Friday, December 08, 2006

TVU-NHL Is No More

The brain trust behind TVU-NHL has decided to call it quits.

Hi all,

It is my sad duty to report that we're shutting down the streams. Tonight will be the last night.

Other forums have been approached by NHL legal and asked not to link or reference TVU/Viidoo and I know most of the team forums have been asked the same thing, and with the visibility of the kago name and the NHL legal team getting more aggressive about shutting down tvu we've decided it's best to shut down the streams for a while.

I'm sorry for all those who will go back to missing out on hockey but NHL1 and NHL2 are now offline. JHaul and xFloyd_x78 are on their own to stream or not stream - you can still come here to chat about hockey, p2p streaming, etc. The forum layout will change over the next day or two - I apologize for any threads that get lost along the way. *Mods, if you're interested I'll find a place for you - pm me.

Again, I'm sorry. With any luck the NHL will wake up and realize there are a ton of fans out there that they currently aren't reaching, and hopefully will do something to fix that.

I guess that's all from us!

The Kagos

An unfortunate conclusion to what had become a very popular service. For me personally, it means no more live Oilers hockey, unless of course the game is one of the few that are nationally broadcasted. While an argument can be made that piracy in all forms is wrong, I hardly think that TVU was taking any revenue away from the NHL. There are numerous markets both in Canada and abroad where Centre Ice is not available, and I believe TVU was helping to bring the game to the fans in those regions, albeit in a grainy and low quality fashion.

I think the NHL can learn something from TVU; it showed that there is demand for the streaming of hockey over the internet. If I were Mr. Bettman, I would implement a low cost pay per view system much like MLB.tv; thus both promoting the game abroad and increasing league revenue.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Maybe when TSN gets the full broadcast rights (instead of the CBC) TSN will stream the games on its site.

Doogie2K said...

KK reports that Comcast has made their online streams free: first Oilers game is next Wednesday.

Julian said...

I wonder if a person/group who provided such a service a little more anonymously wouldn't last a little longer.

The Kago's had a message board going and were very well organized with their service.

I don't know that it would last forever, but someone who just put up the feed whenever they felt like showing a game or two without logging onto any message boards whatsoever might make the ride last a little longer.

kinger said...

You make some good points Julian. Personally, I think the high profile the Kagos adopted led in part to the loss of the channels.