[Varquel]

I just set up Gotham XBMC and the latest version of this add-on on my Windows 8.1 PC, and while I've got the streaming working, I seem to get a lot of XBMC crashes while I navigate through the menus inside the add-on. It seems like most commonly I get crashes when I back out of an active stream, but it also seems to have a chance of happening any time I click a menu item inside the add-on. Anyone know of a fix for this?

[hitman19]

Working great for me tonight too.

Question: I had noted that the quality looks amazing and was better than PS3. Which in turn thought looked better than the pc feed (so XBMC > PS3 > PC). Does anyone have the differing best qualities for each version (pretty much a comparison)?

This is definitely the case, the XBMC app has always had the best quality video. The PS3 looks ok, still not as good, but it buffers ALL THE TIME. I can't say anything about the PS4 app, because it has not worked once for me this season. The web browser feed is pretty consistently bad, the picture quality is usually HD, but the frame rate is complete garbage, so not great to watch.

If the NHL was smart, they'd be trying to hire the people who develop and maintain apps like these, to improve their garbage software.

I can only speak of my subjective experience...but I think watching the same feed via XBMC is markedly superior to the web equivalent, and I think it's better rendering.

And, after a lot of research and tweaking, I'm 99% sure that the lion's share of the buffering issues are NHL server related, not specific to any method of viewing, plug in or web. Even if your pipe is 10x as fat as it needs to be you'll still see buffering sometimes, no matter what. But, I have only the web version and the XBMC versions to compare. </twocents>

I have 150Mbps internet, and the games still buffer, some more than others, so I have to assume the issue is with NHL's servers as well.

[rbrohman]

I have 150Mbps internet, and the games still buffer, some more than others, so I have to assume the issue is with NHL's servers as well.

I think you're right.

It seems like the NHL is allocating a fixed amount of bandwidth to each game. I watched the last 2 periods of bruins game at 5k and didn't buffer once. Couldn't go more than a few minutes without buffering for the canucks game, even when using the 3k stream. I guess that would mean the canucks game had more viewers?

[eracknaphobia]

I just set up Gotham XBMC and the latest version of this add-on on my Windows 8.1 PC, and while I've got the streaming working, I seem to get a lot of XBMC crashes while I navigate through the menus inside the add-on. It seems like most commonly I get crashes when I back out of an active stream, but it also seems to have a chance of happening any time I click a menu item inside the add-on. Anyone know of a fix for this?

I had the same issue with a fresh install too. I believe there is a discrepancy with the addon.xml and the folder created when installing the zip file. I'm still trying to find a solid fix for this but here's what I did to patch it.

- Close XBMC
- Go to your addons folder (in windows "%APPDATA%\XBMC\addons")
- Rename plugin.video.nhl-gamecenter-master to plugin.video.nhl-gamecenter
- Go to your userdata > database folder ("%APPDATA%\XBMC\userdata\Database") and delete any files that look like AddonsXX.db where XX is a number (don't worry xbmc will recreate this when you open it again).
- Start XBMC and hopefully you won't have anymore force closing in the addon

Hope this helps

[amd7674]

Great Job ellisd and big kudos to Carb0 :-)

I've tried this successfully on 3 different PCs all running 13.2 (win7 64bit, win7 32bit and win8.1 64bit).
Also It works well on Amazon fire TV with xbmc (latest spmc flavour).

However as other pointed out I had a lot of buffering issues with all the games I tired. I didn't try to use lower stream rates to see if it makes any difference. I'm not sure if it is related to overloaded NHL servers, my ISP at night (I'm on 45mbps plan), xbmc video caching or addon itself (I don't think so). If I had to blame anyone it would be NHL and Robbers at fault... LOL

[ellisd]

Great Job ellisd and big kudos to Carb0 :-)

I've tried this successfully on 3 different PCs all running 13.2 (win7 64bit, win7 32bit and win8.1 64bit).
Also It works well on Amazon fire TV with xbmc (latest spmc flavour).

However as other pointed out I had a lot of buffering issues with all the games I tired. I didn't try to use lower stream rates to see if it makes any difference. I'm not sure if it is related to overloaded NHL servers, my ISP at night (I'm on 45mbps plan), xbmc video caching or addon itself (I don't think so). If I had to blame anyone it would be NHL and Robbers at fault... LOL

Thanks. Yea, I don't htink it has anything to do with the application. I wasn't testing things last night though so I'm not sure if buffering is across the board. If I get home from work tonight in time to watch some games I'll test it out.

[hscotty55]

Thanks for this!

[kaczor47]

Thank you so much for keeping this going - it is far superior to the web-based feed!

Now, what is the reason for the 4500kbps streams not working? Have they not enabled these? I remember these were working quite nicely last season (and what a difference 60fps makes!)

Thanks again for the hard work going into this.

[eracknaphobia]

Thank you so much for keeping this going - it is far superior to the web-based feed!

Now, what is the reason for the 4500kbps streams not working? Have they not enabled these? I remember these were working quite nicely last season (and what a difference 60fps makes!)

Thanks again for the hard work going into this.

4500kpbs streams have been replaced by 5000kbps. If you select "Best" in the stream quality settings you will get the 5K streams.

[kaczor47]

Thank you so much for keeping this going - it is far superior to the web-based feed!

Now, what is the reason for the 4500kbps streams not working? Have they not enabled these? I remember these were working quite nicely last season (and what a difference 60fps makes!)

Thanks again for the hard work going into this.

4500kpbs streams have been replaced by 5000kbps. If you select "Best" in the stream quality settings you will get the 5K streams.

The 'Latest Games' feeds do indeed give the 5000kbps option (which works). "Archived Games" still list 4500kbps and don't seem to work. Selecting Best seems to give a 30fps feed....

5000kbps does look nice, though!

[eracknaphobia]

Thank you so much for keeping this going - it is far superior to the web-based feed!

Now, what is the reason for the 4500kbps streams not working? Have they not enabled these? I remember these were working quite nicely last season (and what a difference 60fps makes!)

Thanks again for the hard work going into this.

4500kpbs streams have been replaced by 5000kbps. If you select "Best" in the stream quality settings you will get the 5K streams.

The 'Latest Games' feeds do indeed give the 5000kbps option (which works). "Archived Games" still list 4500kbps and don't seem to work. Selecting Best seems to give a 30fps feed....

5000kbps does look nice, though!

I see what you mean. I was able to view 60fps (4500kbps) archive streams as far back as 2013-2014 season. Anything before that is 30fps. I'm not sure 60fps was available back then.

[amd7674]

Great Job ellisd and big kudos to Carb0 :-)

I've tried this successfully on 3 different PCs all running 13.2 (win7 64bit, win7 32bit and win8.1 64bit).
Also It works well on Amazon fire TV with xbmc (latest spmc flavour).

However as other pointed out I had a lot of buffering issues with all the games I tired. I didn't try to use lower stream rates to see if it makes any difference. I'm not sure if it is related to overloaded NHL servers, my ISP at night (I'm on 45mbps plan), xbmc video caching or addon itself (I don't think so). If I had to blame anyone it would be NHL and Robbers at fault... LOL

Thanks. Yea, I don't htink it has anything to do with the application. I wasn't testing things last night though so I'm not sure if buffering is across the board. If I get home from work tonight in time to watch some games I'll test it out.

If I run into buffering issues again I will try it on my supported Sony TV with nhl media app. The problem is I don't think Sony TV supports 4.5k/5k streams and it maxes out on 3.2k 30fps streams.... :-(

Thank you so much for keeping this going - it is far superior to the web-based feed!

Now, what is the reason for the 4500kbps streams not working? Have they not enabled these? I remember these were working quite nicely last season (and what a difference 60fps makes!)

Thanks again for the hard work going into this.

4500kpbs streams have been replaced by 5000kbps. If you select "Best" in the stream quality settings you will get the 5K streams.

The 'Latest Games' feeds do indeed give the 5000kbps option (which works). "Archived Games" still list 4500kbps and don't seem to work. Selecting Best seems to give a 30fps feed....

5000kbps does look nice, though!

I don't think Archived Games ever supported higher bitrates. I think they were always 3200kbps (30fps) archives... Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong...
eracknaphobia just answered this... :-)

[SparkGFX]

Quick question - Does the settings for the thumbnails work anymore? Not a big issue, because the streams were all working great. No buffer or lag at all, even while streaming 4 games at once.

[eracknaphobia]

Quick question - Does the settings for the thumbnails work anymore? Not a big issue, because the streams were all working great. No buffer or lag at all, even while streaming 4 games at once.

It does if you have the PIL (Python Image Library) available. What I've experienced: works in windows, Raspberry pi needs an manual installation, no go on android.

[jayace]

Quick question - Does the settings for the thumbnails work anymore? Not a big issue, because the streams were all working great. No buffer or lag at all, even while streaming 4 games at once.

It does if you have the PIL (Python Image Library) available. What I've experienced: works in windows, Raspberry pi needs an manual installation, no go on android.

Working on Apple TV also