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NHL GameCenter Live Review Recently, I was invited by the NHL to review NHL GameCenter Live in return for getting the remainder of the season free. Being the venal blogger that I am, I jumped at the opportunity. Okay, I'm only joking about the last part there. I was genuinely excited about this opportunity in light of the Oilers' current struggles. Already, I was in the middle of deciding between the Los Angeles Kings and the Chicago Blackhawks as possible teams to follow for the playoffs while this will give me the opportunity to watch both of these teams during the regular season. Like many bloggers who've been given this offer, the idea is that we provide an honest review of the product. Now I've had the NHL GameCenter Live account since mid January, but I wanted to take the product for a thorough test drive before I wrote my review. Follow the jump for my thoughts on GameCenter Live. To start off with, my intentions are to provide the good, the bad, and the ugly about this product. Honestly, the only real 'ugly' aspect of this product has to do with the blackouts. Basically, this product is not intended as an extra or replacement TV set for you to watch your local team since games that are aired on TSN, Sportsnet, CBC, RDS, and NHL Network Canada , will not be viewable. For example, if you're an Oilers fan like myself, you won't be able to use NHL GameCenter Live to watch the Oilers play while your wife's on the TV in the bedroom and your kids are watching Hannah Montana in the family room. However, if you are interested in watching games that are not available on TV in your area, this is a great option for you. I was impressed with both the picture quality of the games along with the speed over the Internet. Qualities of NHL GameCenter Live that I really liked: - The picture quality is absolutely impressive. I'm not sure if all the games are actually HD, but they looked the same as they do on my HD TV.
- Over my cable modem, the stream played without any lag at all even when I watched multiple games at the same time.
- There's an archive of games dating back to the 2007-8 season which means that you can re-watch games from the past two previous seasons. ***It's unfortunate, but you do have to wait 48 hours to watch games that were blacked out. I would prefer this to be a shorter period myself.
- You can choose the option of downloading the DVR plugin which allows you to click ahead to significant plays which are clearly demarcated.
Features of NHL GameCenter Live that are useful: - There's a number of cool features including the ability to view live boxcar stats, an ice tracker for shot locations, or chat online during the game with other viewers while you watch the game.
- There's a picture-in-picture option if you want to follow another game at the same time.
Additional features of dubious utility: - The play-by-play feature has some use for navigation, but it's a bit superfluous.
- The view multi game feature allows you to watch up to four games at the same time which is a bit much unless you have a very large computer screen. Also, if you only watch two games at once with this feature, it wastes half your screen with blank slots for two other possible games.
Overall, I was impressed and there's no question that this is an excellent piece of technology. I understand the issues with blackouts in terms of local television providers. However, if there's one thing that I could change, I would get rid of the 48 hour wait to watch replays of blacked out games.
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I have a few friends that live outside of North America who love this product. You can imagine that the DBC (Dubai Broadcasting Company) doesn't carry too many games.