Today, the NFL launched a new video on-demand service called Game Rewind that lets you watch every NFL game in HD quality, with no commercials. The service, which costs $19.99 for the season or $4.99 for a week pass, also provides DVR functionality and lets you watch up to four games at once. While it is not known exactly how quickly games are made available after they end, for now the NFL is saying within 24 hours, but it is expected times will be much shorter.
The NFL is using Move Networks for the service, which is the same technology partner used for the NFL’s live video service called GamePass HD, available to those outside the U.S. As expected, the quality of video for Game Rewind is amazing and the NFL kept the interface clean and simple. While you can see a demo of the service at NFL.com/gamerewind, the interface I got through an actual account looks a little different. You have the option of just watching the game with no additional content, or including things like stats and chatting with others during the game or watch up to four games at once. Initial buffering times took about a second for me on my Mac, in Safari and I experienced no stuttering at all getting the 2.4MB stream.
While it’s not ideal that the NFL would charge for games on-demand, at twenty bucks a year, it’s very affordable and by providing HD quality and no commercials of any kind, I’d throw down twenty dollars for it. I’d prefer to see the NFL offer this kind of on-demand video with this kind of quality, for free, but with online video monetization models being what they are today, you can’t fault them for charging viewers. With the NFL now providing this kind of video quality for two out of their three online video services, I hope the games they broadcast on Sunday night in conjunction with NBC start getting the HD treatment, or least encoded into a much higher video quality.
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I saw this a week or so ago and was going to post about it but I hadn’t purchased it yet. Does the video still look as high quality when you go to full screen HD? When I tried the demo on my home PC it looked great but when I went full screen it got a little “grainy”
I haven’t purchased anything yet, either. I didn’t think the full screen looked too bad. I am tossed about this one but for $20, it would be nice to replay some of the game. I posted this because there has been questions about where to watch the games. My guess is that this will be the mechanism for them to begin live streaming.
Well I purchased it. I think its a pretty good product. If you can’t watch em live this is a great substitute. You get it in HD quality providing you have a decent computer/video card and you have broadband.
It was pretty slick, with only occasional slow downs or glitches. If I had a LCD flatpanel tv I could hook my laptop up and watch it on there and it would look excellent.
I would say its worth the 20 bucks, no commercials either and it skips half time.
Sounds like a really great option for me! My son has a flatpanel TV and a decent laptop, so I may have to negotiate with him
as my destop creaks and groans.
Thanks for the tip, guys – and for the show.
Sounds like a great feature, and $20 is nothing for a real fan that would really use it.
Do you guys know if its possible to save games (or even certain clips) to your own computer for later viewing, or is it only on nfl.com’s server?
I have tried the demo and it works fine – sadly though it leaves the SB with the Patriots still up by 4
I will certainly try this next year – well worth $20.
The big decision for now is do I spend $20 to have the deep joy of reviewing the Packers games from this season? (Apparently they expire at the end of March) Maybe they would do me a cut price for 6 games?!
Zack, it doesn’t look as if you can save clips – but I’m no expert, and there may be a way. The NFL tends to have this locked down pretty tightly though.
BTW can you believe the Vikes can’t sell out their playoff game? Wasted on them!
A very happy new year to all in the Packer Nation!