NOTE: At the time of writing this review, NHL games were watchable with an ESPN Player subscription. As they have recently lost the license, ESPN have removed the NHL from its online player’s programming and therefore this review is now obsolete, at least for hockey fans anyway. Since NHL GameCenter Live is now available to most European NHL fans, you can find our review of it by clicking here.

ESPN Player

After a long offseason that dragged on far too long for our liking, the 2010-11 NHL season is now around the corner. For those of you with the appropriate TV packages you’ll soon be able to watch all of your favourite team’s games the very moment they start.

But what about those of us who don’t? Or those of us who can’t get the right TV packages, e.g. NHL Center Ice, at all? If you happen to be on a comfortable broadband speed, this is where ESPN Player comes in, and it is a godsend. This may sound as if I’m blatantly promoting this service, but I’m just sharing my thoughts about it here.

Prior to the 2008-09 season, since I live in the UK and am 8 time zones in front of my favourite NHL team, the Anaheim Ducks, and since there wasn’t (and still isn’t) any decent NHL coverage over here, my only real option for following games was to listen to the Ducks’ radio broadcast available on their website. But then out of the blue, and sometime during the offseason, a website called ESPN 360 had been advertised in my inbox.

It was offering me a surprisingly affordable subscription – since at the time, ESPN were advertising the Early Bird promotion for it: there was no way in hell that I would turn down £70 ($110/€80?) to be able to watch as many NHL games as I wanted, including every one being played by my favourite team – or as many that were scheduled at a convenient enough time – streamed to my PC, as well as the option to watch archived games that I missed later on, so I went ahead and bought that straightaway.  Two years later, I’ve gone ahead and renewed my subscription again.

Subscription prices vary depending on what kind of package you’re after: If you want the whole season, go for the season package, or you can have it for a month, or a day when you really want to watch a particular game.

As good a service as ESPN Player is, I haven’t exactly been without my general complaints either. What I wasn’t told when I bought my initial subscription is that the Playoffs are not included in the package. Once the regular season’s over, so is your subscription. And if you want to watch playoff hockey, you have to pay again for that.

The playoff subscription is cheaper than the season one, of course, but you’re left wondering if it’s really worth paying the full price for it, especially if your favourite team is not guaranteed to make it very far. My advice would be to get that instead of the daily package for each game, because the latter would only rack up more costs in the end anyway, even if your team doesn’t make it past the first round (plus, you can still watch the rest of the postseason if you still need your Hockey fix).

The only other issue I came across was the streaming speed. For most broadband users, this should in theory not be a problem, provided you’re getting at least 1MB or more download speed. For me early last year, I wasn’t even getting 0.5MB because my Internet Service Provider sucked, so my video feed was often either freezing or skipping ahead so it could keep up with the broadcast. My connection speed is a bit faster and more stable now, so there shouldn’t be any more problems for me.

Also, I’d like to point out that ESPN Player is entirely Flash based, so it should work on all web browsers and on all operating systems, provided you’re not attempting to watch it via an iPad or iPhone.

So overall, is it worth it? Hell yeah. But if you’re considering signing up, I’d recommend doing it before October 20^th when the Early Bird offer ends and the subscription cost shoots back up to its regular price. If you are interested, simply click here to check it out.

I’m Wildwing64, and this is PowerPlayGoal.com