NHL GameCenter Review
Posted by Mother Pucker on October 31st, 2008Last night NHL GameCenter gave out another free preview of its streaming video and audio, coupled with stats service. GameCenter runs at $30 Canadian per month, and provides you with pretty much real time stats and audio for every game, and video for quite a few of them as well. Anyway, last night I parked myself in front of the computer for what felt like an eternity as I took in as much hockey as I could, and to compile this review.
How well did GameCenter hold up?
As expected, and more than likely due to the influx of people cashing in on the free preview, there were a few glitches in the service last night. Everything started off smooth, but as soon as there were four games running, the system really started to tank. I initially started to see messages like, “The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.” which proceeded to everything screeching to a halt at 8:05pm EST. The downtime lasted for approximately five minutes, but after that things were back in order and the system seemed to work as expected for the rest of the night.
Multi-Game View
You’ve gotta love it when you are able to watch four games at once. I flipped back and forth between this mode, and single game mode all night, but ultimately stuck with single game mode. Why? Yes, four games at once is nice, but I found that there were audio issues when you had that many games going. I turned down the volume on three of the four games I had up, and upon clicking back on the original game there was a nasty echo present. I’m not sure what caused this, but every single time I tried to mute the other games, and just have volume for one game I was presented with this echo/delay. Another reason why I didn’t stick with the multi-game view is because you can’t take that view full screen. Only individual games could be expanded to full screen, so that was the deal breaker for me.
Full Screen View
I’m running a 22″ monitor with a screen resolution of 1680 x 1050, and upon expanding a game to full screen view I was pretty impressed. Though not perfect, and nothing like watching a real HD game on my TV, this was still easily watchable, and the best full screen streaming that I’d seen to date. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to hook my computer up to a HDTV to test it out there, but I’m sure that I would have seen similar results. Unfortunately this screenshot is a little blurry, but if you were dodging punches from Colton Orr, you’d be a little blurry too I bet!
Do Streaming and a Fast Paced Game of Hockey Mix?
Yeah, this is definitely something that works, but when the action is fast, or the camera pans too quickly you see some blur and its hard to tell where the puck is or who is who for a few moments. Overall this doesn’t happen too much, so as long as you don’t mind a little blur when the action is going through the neutral zone, this shouldn’t be much of an issue for you. Once everything is down in the offensive zone you can watch your team pretty clearly.
Shot Location Stats
I found this section of the stats to be quite interesting. As you watch the game, you get a general idea of where shots are coming from, but this takes it a step further by recording all of them, and displaying their result with markers representing shots and goals. You can also filter in hits, penalties, and other miscellaneous stats as well in this view, and if you are following the right game, there will even be video clips associated to certain events and locations on the ice. Simply clicking on the little blue video indicator will bring up the highlight in the main video window for you to enjoy. I didn’t see too many of these through the night, but they were still welcome, and may increase when more cameras make their way into NHL arenas.
Instant Player Stats
This has to be the killer app for fantasy hockey players, as they are able to follow their players in pretty much real time to find out how many goals, assists, plus/minus, penalty minutes, and time on ice. you can even see who is scratched in case you need to make a last second move on your fantasy team and replace that guy.
For someone that doesn’t play fantasy hockey, I’m not sure if this is more than just eye candy over on the right side of the screen. It is definitely nice to see who has scored what when you are flipping between games, but if you are just concentrating on one game, you should be able to keep track of these things in your head (ok, maybe not plus/minus and time on ice unless you’re some kind of genius). Regardless, this is a nice to have feature, but I don’t think that its a critical part of GameCenter’s success.
Interesting Out of Town Broadcasters
I only have one thing to say about Pete Weber and Terry Crisp in their Nashville getup. Are you freaking kidding me?!?!
Blackouts
Unfortunately blackouts are still relevant on NHL GameCenter, as there were numerous games that I wasn’t able to watch with it last night. Some were pay per view, and others were supposedly broadcast nationally, but regardless, I feel that they could have lifted all the barriers for this one day at least so that we could all get a taste of the teams and games that we wanted to.
Who is this best suited for?
NHL GameCenter is the ultimate tool for someone that lives way outside any hockey markets, and doesn’t have any good TV coverage of teams that they want to watch. If you are currently overseas, or in some remote part of the country that is lucky enough to have high speed internet, this service is definately for you.
Who is this service not for?
This definitely isn’t for someone that wants to watch their local team on the internet. Unfortunately the blackouts prevent you from catching your local team, so the best you’ll get is game radio, which if I understand correctly is free anyway.
The Bottom Line
Overall I was quite impressed with NHL GameCenter, and have to say that their streaming video was some of the best that I’d ever seen. Yes, there are some better videos online, but nothing that streams live action as nicely as GameCenter does. Will I be subscribing to this service? No, simply because I live in a hockey market and without the team I want to watch the most, I fear this service will get old real fast. Not saying its bad or anything, it’s just not for me.
Now its your turn!
Ok you’ve somehow survived my review of GameCenter, now its your turn to voice your opinions. I know there were quite a few of you that watched the free preview last night, so let us know what you thought in the comments!
Great review of the site. I’d posted about this service a couple of times on my blog, because I think its a great idea for the league, but I had not had a chance to try it out myself yet.
Greaaaaaat!!! Review. That was an impressive review man. You said you’ll be posting a review of HS too right? I’d like to see how it stands upto gamecenter.
Blackouts are bullshit. If i had a tv near me Id watch it. I am watching on the computer because I don’t have a tv. Isn’t that the point of this service? Glad I have 2 months free from nhl2k9. Not worth $30/month when you can’t even watch the game you want.
I actually like it alot.
But i guess im from Australia and so blackouts only happen for 2 games a week. lol
Service is a good idea, but not if you don’t have access to a tv with cable and want to watch the local team without going to the bar. And you better hope that if you have a problem, it’s one that one of the regular customer service reps can fix, I couldn’t get a phone call or an email from a superviser to save my life.
I really like NHL Gamecenter, but it’s not for everybody. I’m a Penguins fan living in South Jersey, so the Flyers are the popular team in this area and CSN broadcasts virtually every one of their games. The only time I get to watch the Penguins is if it’s against the Flyers, or if one of their games happens to be on Versus or NBC.
A decent amount of the time I can find a Pens game being streamed on the internet via ustream or somewhere else, but often times the stream is choppy and barely tolerable, and of course there isn’t always a stream.
With Gamecenter I get access to every Pens game available and nearly every other game as well. As for the stream itself, it’s very good quality and the stream is perfect. Also, you get access to every game 2-3 days after it has been broadcasted, and that goes back to the entire 2007-2008 season. It’s awesome to relive some of the great moments of the 2008 playoffs or catch up on a game you missed, etc. Again, the stream is perfect for archived games as well.
If NHL Center Ice had all of their games in HD instead of SD I might have gone that route instead, but Gamecenter to me is easily worth the money with access to so many games past and present. Like others have said, there isn’t much point in it if you only want to see your home team, but if your team is located elsewhere and / or you just love watching hockey whether it’s your team or not then Gamecenter is definitely for you.
Be aware when signing up for NHL Gamecenter Live.
I signed up for this service for one playoff game in April 2009 when I was away on vacation. What I didn’t realize when signing up is that under their terms and conditions if you sign up while outside of Canada (I was in California) they will automatically subscribe you to the subsequent seasons.
Much to my dismay, when I received my most recent Visa bill I had a charge on it for a full season’s worth ($160US) of games, even though I didn’t want that and I had never signed up for it. Upon further review of my old Visa bills I had a charge back in April for $80US which I hadn’t noticed at the time that was for a package called “Race for Cup.” I assume this was a package for the rest of the playoff games. Again, I did not want this nor did I sign up for it as I had returned home from my vacation already and was getting all of the games on cable tv.
Upon noticing these charges to my Visa I of course contacted NHL.com to ask for my money back and to cancel my account/subscription. Every time I have called I’ve been told that I must speak to a manager and that the employee will contact the manager and have him/her call or e-mail me. After two weeks now I have heard nothing despite numerous calls back by myself. To cap this all off they will not even let me cancel my account/subcription without talking to a manager. This is clearly beyond ludicrous as no one should require permission or authorization to be able to cancel an ongoing subscription.
This is all obviously very upsetting to me as the NHL’s brand is behind this site and I would have expected a fair and honest service rather than something that I would consider to be a borderline fraud. While I’ve been told that this automatic renewal/negative billing process is legal in New York (where the site is run) I consider it to be unethical and unacceptable for a number of reasons.
I’ve made this post simply as a warning to potential customers of the service that I would stay away from it.
Thanks for reading!
I am generally happy with the service this season 2009-10 but only signed up because Verizon Fios was unable to provide NHL Center Ice in central New Jersey (something about black out complications).
My only complaint this season is the archiving of games takes too long. Its not 48 as advertised, never less than 72 hours. I know because on my schedule I tend to watch the games only from archives during lunch or late in evenings. I should be able to watch an archived game in no more than 48 hours, after that the game is stale because my team will have played yet another opponent.
I am VERY DISAPPOINTED with it. As a Canadian, they black out virtually all Canadian team games. When I signed up, I expected that my local team would be blacked out, but thought I would still get to watch all the other Canadian teams. I cant.
When you combine this with the automatic recurring billing and other tactics, it looks like typical Bettman NHL style.
god help you if you’re signed up for this. they resubscribe you for the next season even if you CANCEL the service. They then will not refund your money. I only got my money back by calling daily to harass their operators until they got sick of me! Two weeks and 15 calls later I got my money back. All because I was charged for a service I had cancelled because it was terrible, too many blackout games! NOT WORTH IT
Wow I’m surprised that it took that much work to get out of it. I signed up at one point last season, and all it took was a phone call to cancel it. I heard of the auto resubscribe thing, but I didn’t have that problem. Sorry to hear it was such a gong show for you!
[...] Maybe now it’s time for some of you to sign up for NHL GameCenter? [...]