Comcast Streaming NHL Games

NHL Games to be Available over the Internet!

If you are a hockey fan, then the news of being able to watch hockey for free will make your day.  Comcast just announced that they will be broadcasting as many as two National Hockey League hockey games a night throughout the season for the 7.7 million Comcast high speed Internet customers. 

Until now, there have been no sports leagues and broadband Internet providers with exclusive contracts.  The NFL and the NBA both offer audio broadcasting over the Internet, and the MLB broadcasts their games through several different providers; but these leagues are available through a number of broadband providers.  Also, the MLB viewers are billed per month or per season. 

How Does the NHL Broadcast Work?

This new Comcast broadcasting of NHL games will work through video streaming.  Streaming uses recordings of moving images, combined with audio files, in a compressed format that is sent over the Internet.  The purpose of streaming is to have a means of watching TV or, in this case, NHL games over the Internet without it taking a large amount of time to download first.  Instead, the video and audio files are compressed to smaller files, sent over the Internet, and then decompressed through the viewer’s media program so it can be viewed in its original format. 

Don’t miss a game, all you need is your computer and Comcast high speed Internet!

Comcast’s Added Features

Not only does Comcast now offer National Hockey League games free of charge, but they have been working to improve their services in other ways as well.  Comcast reported that although DSL services have been coming down in price, they will not follow the lead.  Instead of cutting the price of their cable Internet services, they are improving the quality of their services, by adding content (such as the broadcastings of NHL games and free of charge access to RealNetworks’ Rhapsody music services) and faster, more reliable high speed Internet connections.