NHL Streaming

[durke 0]

I've been a subscriber to ESPN Player for the past few years, and I've been a fairly satisfied customer. With the Live and Archive section you could watch a game whenever it fit you schedule. Watching a live west coast game is difficult with a 9 hour time difference! The price was reasonable too.

When I went to check on it today for the Early Bird Special it said it was no longer available for European viewers and doesn't even seem to include hockey anymore. I think it may have something to do with NBC having all rights to NHL broadcasting. Is there any Europeans on here that know where they may be offering a similar service?

[adalbort 1]

I've been a subscriber to ESPN Player for the past few years, and I've been a fairly satisfied customer. With the Live and Archive section you could watch a game whenever it fit you schedule. Watching a live west coast game is difficult with a 9 hour time difference! The price was reasonable too.

When I went to check on it today for the Early Bird Special it said it was no longer available for European viewers and doesn't even seem to include hockey anymore. I think it may have something to do with NBC having all rights to NHL broadcasting. Is there any Europeans on here that know where they may be offering a similar service?

I cant give you a final answer, but -as a subscriber myself to ESPN 360- I find it rather bizarre that the new rights owner would terminate such option. After all, it means business, and I dont see why any company (even more these economically-harsh days) would simply destroy one of their markets. Just not logical, IMO. What I do see is them rising the price...

In any case, I hope something along the lines of ESPN On Demand gets offered.

[IPv6Freely 2092]

Simple - they want you to attend the games in person, instead! lol.

Anyway, on a serious note. There are a few somewhat decent places to see the games. Hockeystreams.com is usually pretty good, but it's a paid service (and in all likelyhood, a very illegal paid service... so buyer beware). They also archive the games, I think, so that may be useful for you.

I had pretty good luck with http://www.firstrowsports.eu/sport/ice-hockey.html also. Quality isn't amazing, and it's just streaming, no archiving.

Theres also http://www.nhltorrents.co.uk/ but its an invite-only service.

And of course, you could always try using a proxy or ToR (with a fixed exit node specified) so you can use the ESPN service (but do you really want to listen to Mike Emrick? Yikes...) This is the method I use for LeafsTV out of the country, and in that case, only the signup/payment needs to be from an Ontario IP address, they don't seem to police the actual viewing of games.

Hopefully I didn't break too many rules with this one... :)