an awful lot of the Vault because the 10-12 minute game highlights are brilliant. This is something I've always wanted from ESPN360. This allows me to keep up with all the goings on in the league rather than only really following the Bruins. Whilst not as great as the 3,000kbps, 1,600kbps is still very watchable - even on my 37" TV.

I really do hope we can continue to have access to NHL Game Centre and Vault over the coming seasons. Although I think the layout of the site could be improved, the service is far superior to that of ESPN360. NHL Game Centre games can be watched on demand right from when the game starts (useful yesterday when I wanted to watch the Bruins game an hour after it started) whereas it could take 24 hours or even a number of days before the on demand stream was available on ESPN360 - and there were plenty of times when all of their streams went down. I've have no trouble with NHL's service since I've been subscribing.

TSN has started streaming thier Wednesday night games. And anyone who is a Rogers subscriber in Ontario can watch the games that are on Sportsnet streamed through www.rogersondemand.com. So that only leaves non-Wednesday games and games from Leafs TV that are not streamed online for free. (And I guess the Sportsnet games too for non-Rogers subscribers). I wonder at this rate how long until everything is online for free?

I wouldn't be surprised if all of TSN's games are streamed for free in another couple of years.

Are there any fellow Game Center Live users here?
I'm just wondering if anybody else has noticed that the 3000kbps option has disappeared from the bitrate/quality settings when watching a game. We're now left with a woeful 1600kbps which means that the picture quality is now very poor. I'm hoping it's a glitch but it has now been like this for over a week. I miss my near-HD hockey.

To answer my own question: It's because the games on GCL are being archived more quickly than previously. When they archive them, the commercial breaks are removed and the game is only available at 1600kbps. So to watch on-demand games at 3000kbps you have to watch them before they get around to archiving them. It looks like it takes them roughly 24 hours to archive them.

Got Gamecenter too, but really unsure whether to subscribe for next year.
PC version is reliable but the playback isn't 100% smooth and you don't necessarily wanna watch hockey on a smaller PC screen when you've got a 40-50 inch HDTV. It plays smoothly on the PS3 app but not as reliable, I usually end up missing the first few minutes because the streams always appear way too late. Furthermore you can't set the bitrate manually so sometimes when they've got traffic issues it keeps switching between 1500 and 3000 kbps, and everytime that happens it takes you back 15-20 seconds and the whole sequence is being played again. And it seems they archive games much quicker on the PS3 app, the problem being, as mentioned above, the highest bitrate isn't available for archived games, hockey on a big HDTV at 1500 kbps=lame. Oh yeah and what's with the frame rate drops that always occur during the second period, on both PC and PS3 ? It usually renders half of the second period unwatchable because it feels like a slideshow on speed. There have been a gazillion of complaints about that and all the support tells you is that your connection or hardware can't handle it and you should upgrade.
Seriously, it's 200 bucks a year, I expect something better than that. I mean, I am willing to pay for the legal stuff, but if that's not improved next year I'm taking my money elsewhere.

Yep there are lots of negative experiences posted on the likes of HFBoards. I've been pretty lucky with it really. I watch probably between three and four on demand games a week (at 3000kbps the following evening after the game) and lots of highlights per week (the ones that are 10-12 mins long at 1500kbps). The 3000kbps games run perfectly smoothly on my 37" HDTV (I hook up my laptop to the TV via an HDMI cable). Occasionally there is a small bit of frame drop for a minute or two usually in the second period - but it's not unwatchable (just less smooth than normal). I find upping the motion processing on my TV helps make the games smoother.

I've heard the PS3 app is very unreliable (frame-dropping, variable bit rate, games cutting out, etc) which is a shame. I absolutely love the PC version though. I guess if you don't have a laptop it means hooking your PC to your TV isn't feasible. 1500kbps highlights are just about watchable on my TV but I couldn't cope watching a full game like that.

My main criticism relates to the design of the site. Until recently the winning team of a game would be highlighted in blue (or white - I forget which) even if you turn off the scores. This meant that I'd have to close my eyes when clicking on the game (I hate knowing what the score it). Also, it's a real pain to make the image truly full screen. The in-browser view button doesn't make it completely full screen because it leaves the play/pause controls at the bottom. You have to select the pop-out view to go properly full screen - but then you lose the slider control for skipping through the intermissions (so you have to revert back to the in-browser view, slide forward and then re-open the pop-out). Their help desk is rather unhelpful too.

It's ok on the PC for me as far as smoothness is concerned, but not quite as good as on the PS3. Definitely watchable though. Might be a matter of standardized hardware on the PS3. Agreed on the design argument using the PC, it's inconvenient and just doesn't look overly professional. The PS3 app menu is actually quite nice and comfy to use, except it takes a bit too long to switch between games/feeds at times and there's no PIP/split screen.

Apparently you canadian guys can watch the upcomincg world championships for free on youtube!
http://www.iihf.com/competition/272/new ... ?tx_ttnews
The link directs you to a news article on the IIHF page, according to which a company is streaming all the games of the tournament for free on youtube.
Of course for those countries where the television right have been sold exclusively to someone won't be seeing the stream, but if i understand correctly Canada is not on that list. I'm sure there's people on these forums from other unblocked countries too, but you lucky canadian silly billies came to mind first.

Geo-blocked countries include: Belarus, Denmark, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine and the USA.

The channel can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/icehockey

Darn it, I had hope to be able to watch more of the Finland group's games. Because the company who got the rights here in Sweden will show most them on a exclusive channel.

My friend told me there's a way to get around it. That is by using a proxy-type deal. It'sa perfectly legal, I think.

He gave me this link: http://hidemyass.com/proxy/
I'm inteding to test it today, when Finland plays!

There is a german channel with KHL games live, everyday. The image quality is very decent, you can clearly see the puck all the times, even in full-screen
But about the sound, there is no commentators at all. You can also find some DEL and Erste Bank Hockey League games sometimes, and other sports live streaming (Commentaries are available for german and austrian games. In German, of course). The schedule is very clear, it's easy to select the game you want to watch.

I don't know if it has been discussed before, but here is the link if some of you are interested! Go to "LIVE", and choose the game you want to watch. I think this link is totally legal :

http://www.laola1.tv/en/int/home/

Also, you can find every week-end some DEL games live on the website of Servus TV ( http://www.servustv.com/cs/Satellite?pa ... andingPage )

Apparently GameCenter Live is $50 (link). Apparently that's a 40% discount (usually the full season is $160 and we're getting just over half a season (in terms of GP) for about a third of that price).

I think that's a very fair price.

Now I just need to wait for the renewal option to go live. EDIT: It seems all existing subscribers are set to autorenew - so there's no need to manually renew. So I'll be watching the Pens v Flyers game come Saturday night!

That's right, it's auto-renew unless you cancelled it at the end of the season, like I did

One question though archie, looking at some of the games from last season, the picture quality is really not that good (1600 kbps), playback is choppy at times and the edges look very pixelated. Same for you, and if not, do you have any advice ? Other flash videos, even full HD, work flawlessly

I've found vault is much more stable using firefox than chrome. On Chrome it was quite chopping on ff it seems more stable. Still though if I pause a game in the pop out player for long it seems to lose its place or go back to the start.

Danny wrote:One question though archie, looking at some of the games from last season, the picture quality is really not that good (1600 kbps), playback is choppy at times and the edges look very pixelated. Same for you, and if not, do you have any advice ? Other flash videos, even full HD, work flawlessly

The new games are broadcast at 3,000 kbps. However, after 24 hours they archive the games which means that only the 1,600 kbps stream is available. In the past, though, it has taken them a lot longer to archive games - often up to three or four days. But if you want to guarantee a 3,000 kbps stream, make sure you watch the game within a day of it taking place.

I don't get any choppiness. I know users watching through their Playstations get the occasional issues, but it's been fine on my laptop. There is almost always a period of about five minutes in the second period where the picture does drop a few frames and become very slightly choppy, but it's still watchable. I always watch the games via Internet Explorer 9 - I don't know if this is still the case, but IE seems to have better GPU acceleration for videos than Chrome. You might also want to check that you have GPU acceleration enabled in Flash: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/891337

archibalduk wrote:

Danny wrote:One question though archie, looking at some of the games from last season, the picture quality is really not that good (1600 kbps), playback is choppy at times and the edges look very pixelated. Same for you, and if not, do you have any advice ? Other flash videos, even full HD, work flawlessly

The new games are broadcast at 3,000 kbps. However, after 24 hours they archive the games which means that only the 1,600 kbps stream is available. In the past, though, it has taken them a lot longer to archive games - often up to three or four days. But if you want to guarantee a 3,000 kbps stream, make sure you watch the game within a day of it taking place.

I don't get any choppiness. I know users watching through their Playstations get the occasional issues, but it's been fine on my laptop. There is almost always a period of about five minutes in the second period where the picture does drop a few frames and become very slightly choppy, but it's still watchable. I always watch the games via Internet Explorer 9 - I don't know if this is still the case, but IE seems to have better GPU acceleration for videos than Chrome. You might also want to check that you have GPU acceleration enabled in Flash: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/891337

Never had problems last year, but watching the old games right from the live panel gives me a very pixelated picture, while it's perfectly clear when I watch the same game from the archive
I will give it a try with IE

Quick update, apparently there's going to be an additional option as far as picture quality is concerned (4500 kbps), only confirmed for PC/Mac though, not for external apps

Oh that really is fantastic news!

When I first subscribing to ESPN360 (IIRC about five years ago now), the highest bitrate was something like 1,600Kbps. It has steadily increased more-or-less every year. On my 37" TV, 3,500kbps is very watcheable (near HD, but it always gets slightly fuzzy with motion). 4,500kbps is going to be brilliant - hopefully HD quality during motion.

yeah good point about motion, they definitely need to increase the frame rate, to be honest I'd rather have a higher fps than the 4500 kbps, eventhough it's good to see they're constantly working on it, I remember the times when 1000-1500 kbps was considered high quality.

4,500kbps is quite possibly an indicator of FPS. The higher the FPS, the higher the bit rate per second. IIRC the frame size when the feed was at 3,500kbps was 720px (i.e. HD). I'm hoping that the 4,500kbps is predominantly lower compression (i.e. less jaggedness and fewer compression artefacts) and a higher FPS (and in an ideal world, no increase in sound quality - it's perfectly acceptable as it is). Even if the increase in kbps is due to a higher resolution (presumably 1080px), it'll help the image look a bitter better even during motion.

Either way, it's virtually a 50% increase in kbps and so it should be a noticeable improvement.

bah, way too technical for me

Lets hope it's true and I hope they'll make it avaiable for the external apps too, PS3 and Xbox apps should be available this Friday, the old app has already been pulled from the shop so that's a good indicator a new release is coming. They can fix the annoying 2nd period lag as well while they're at it

So, I guess that nobody wants my beautiful links to the KHL games

Doomski wrote:So, I guess that nobody wants my beautiful links to the KHL games

Ha! Please do share! I had a link to a German TV network which streamed KHL games for free (not sure how they afford to give it away for free), but I never got to catch a game due to the timings.

archibalduk wrote:

Doomski wrote:So, I guess that nobody wants my beautiful links to the KHL games

Ha! Please do share! I had a link to a German TV network which streamed KHL games for free (not sure how they afford to give it away for free), but I never got to catch a game due to the timings.

I think we're talking about the same links! LaolaTV is a german channel, and they do diffuse KHL games live almost everyday. I asked myself the same question, how did they afford the rights to broadcast it!

For those interested, I posted the links a few messages above!

So apparently people in the UK will be blacked out because of that naff Sky Sports channel that owns the TV right for the UK