NHL.TV / Center Ice / ESPN+ Discussion - Part IV [See the warning in OP]

[SensHulk]

Last week ESPN+ didn’t broadcast any of the senators pre-game ceremony and player introductions for the home opener. Super disappointing with this coverage.

Also looks like they have scrapped their nhl recap show?

 

[Faterson]

The f***ing NHL.tv chatbot (although signed with a female name) returned a boilerplate reply to my complaint that did not address the content of my complaint in any way. Of course!

It's Day 3 now that I have no access to NHL.tv streams despite NHL.tv having already charged me TWO TIMES, to the combined tune of €184.

Day 3 for me having to watch pirate streams, despite me being a paying NHL.tv subscriber for many years.

I have submitted another complaint to them via email, in reply to the irrelevant boilerplate reply from the chatbot. It's obvious they are Pejorative Slured, normal English text does not register with them, so you need to communicate with them as you would with someone who's Pejorative Slured. Complaint attached as a screenshot below.

 

[byrath]

ESPN+ is pretty good and the price is very cheap. But what would I pay for a service with no blackouts including playoffs, that doesn't try to slap me with spoilers at every step while trying to get to on demand replays..

 

[Runforthecup]

Tremendous Tuesday has been great. All 32 teams playing has has kept me switching for 6 hours (so far). Cheering for my team (Jets) to win and other teams in the Central to lose. I would bet the bookies loved it too. An evening well spent. Hope the NHL picks up on this in future years.

 

[Reaser]

Also looks like they have scrapped their nhl recap show?

Yup, "In the Crease" was scrapped. Disappointing, it was good for what it was. A quick highlights show that didn't drag on.

 

[Faterson]

It took 6 full days to finally resolve my issue. Yup, for 6 game days, I was reduced to watching pirate streams.

Apart from ethics, there's nothing wrong with them in terms of quality, when you talk about live broadcasts. In fact, they're better than official streams because they always include the full pre-game and post-game shows.

This should be a must for official streams as well. If I pay you my money, NHL, your service should be of higher quality than that of pirates!

The main reason I purchase official streams every year is that (as my profile tagline suggests) I often need to watch hockey in "delayed live" mode. Most NHL hockey games take place in the middle of the night for us here in Europe. And pirates aren't catering to this "delayed live" need at all, as far as I'm aware.

My issue was finally, after 6 days, resolved earlier today by someone from NFL support. Yup, NFL. But I don't care – whether my issue is resolved by MLB, NBA, NFL or NHL.tv support, all I need is a working full-season NHL.tv subscription, and now I finally have it, after lots of struggles and anguish.

A final word of advice to anyone considering the purchase of NHL.tv: don't purchase it via PayPal. This season, there are extremely high PayPal surcharges when purchasing NHL.tv subscriptions. This wasn't the case a year ago, but it is now. Here is an excerpt from my final email I sent to NHL.tv/NFL support earlier today:

You can close this ticket now, but just one suggestion for the future, please: why is there such an extremely high surcharge, all of a sudden, when using PayPal as the payment option? Last year, I purchased NHL.tv's Full Season Subscription via PayPal, and there was no such heavy surcharge back then. There was a moderate surcharge of a couple of dollars, and that's fine. But this year, PayPal suddenly wants me to pay $129.59 for your subscription that's worth $119.99. (Which already includes $20 of European VAT tax.) I mean, really? A PayPal surcharge of nearly full $10, just to make a payment? I purchase goods online from America via PayPal all the time, but I have never seen such an extremely high PayPal surcharge anywhere. This is not customer-friendly. By the way, PayPal's conversion rate for dollars to euros is also very disadvantageous (basically 1 to 1, whereas on my MasterCard, 1 dollar equals 0.947 euros). If I purchased the NHL.tv subscription using PayPal, it would cost me €128.80, whereas purchasing it directly via my MasterCard, it only cost €113.58. That's a whopping difference of over €15, which seems unfair to your customers. I think you should talk to PayPal to treat your customers more fairly.

 

[Mach2]

Take a look at ESPN's site for their schedule of upcoming NHL games. It looks like ESPN/ESPN+'s showing of NHL games is almost non-existent after 5 Nov! I'm hoping this is a mistake.

ESPN's schedule now shows TV coverage thru 26 Nov.
Looks like they're working hard to fill in the TV coverage blanks when they're not busy placing bets on DraftKings.

 

[jaro]

here we go again. mostly todays games is not avalibe ...

 

[DutchHockeyGuy]

here we go again. mostly todays games is not avalibe ..

Very annoying. Was looking forward to hockey night in Canada at brunch. The Leafs game is one that’s available on NHL.tv, but only the Nashville broadcast. Better than nothing I suppose.

 

[Faterson]

here we go again. mostly todays games is not avalibe ...

Very annoying. Was looking forward to hockey night in Canada at brunch. The Leafs game is one that’s available on NHL.tv, but only the Nashville broadcast. Better than nothing I suppose.

We must bombard them with customer complaints every time this happens. I must believe that this is simple oversight/some bug, not intention. An exception, not the rule. On the Frozen Frenzy game day, weren't all 16 games available both live and for replay?

If we don't let them know that this is unacceptable, it's going to happen again and again in the future, too.

If you do write to them, please also lobby for the pre-game and post-game shows to be included both in the live broadcasts and in replay streams.

(After my recent nightmare with the dysfunctional NHL.tv subscription, a feedback form was delivered to me via email, so I'm going to mention these points there.)

 

[LuckyDay]

Have recently told Canadian fans that the Heritage Classic gets absolutely no coverage down here in the states and it's worse than I thought.

It wasn't on ESPN+ so I turned on TNT and there was no mention of it there.

It turned out I needed a subscription to MAX ? Since when did MAX do NHL? And who watches MAX? So certain games are exempt from the $750m contract so the NHL can auction it off?

update: Just saw an update for MAX on my ROKU and it was promoting that MAX has Live Sports and shows all these hockey players - dang ROKU is tracking what I watch of course, even though I told it not to.
So MAX is owned by Warners and so is TNT. So Turner is transferring some of it's contract games to premium subscription. I should have expected that.

 

[DutchHockeyGuy]

Have recently told Canadian fans that the Heritage Classic gets absolutely no coverage down here in the states and it's worse than I thought.

It wasn't on ESPN+ so I turned on TNT and there was no mention of it there.

It turned out I needed a subscription to MAX ? Since when did MAX do NHL? And who watches MAX? So certain games are exempt from the $750m contract so the NHL can auction it off?

update: Just saw an update for MAX on my ROKU and it was promoting that MAX has Live Sports and shows all these hockey players - dang ROKU is tracking what I watch of course, even though I told it not to.
So MAX is owned by Warners and so is TNT. So Turner is transferring some of it's contract games to premium subscription. I should have expected that.

According to a topic on the Business of Hockey-forum the game was shown on TBS.

 

[LuckyDay]

According to a topic on the Business of Hockey-forum the game was shown on TBS.

Would explain why it wasn't on TNT.

 

[Nineteen67]

Sorry if already discussed but, does Directv not have Canadian feeds on center ice this year?

 

[SirJW]

Sorry if already discussed but, does Directv not have Canadian feeds on center ice this year?

Saturday Hockey Night in Canada games show the Canadian feed, the rest of the week it's only when both team are from Canada.

Side note, I wish they'd broadcast the French feed.

 

[Nineteen67]

Saturday Hockey Night in Canada games show the Canadian feed, the rest of the week it's only when both team are from Canada.

Side note, I wish they'd broadcast the French feed.

Do you know why they did that

 

[SirJW]

Not sure.

 

[Ducer]

For the guy wanting to watch the leaf game tonight and you have a vpn try gem.cbc.ca the saturday nite games are free.

 

[Foppa2118]

I'm so tired of ESPN+ never fixing their problems.

Three years in a row now, when I try to scorll back or forward during a game that I started from the beginning while it's live, it resets to the beginning of the broadcast.

Then like with every part of their app, when I exit out it freezes, and I have to force quit the app. This happens 100% of the time. Not 99%. 100% of the time.

Not to mention I have to sign in to the app almost every other day.

There are no user fixes for this. Not a reset, not reinstalling the app, not anything but ESPN actually taking the time to fix a bug that's been in their product for 3 years.

 

[FMichael]

Watching the Canucks/Canadiens game on my older Samsung 1080p with Roku…ESPN+, game is being televised on both SportsNet and TSN…Interesting as to how much better the SportsNet feed is in terms of picture quality.

 

[Boothinator]

Has anyone problems with geoblocking even though it isn't shown on TV here in German. Second time already

 

[Golden_Jet]

Watching the Canucks/Canadiens game on my older Samsung 1080p with Roku…ESPN+, game is being televised on both SportsNet and TSN…Interesting as to how much better the SportsNet feed is in terms of picture quality.

Interesting, Sportsnet shows a game or 2 in 4K most nights. Wonder if that was one of them, as usually the TSN games are better, if both produced in HD.

 

[Woodrow]

The captchas when trying to log in to sportsnet+ are the absolute worst.

 

[Isles72]

did I mention that not having ability to start game at the 2nd period or 3rd period on sn + is annoying . I'm pretty sure nhl live had this option .

I'm using a firestick , maybe other devices offer that option ?

 

[yada]

What the f*** is wrong with espn. Rangers sharks game isnt showing available for some reason. It is NOT shown as an nhl network game