My Holiday season was unexpectedly extended by one day, so I spent part of it playing with some of the online applications that provide video highlights from the NHL. Here are some thumbnails and grades for each of the services I used. Please note that I've only reviewed league-sanctioned applications. Today I'm taking a quick look at the league's presence on Google and YouTube. I'll be taking a look at other applications, including ESPN 360 and TSN Broadband, later in the week.
NHL On Google Video: Complete games (fights included) from current season and classic games from the NHL archives. Video quality: Fair. Originally, the NHL said that it would start charging for access to this content, but here we are a little more than two months later, and all the footage is still available for free. Then again, uploads of games can be unpredictable -- new uploads slowed to zero over the Holidays -- and I've yet to see any additional footage from previous seasons added to the archive since the hard launch. Promised user-generated content has yet to materialize. Overall Grade: B
NHL On YouTube: Game highlights, compilations, NHL commercials. Video quality poor. Sure, the images are pretty blurry, but YouTube does the job it sets out to do -- helping folks share video clips easily -- better than anybody else. I short order, it's become an invaluable tool for the hockey blogger. Message to the league, you can never get the highlights up here quick enough. On the downside, don't expect to see anything that isn't 100 kosher -- which means that any fights or controversial moments go down the memory hole. Overall Grade: B
good idea and good insight Eric. i have to agree that YouTube has become the “standard” for NHL videos – at the expense of video quality however. the highlight packages at NHL.com are MUCH better quality, but are not as useful because they are not embeddable. YouTube also has the “wildcard” of user-generated content, and sites like HockeyFights.com do a great job “filling in the blanks” left by Bettman’s PR conscious video editors.
There’s only so much the NHL can do with Google Video and Youtube in terms of quality. There are technical limitations that just can’t be avoided. NHL clips, with a lot of motion aren’t going to look that hot with Youtube’s size and compression no matter what they do. The NHL Network released a few clips and I had a quick back and forth with someone there to help them get the clips looking a little better, but as I said, you can only do so much. Google Video has slightly higher quality overall.
Thanks murph, I do my best.
There are a bunch of online video sites one can use now, and some definitely have technical advantages and better quality over Youtube, but popularity is where it’s at for the league, which is currently the right move.
Also, as murph pointed out, NHL.com does have some decent quality clips.