I have subscribed to CenterIce several years but I skipped last year.
I have thought about switching to Gamecenter instead-- what are the pros and cons of Gamecenter?
Can you connect from wherever you are (out of market) and still see your team's games as well as any other games you want?
Are their limits or hidden gotchas?
Interested in other people's experiences...
I had CenterIce for 4 years and now am on my 4th season with GameCenter. Here is how I break it down:
GameCenter Pros/Cons:
-- You can watch it anywhere (on your tablet, your phone, your PC, PS3/Xbox, at work, in the car, on the bus/train, etc).
-- You can watch either feed in full HD (home or away feed).
-- Depending on which program you are using, you can listen to the radio feed while watching the game rather than listen to the tv guys.
-- If you are big into fantasy sports, it allows you to follow your players stats real-time as the games are going on.
-- You don't have to DVR games if you miss them. You can go back and watch them anytime.
-- If you are late getting into a game, you can rewind to the beginning and watch the game in its entirety.
-- It shows you team's real-time stats if you are into that sorta thing (shots, hits, blocked shots, players TOI, etc).
-- You can watch 4 games at once and you get to the pick the games...
-- You can watch 1 game while another is in PiP.
-- You can connect HDMI chord from your PC/Mac to your Tv to watch it on your tv.
-- You need internet at least download speed of 5 Mbps for the video to run smoothly for just 1 game. If you want 2-4 games going at once, you will need 10+ Mbps download speed.
-- I've NEVER had issues buffering. But I have 50 Mbps download speed internet. Also, sometimes GCL people have complained about outages (I've never experienced it), but sometimes CI goes out depending on if your cable tv is out or not...
Pros/Cons to CenterIce:
-- It is already on tv and no extra HDMI chord is needed if you don't have PS3/Xbox.
-- Don't have to worry about buffering/outages.
-- You are sometimes limited on HD games.
-- You are sometimes not able to get both home/away feed.
-- You can listen to the radio feed.
-- You have to DVR games if you would like to go back and watch them.
-- You can't watch 2 games at once nor can you select which 4 games you want to watch at once.
Lastly:
-- You are blacked out of the local team's games depending on where your IP is for GCL. So if you are in Boston, you won't be able to watch the Bruins games, but you can watch the Preds games. However, if you are in Nashville, you can watch Bruins games and not Preds games. It isn't dependent on address, it is dependent on IP address. Where for CI, it is based on your address.
Personally I love GCL way more than Center Ice. But that's me... (this is coming from a person that prefers streaming Netflix over paying $100+ a month for cable tv)