Friday, September 7, 2007

First Peek at NHL's Online Broadcasts?

Just in case the website gets taken down, here's a screen shot.
NHL.tv

If you can remember all the way back to mid-July, you might remember that the Wall Street Journal broke a story (you have to be a subscriber to read that... bastards) about the NHL signing a deal with NeuLion Inc. The deal was supposed to "make live games available on the web starting next season." By the looks of it, that may be closer to fruition than any of us realized.

Head on over to www.nhl.tv, and have a look for yourself. There's two possible scenarios going on over there. Either we are witnessing the first makings of the NHL providing live games over the internet, or they are trying to open a portal to another universe. I would assume it's a universe where a species similar to our own would pay millions for broadcast TV rights. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the former scenario is occurring, and as an Islander fan living in the southeast United States, this is a development that cannot possibly come soon enough. If this ends up turning out to be anything similar to MLB.tv, I might just start punching babies in blind excitement. OK, maybe I won't be that excited, but I'll be pumped.

Right now, when you click on the link at NHL.tv, it sends you to some error page. Looks like the portal to another universe isn't ready yet. That's fine, they've still got about three weeks to make it work before the season starts.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see about all of this, but isn't speculation fun?

Here's a fun parting fact. Neil Best of Newsday reports that NeuLion's CEO is Nancy Li, the wife of Charles Wang, who owns the Islanders.

UPDATE: Well, apparently that link is working now. This is what pops up when you click it:




8 comments:

  1. If you are an Islander fan living in the South, you need all the help you can get.

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  2. And this is in the menu > About section:

    "It is the first video portal providing original content created by the NHL, its teams, and its partners, not available anywhere else. Programming consists of all events leading up to a game, detailed post-game locker room interviews and other features that resemble reality television at its best."

    Interesting.

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  3. Maybe they will have a "J.R. Bangs a Broad In Every Town" portal where we can witness his suave moves with the ladies in real time.

    As for streaming video, last year Comcast users were able to see a few games a week online which was a nice bonus. I still miss having the Dish Network Center Ice package though (compared to Comcast's) since most games had both teams' feeds plus the entire CBC Hockey Day In Canada feed (not just the games themselves).

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  4. @James: lmao holy crap man, that was priceless

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  5. $200 USD for Early-Bird subscription? Considering the problems I've read about from late last season, I believe the price should be less, at least there should be some freebies to see if even on-demand works on our computers and modems.

    I'll probably dive in when it's officially announced, and watch the improvements over the years. I do not want a tv to rent boxes, etc. I want the online experience to be great within Canada and the United States before it's available for Europe and the rest of the world.

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  6. Upon checkout, the $199 turns into $149.

    Not much there yet, but still neat to see my Habs & Sharks in one place.

    The console is not free of errors, but it'll have to do for some of us.

    There's not a lot of content yet, but there was a NYI practice of a couple minutes, that will be deleted from the Habs section when those in charge add Montreal content.

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  7. I registered too early, they're now saying come back on Sept 17th.

    Sorry to take up space, just wanted to update in case others were curious in their Google News searches. :o)

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