Canucks & Beyond
Next entry: Hockey Quote for the Ages
Previous entry: Columbus Irritates Me Before the Game Even Begins
Catching Hockey On ESPN
by Alanah McGinley on 10/22/08 at 01:38 PM ET
Comments (5)
I once found it odd how many UK hockey fans there are out there, but not anymore. Over the years I’ve heard a lot from British NHL fans and am no longer surprised at their knowledge of and passion for the game.
The only thing I still find surprising is that such passion exists despite the obstacles they face in trying to enjoy their favorite sport—which is why this might be an interesting option for some.
This morning, SENShobo dropped me a pointer to a press release about ESPN360 in the UK and it’s new online video player:
LONDON - Sports network ESPN has launched its online video player ESPN360.com in the UK, which airs live streams from major American sports associations the NHL and NCAA basketball and football.
The on-demand content is available through a range of subscription packages, ranging from £7.99 per month to £54.99 for complete access.
The service has been broadcasting on occasion in high-definition over the past year (though I’m not sure how often that will apply to NHL games). Regardless, at least the live streams aren’t a rare occurrence. From Pocket Lint:
The service also includes a subscription package offering video on demand access and live streaming of more than 1000 NHL regular season games, as well as the Playoffs and the Stanley Cup Final.*
Recently, Kukla’s Korner solicited reader questions about hockey broadcasting which we’ve sent to John Shannon, the Senior VP of NHL Broadcasting. He’ll be answering those questions for everyone soon (and we’ll post the answers online) but one of the questions caught my eye.
A Spanish KK reader (Miquel B.G. from Palma de Mallorca, Spain) mentioned how ESPN360 works for him, and some issues he has:
Hi, I´m a european NHL fan and I purchased ESPN360 Season Pass and Playoffs Pass last year and the experience was great so this year I purchased the Early Bird.
But I have some questions/problems.
-Why we can´t have the Center Ice Online? ESPN360 works good but CIO has some features (watch 4 games at the same time ) that ESPN360 doesn´t have.
So it sounds like there are some issues, but hopefully things continue to improve. If anyone else has experiences with ESPN360 that they want to share, please do.
Just a note: the ESPN360.com website seems to be IP-dependent… meaning that clicking that link will take you to the ESPN services available in your specific country.
For more about ESPN360, check out their site’s FAQ page or their wiki.
___________________
*emphasis mine
Filed in: hockey media, nhl general | Canucks and Beyond | Permalink
Tags: broadcasting, espn, espn360, media,
Comments
As an avid Red Wings fan at university looking for live coverage, I discovered ESPN 360 last hockey season only to find that it was ‘blocked’ in the UK. After several exchanges with the help team at ESPN 360 which got me no where, I was resigned to no live hockey games, and as a University student, I can’t afford digital television plus the one channel that shows 4-5 hockey games a week.
Thankfully, NHL Centre Ice is now available on ESPN 360, and I have the season pass, which has worked great so far. 2 issues I have however are, 1) the fact that it takes quite a while for archive games to come online. Being 5 hours ahead of the US eastern time zone, it’s rare I can stay up late and watch any NHL games, seeing as they all start at 12:00am my time, or later. As such, I’m resigned to watching them via archive, however, some games have taken as little as 12 hours to come online, while I;ve had to wait as long as 3 days to watch a game, meaning I can’t keep track of the hockey news until I’ve seen the game I want to watch without finding out the score. This is extremely frustrating. I also subscribe to mlb.tv, and their service is superb. Archives of games seem to go up almost as soon as the games themselves have finished, which is brilliant. Meaning I can go to bed, wake up the next morning and watch the game.
My second problem is that, as a mac user, the archive games don’t play well. The screen becomes distorted somewhat, and there’s no scroll bar at the bottom of the video player. Yet for some reason, I can watch games live on ESPN 360 on my mac in full screen with no problem whatsoever.
Still, I’m grateful that I can (Finally!) watch all 82 Red wings games this year and any others I choose. Such a relief.
Posted by Neil from UK on 10/22/08 at 03:50 PM ET
Sarah -- Your setup sounds amazingly better than I would’ve expected. Expensive, I know (although let me tell ya… it ain’t cheap here, either!) but the fact you can flip back and watch the archives, plus watch the games on your TV… that’s fantastic.
Neil -- Thanks for the information. I can appreciate your frustration with the archives being on delay—I’ve heard that before, and I wonder why that is. But as you say, it’s very cool you can scrounge up all your team’s games this season. For some reason, I didn’t think that was possible over there.
Yay for the internet! 
Posted by Alanah McGinley from British Columbia on 10/22/08 at 07:06 PM ET
Neil - a friend of mine emailed them about the inconsistency with how fast the archive games are being made available , and they have emailed him back to apologise and said that it is “teething trouble” and they are aiming for 18 hours max going forward. Which is still longer than ideal, but not too bad. I understand they have to keep a minimum 12 hours apart for some licensing reason, but I don’t really understand the details.
On my PC the archive games actually play better than the live ones - the picture is clearer - and the interface “full screens” nicer.
Posted by Sarah from England on 10/23/08 at 07:46 AM ET
help,
i am from vancouver b.c.canada and in costa rica for 3 monthsdoes anyone know where i can get canucks games online,
dont realy care if it is live stream,even if i can down load the game 3 days later would be heaven.
judy
Posted by judy from costa rica on 12/20/08 at 10:01 AM ET
Add a Comment
Please limit embedded image or media size to 575 pixels wide.
Add your own avatar by joining Kukla's Korner, or logging in and uploading one in your member control panel.
Captchas bug you? Join KK or log in and you won't have to bother.
Most Recent Blog Posts
Wellwood Returning to Vancouver
In Defense of Dany Heatley (sort of)
Sedin’s Agent Not Optimistic About a Vancouver Deal, but is Anyone?
Mike Keenan Joins the Canucks?
GM Place Keeps its Name; Disaster Averted
What’s Trevor Linden Been Up To?
About Canucks & Beyond
Alanah McGinley has been blogging hockey since 2003, sharing opinions, rants and not-so-deep thoughts with anyone who will listen. In addition to writing Canucks & Beyond and helping manage Kukla’s Korner, Alanah is one of the founders and co-hosts of The Crazy Canucks Podcast, as featured at Canucks.com.
She has contributed pieces to FoxSports.com and the New York Times Slapshot blog, as well as other stray destinations in cyberspace.
Email:
Alanah’s Twitter: Not really hockey-ish. [LINK]
Other Canucks Blogs
I signed up for this this year and so far, touch wood, I’m very impressed with the service. Good quality streaming of live games - both in terms of being able to actually see what’s happening - and it not buffering / jumping about. Plus, very importantly for those of us who would have to stay up till 3am just to see the first puck drop of a Canucks home game, it auto archives all the games so that you can watch them later at your leisure.
I can plug it into my big TV too and it’s almost like the real deal.
I have still kept up my NASN (premium North American sports TV channel) subscription, as games shown on NASN are blacked out on ESPN 360 - so it all works out quite pricey - but given that the only TV I really watch is hockey (well, that and Heroes
) , it’s worth it for me.
Posted by Sarah from England on 10/22/08 at 03:47 PM ET