I'm subscribed to the Game Centre Live so I have access to the live games in addition to the Vault. Owing to the obvious timezone differences, I never watch a live game other than the occasional afternoon game. However, I use Game Centre Live to watch the full length archived games as they're streamed at 3,000kbps whereas on the Vault they're streamed at 1,600kbps. I watch the games on my 37" TV and so the increased bitrate makes a huge difference. At 3,000kbps it's almost standard TV quality - there is plenty of detail in the picture and the framerate means relatively little judder when the screen pans. The only downside is that the on demand recordings don't cut out the commercials (but there is a useful skip 10 seconds forward button which helps).
Having said that, I watch an awful lot of the Vault because the 10-12 minute game highlights are brilliant. This is something I've always wanted from ESPN360. This allows me to keep up with all the goings on in the league rather than only really following the Bruins. Whilst not as great as the 3,000kbps, 1,600kbps is still very watchable - even on my 37" TV.
I really do hope we can continue to have access to NHL Game Centre and Vault over the coming seasons. Although I think the layout of the site could be improved, the service is far superior to that of ESPN360. NHL Game Centre games can be watched on demand right from when the game starts (useful yesterday when I wanted to watch the Bruins game an hour after it started) whereas it could take 24 hours or even a number of days before the on demand stream was available on ESPN360 - and there were plenty of times when all of their streams went down. I've have no trouble with NHL's service since I've been subscribing.
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Apparently that's a 40% discount (usually the full season is $160 and we're getting just over half a season (in terms of GP) for about a third of that price).
