Nfl Football 2011 Season Underway Now!

[jfchandler]

Almost by surprise, the 2011 NFL football season has snuck up on us and we've already had the first week of preseason games. Hard to believe after all the off-season BS with the collective bargaining talks and lockout. But there are some good results from all that...

The NFL seems to be offering discounted rates on its combined live and video-on-demand online game viewing packages for those who can access the internet with U.S. IP addresses...

Here's how those are shaping up:

Right now, the NFL is offering its "Preseason Live" online video package for $19.99 vs. the regular price, and last season's price, of $39.99. The package, with some usual blackout and local market delays, offers the entire preaseason schedule of both live games as they occur, as well as the ability to go back and watch them afterward on demand thru Sept. 11.

As mentioned above, the "Preseason Live" package is only available (and viewable online) to those using U.S. IP addresses. Info and details can be found at:

https://preseason.nf...secure/packages

One un-advertised advantage I discovered when I signed up for the "Preseason Live" package is that once you've done so, in your online NFL account, they're currently offering their regular season NFL "Game Rewind" package for $29.99, $10 off the regular price of $39.99 for the Game Rewind package.

"Game Rewind" provides online video-on-demand access to every regular season NFL game, typically available in less than 24 hours after the conclusion of each individual game. In my experience, live games that start around midnight Thailand time are typically available online on the NFL site by the evening of the next day.

https://gamerewind.n...secure/packages

All of the above compares to the NFL's Game Pass live video and video on demand package for those with outside the U.S. IP addresses that's priced at a pretty hefty $249.96, but does include both the preseason and regular season games.

https://gamepass.nfl...secure/packages

Over the past weekend, I accessed the Preseason Live package via a 10 Mbps cable internet connection that worked just fine. But when my cable connection was running slowly on Sunday morning, I switched to my backup 6 Mbps DSL connection and the NFL video stream played just fine as well. The NFL continues to use Adobe Flash video to provide its streams.

So basically, a combined preseason and regular season package for those with U.S. IP addresses prices out at about $50 -- $19.99 for the preseason package and $29.99 for the Game Rewind package... Compared to almost $250 for the international Game Pass package, which does include the advantage of offering live access to the regular season games, whereas the Game Rewind service regular season games are delayed...

Edited August 14, 2011 by jfchandler

[ScubaBuddha]

I have been watching mlb.tv for a while and I don't recall exactly how much it was but it wasn't very expensive. Maybe $20 month. 250 bucks for NFL live? That's ridiculous. Until the price becomes reasonable, I will continue to Google "watch free NFL games now" and follow the various links. I have never had a problem finding a live feed.

[jfchandler]

I too think the $250 price tag for the NFL Game Pass is ridiculously overpriced... But then again, you've got to remember, it's aimed at an international audience... not Americans (as people might usually think about them).

On the other hand, Game Rewind (every regular season game on demand available in less than 24 hours after the completion of the live game, is a steal at $30 for the entire regular season.

The problem with watching NFL games live in Thailand, whether unofficial streams via the Internet or direct from the NFL, is that they're typically occurring in the midnight to 8 am timeframe Thailand time, when most people are or should be sleeping.

I used to try to watch the games live via those unofficial streams or via ASN on Truevisions cable... but invariably I'd end up falling asleep partway through one of the live broadcasts, and then end up having to watch a repeat on ASN/Truevisions anyway.

The advantage of Game Rewind over ASN and Truevisions, of course, is Game Rewind gives you access to every single game every week all through the season, whenever you want to watch them. ASN/Truevisions, by comparison, typically is carrying the three or so national network broadcasts and then maybe one or two other games as repeats, 5 or 6 different games per week. And those may or may not be whatever teams a particular person might be interested in.

[snarky66]

Yeah but the beauty of watching a replay on ASN is you don't have to suffer all the BS ads. No halftime? Great. Bring it on. a 3 hour game in 2 hours. Manna from heaven.

[ScubaBuddha]

I'm a bit of a night owl so late night games aren't a problem.

The other problem I have with watching delayed is I always seem to stumble upon a spoiler. Oddly, Al-Jazera runs American sports scores on their ticker.

[jfchandler]

Yeah but the beauty of watching a replay on ASN is you don't have to suffer all the BS ads. No halftime? Great. Bring it on. a 3 hour game in 2 hours. Manna from heaven.

Actually, that's an equally good feature of the NFL's Game Rewind service... They cut out all the commercial breaks, timeouts and even halftime... So the video stream/feed you just is just the game itself, with the brief intro and exit at both ends...

I know some people do like the actual U.S. commercials and some want to hear the half-time features and reports... I don't happen to be one of them, however...

But in contrast, this past season, I had the similar video on demand subscription for the NBA playoffs, and they did just the opposite...and probably the worst among bad choices. They included, in real time, all the delays of the commercial breaks and halftime.... But the didn't actually show any of the commercials or halftime features... Instead, every time one of those breaks came along, they went to a canned video message screen and the same boring music - over and over and over again -- saying it's game break time and they'll be back shortly... Now that... repeated endlessly game after game ...made me CRAZY!!

[jfchandler]

I'm a bit of a night owl so late night games aren't a problem.

The other problem I have with watching delayed is I always seem to stumble upon a spoiler. Oddly, Al-Jazera runs American sports scores on their ticker.

Ya, I understand about that... The first year I had NFL Game Rewind, they have a feature in their web player that allows you to display the scores of the already completed games on the video player's home page... So every time I'd sign in, I'd see the score of the game I was about to watch... Fortunately, as I discovered, that feature also has an on-off button in the player, so you can simply turn off the game scores and they never show up again.

I don't watch Al-Jazeera, so I never had a problem with that... But I did used to run into that problem with unofficial Internet streams of games where I'd catch a half-time report that would be giving out the score of an earlier game I hadn't watched yet.. I think I used to run into the same thing sometimes with ASN as well.

Now, I've gotten pretty accustomed to simply avoiding looking at or listening to anything that's going to give me the game scores before I've had a chance to see any game I'm planning to watch. And as I mentioned above, Game Rewind skips all of the network half-time reports, so no problem there.

Ahh... now I'm remembering... When I used to watch via ASN... sometimes toward the end of either the first half or the end of the game, if the current game was slow or uninteresting, there were a couple of game announcers who'd have the habit of suddenly wandering off in their commentary and beginning to talk about conference standings and who'd won or lost earlier in the day... It got to the point where I could mostly tell when those kinds of side tracks were coming, and I'd put the volume on mute until it looked like they'd finished.

[lomatopo]

Thanks to the powers that be, Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith most notably, for figuring out the best way to divvy up the $ 9 billion annually (SI had an interesting chart, some of it based on the Packers, which as a publicly owned entity publish their financials).

I see on the Truevisions schedule the season opener:

ASN (110) 07:30 09 Sep 11 NFL REGULAR SEASON 2011/12 - NEW ORLEANS SAINTS @ GREEN B

Obviously the Sunday games will be somewhat emotional, especially the Giants at Redskins and Dallas at Jets in New Meadowlands.

ASN (110) 00:00 12 Sep 11 NFL REGULAR SEASON 2011/12 - PHILADELPHIA EAGLES @ ST. LO

ASN (110) 03:15 12 Sep 11 NFL REGULAR SEASON 2011/12 - NEW YORK GIANTS @ WASHINGTON

ASN (110) 07:20 12 Sep 11 NFL REGULAR SEASON 2011/12 - DALLAS COWBOYS @ NEW YORK JE

ASN (110) 06:00 13 Sep 11 NFL REGULAR SEASON 2011/12 - NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS @ MIAMI

ASN (110) 09:15 13 Sep 11 NFL REGULAR SEASON 2011/12 - OAKLAND RAIDERS @ DENVER BRO

DST ends Nov. 6, week 9.

[jfchandler]

Loma, you're skipping ahead to the reg season, while I'm still watching (after the fact) VOD preseason games from Week 1..

WOW, there have been A LOT of personnel changes around the league.... Last night watched the Chargers v the Seahawks, to discover that Matt Hasselbeck is gone as the Seahawks QB and now replaced by Tavaris Jackson (formerly from the Vikings). Huh???

And Chargers running back Darren Sproles is gone to the Saints.

TE Zack Miller from the Raiders has now gone to the Seahawks as well...along with former coach Tom Cable, now an O line coach.

LB Takeo Spikes from the 49ers has gone to San Diego.

Troy Smith is gone as one of the 49ers QBs and Alex Smith is back (again!), not to mention Mike Singletary being gone as the head coach and replaced by Jim Harbaugh from Stanford.

CB Nnamdi Asomugha from the Raiders has gone to the Eagles... and on and on and on....

I need the preseason just to figure out who's on what teams anymore...

Ohh... who's Brett Favre playing for this year, BTW???

[Pinot]

The Red Zone channel on the NFL ticket is worth the price of admission for Fantasy Football junkies like me. Also games and replays can be watched on myp2p. Someone told me about it yesterday haven't checked it out but he says it works fine with occasional dropouts from the Internet connection. Every game is on there he tells me. Have to check it out before I plunk down my $250.

[jfchandler]

From what I've seen lately, the various NFL games typically are posted on the My site you mentioned...available for download as multi-part files that the user then needs to splice together in order to play.... And the files are pretty good sized, so they'll take some time to download.... We're not talking about streaming there...

Elsewhere, a lot of the games are available live via StreamTorrent if you install and setup that free software, and have a bit of technical understanding to get it working... But you're always at the mercy of what games anybody out there decides to stream. And of course those are only shown live...there's no playback or VOD...

The NFL GamePass subscription for non-U.S. residents ($250 for the season) includes streaming access to all the games live and on demand after the fact....as well as including streaming access to the NFL Channel... Not sure if the Red Zone channel is included with that....

For my tastes, I'd rather spend $40 or so on the Game Rewind package to watch the games on my schedule after the fact... and then use ST or another means to catch the NFL channel when it suits me.

[TBKK]

I checked the web site of NFL rewind and it stated that games played on Sunday will be posted after the Sunday Night game. This means that the games played on Sunday afternoon will be available in less than 12 hours after they were played. Not a bad deal for $40.

Anybody have a suggestion regarding a good program to use to get a proxy IP address to access NFL rewind in Thailand?

[rwilem]

JF, you are the man here, for this topic. All the exhaustive info you provide is valuable. I haven't gotten with the NFL Rewind program yet, but this is perhaps the year I have to get on it.

Another topic in the forum inquired about True Visions dropping NFL games from it's own stable of sports channels, which looks to be the case. The SNF and MNF games were on True 3 last season, as were all the playoff games, fortunately. And in seasons prior there were the two U.S. afternoon time slot games aired back-to-back in the early AM hours, mostly on TS-4, with edited replays of both shown on Monday evening--which I preferred watching--the best thing they ever did Unfortunately, that ended last season.

So now it's ASN only, for NFL games. And ASN, asn.tv, does have issues, and at their web site there is a forum which ASN administrators do read and respond to comments and criticisms.

For folks like myself who prefer to see games on evening replay when possible, ASN has a real doozy of an issue with next Tuesday night's replays of the season-opening two Monday night games. A check of the schedule shows they'll air replays of the two games on Tuesday night.....but will air them in the reverse order that they were played!

Great, in the first replay (Oakland-Denver, the second of the two MNF openers) the announcers will be yapping about the earlier-played game, or there'll be graphics and probably some cut-away highlights during the the broadcast. So you won't be able to escape finding out what happened in the earlier-played, first of the two MNF openers, New England-Miami game, which is to be aired on ASN immediately after the Oakland-Denver game!

I've left a post at the ASN forum, and I know there are a few guys here who are really up on the NFL, just wanted to pass this along.

The season's not only a week old--actually, it's only 1 game old!--and already, as usual, BS to deal with for NFL fans.

The TV stuff is going to eventually drive me to NFL Rewind. It should be simple for all of them, True, ASN, ESPN with college ball, but they just continually 'drop the ball'.

From what I've seen lately, the various NFL games typically are posted on the My site you mentioned...available for download as multi-part files that the user then needs to splice together in order to play.... And the files are pretty good sized, so they'll take some time to download.... We're not talking about streaming there...

Elsewhere, a lot of the games are available live via StreamTorrent if you install and setup that free software, and have a bit of technical understanding to get it working... But you're always at the mercy of what games anybody out there decides to stream. And of course those are only shown live...there's no playback or VOD...

The NFL GamePass subscription for non-U.S. residents ($250 for the season) includes streaming access to all the games live and on demand after the fact....as well as including streaming access to the NFL Channel... Not sure if the Red Zone channel is included with that....

For my tastes, I'd rather spend $40 or so on the Game Rewind package to watch the games on my schedule after the fact... and then use ST or another means to catch the NFL channel when it suits me.

[kuma]

Hey JF let me ask, do they filter the games on game rewind so they do not mention the socres of other games or have an update banner along the bottom??

I am really happy there is ASN now after years of really no consistent coverage but I cannot believe the NFL will not do a cleansing of their broadcasts for global distribution that eliminates all this interest-destroying info.

Tomorrow the bears play the pack and really looking forward to that - anyone know where in Ptya it plays in the bars?? - but the game before it (jets/raiders) I would like to see also but will not or the bears game will be spoiled.

So wondering if rewind has the same issue.

Thanks

I too think the $250 price tag for the NFL Game Pass is ridiculously overpriced... But then again, you've got to remember, it's aimed at an international audience... not Americans (as people might usually think about them).

On the other hand, Game Rewind (every regular season game on demand available in less than 24 hours after the completion of the live game, is a steal at $30 for the entire regular season.

The problem with watching NFL games live in Thailand, whether unofficial streams via the Internet or direct from the NFL, is that they're typically occurring in the midnight to 8 am timeframe Thailand time, when most people are or should be sleeping.

I used to try to watch the games live via those unofficial streams or via ASN on Truevisions cable... but invariably I'd end up falling asleep partway through one of the live broadcasts, and then end up having to watch a repeat on ASN/Truevisions anyway.

The advantage of Game Rewind over ASN and Truevisions, of course, is Game Rewind gives you access to every single game every week all through the season, whenever you want to watch them. ASN/Truevisions, by comparison, typically is carrying the three or so national network broadcasts and then maybe one or two other games as repeats, 5 or 6 different games per week. And those may or may not be whatever teams a particular person might be interested in.

[lomatopo]

So far this season I've found it pretty easy to BT games, not from TYT. I already have the Pats/Raiders game. ~ 1.5 GB MKV files/540P, run-time ~ 2:25.

[IanForbes]

That is the one thing I miss when I return to Thailand in November. I love my American and Canadian football. But I miss all the finals in CFL and all but a few of the NFL playoff games. The Superbowl I can usually find in some Thailand sports bar, but I'm not sure what is going to happen now that TRUE has dropped the ASN channel. Thai television is so crappy I don't even have a TV in Thailand.

[lomatopo]

So did anyone here use Game Rewind this season? If so, can you provide a capsule review? Video quality? Content? Availability? Can you "download" or capture content for viewing on a different platform? Are the games posted within 24 hours? Less? More? Announcers? How is the multiple game windowing?

And did anyone subscribe to Game Pass? Similar questions, but am curious about the video quality especially.

The 49ers/Saints game was incredible, we watched most of the last quarter at The Sport Corner before the Pats Te-Blowed out the hapless Broncos.

The G-Men seem to be handling the Packers at present,

It would be interesting if brothers matched up as head coaches in the Super Bowl.

[Old Man River]

Now that Truevisions has lost the rights to ASN, will Thai TV be showing the Superbowl?

[lomatopo]

Now that Truevisions has lost the rights to ASN, will Thai TV be showing the Superbowl?

You mean free Thai TV? I don't know for sure but I am thinking that they will not be showing it. I don't think it's been on free Thai TV for ~ 5 years?

[wayned]

Gmm Grammy (Gmm sport) bought the rights to air ASN in Thailand in October 2011. They will air the superbowl on 6 Feb at 0630. They have been running a free test run on the Thaicon 5 satellite (3480 H 30000) since October but encrypted it last Thursday night. There is no free telecast available that I can find. If you have access to papala d satellite (113E) it has been posted that ASN is still being broadcast free there (4101 V 30000)

Edited February 1, 2012 by wayned