NHL Game Center: Cost & Blackout Restrictions

If you are a hockey fan but don't have much love for the cost of NHL Game Center Live or the Blackout restrictions, I've got a couple of tricks to help you see the games you want for much cheaper that the actual publicized cost.

Cheaper Access:
First, NHL Game Center Live allows you to see all of the NHL games during the season, online. This includes: Android, iPhone, Web Browser and many other tools for you viewing pleasure. But for me, paying a hefty cost of $160 for the season or $18.99 a month for 8 months seems like a lot. If you would like to get Game Center for a reduced cost, use a VPN. If you sign up for Game Center from another country except for Canada or the US, you will only pay $99 for the year or $19.99 for 5 payments, a savings of $60 a year.

How to do this:
A VPN allows you to connect through the web and your IP (location) be shown as if you are located somewhere else. I use Strong VPN (see below) and it allows you a secure connection through many different countries for a very low yearly cost. Also with Strong VPN you can set your VPN up on many different platforms and systems. Once you get it installed, you will need to connect and make sure your connection is shown as somewhere else besides Canada or the US, I selected Britain. Once you do this you can now use your browser to connect to NHL Game Center site and the cost will be now be $99.99 for the year or $19.99 for 5 months. Click on the option you prefer and fill in your info. And yes it will accept your Canadian or American credit card with your North American address. 

Stong VPN - Unlimited access $55 / year.

I also use my Strong VPN for many other items as well, including:

• Connecting to the US Netflix;
• Secure Private internet access in the airport and coffee shops;
• To get Hulu in Canada;
• Download apps for my phone that are only available in other countries;
• Ordering items from sites that restrict access based on location.

But it also saved me $60 off of NHL Game Center so that last stuff is just a bonus. See how you can connect Strong to your systems.

Blackout Restrictions:

Second, if you’re like me, you follow the Senators but live in the Senators market; you are subject to Blackout restrictions, meaning games will be blocked if you are in the Senators market area. There are a couple of ways around this:

    VPN: See above on how to connect to a VPN;
    Android 4.3 permissions;

Android Permissions:
In Android 4.3 you can view and change any permissions set on an app. When you install an app it asks for permissions to do different things on your phone in the background. One of these permissions for the NHL Game Center app is to allow your location to be shared with the app. This is used to know where you are located to limit or blackout games in your area that are broadcasted on the TV.

Now since I am paying for a service, I don’t like to be limited to what I can see based on where I am located especially since I want to watch my Senator games in the Ottawa area. So in Android 4.3 you can view each individual app and choose specific permissions of that app and turn them on or off. You can use "App Ops Starter" to get to the permissions. If you edit the NHL Game Center app permissions you can turn off Location Sharing and now you will no longer be blacked out of any games. In older versions of Android you can also accomplish this if your phone is rooted.

Hydro Ottawa and I

This may seem like a strange post, but if you know me, Hydro Ottawa and I have not had the most trusting and agreeable relationship over the years that I have lived in Ontario.

Back in good ol' 2002 when my now wife and I packed up from Newfoundland and headed West to Ontario for work, we moved into a small one bedroom apartment. We got our utilities and perks installed (hydro, phone, cable, ect...). Then we moved into a house in 2006. Here are some of the issues/problems I have with Hydro Ottawa:

Problem

After receiving the first few hydro bills I was outraged about a single line item on the bill; "Debt Retirement Charge". So I called up Hydro Ottawa to get an explanation of this charge, since I did not owe any money past due, why was I being charged for this?

After listing to the representative on the phone explain to me that the Debt Retirement Charge is a charge (tax) on all residents of Ontario hydro bills to repay the debt that was incurred while hydro was managed (I use that term lightly) by the Ontario government. So why must I pay this debt? I did not live here when it was incurred. Nor was I the one who made the poor decisions to to put the organization into debt in the first place.

So back in 1998 the Ontario government decided to break from the power business and have semi-private organizations supply the power to residences and business of Ontario.

At the time, some of the $38.1 billion debt was offset by assets assigned to Ontario Hydro’s successor companies, Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation (OPG).

A portion of the debt was also covered through income the province receives from Hydro One and OPG profits, as well as what amounts to taxes on local hydro utilities.

But that still left $7.8 billion uncovered, so the province imposed a debt retirement charge of 0.7 cents a kilowatt hour on hydro bills until it is “defeased”, which means paid off."

This is where some basic math comes into play with my abacus.

1998 - 2013
Ontario Hydro Debt:  $7,800,000,000.00
Number of Households in Ontario:  4,887,510
Bi-monthly billing = ~ 90 billing cycles
Debt Retirement Charge per house, per bill: $17.00
Total for 15 years per household: $1550.00
Total for all households paid: $7,575,640,500.00

Remaining:  $224,359,500.00*

*No business were taken account for in these numbers, so the Ontario government should now be in the GREEN and we should no longer be paying this. But alas the numbers that the politicians throw out, is that the charge "should" be removed by 2015 - 2018.

Issue / Questionable Hydro Ottawa Knowledge

This only started once we moved into our house in 2006 and I really should not blame it on Hydro Ottawa, but they could have given me some advise or guidance since they are trying to get people to be "greener". Now I understand that a house consumes more power, due to its size. But when we moved we began to get power bills that ranged from $200 bi-monthly to $600 bi-monthly. That's a hefty increase from our normal $100 - $200 bi-monthly bill. I had contacted Hydro Ottawa on many occasions to try and help with my situation since all of my neighbors in similar houses were reporting bills around $150. The best they would say is that we were running too much stuff too long.

In our house we had a gas furnace and gas stove and the AC, dishwasher, dryer and other small items ran on hydro. So we began limiting the use of these items or only using them during the off peak hours when hydro is cheaper. This still did nothing (very little) for the power bills. I was convinced the wires were mixed and there was another house on our line so I hired a  electrician who in-turn charged me and confirmed I was wrong.

So at this point I was defeated and I felt like I should bend over and take it like a Hydro Ottawa customer and continue to pay up. This was up until the spring when my father visited and was wondering what fan was going at night because he could not sleep. After some quick investigation, it was the Venmar system in the house that was running 24*7. Now my first thought was a small fan in a Venmar system could not possibly be causing this increase, but I decided to turn it off and watch the daily power readings. To my surprise the daily hydro usage dropped by about 15 - 20 kWH a day. That's and average of 1050kWH over 60 days. But we needed some longer time stats before we make a conclusion.

Now I am ready to conclude that yes the Venmar system running was what was causing such high power bills over 7 years and below are a few numbers to validate my conclusion:


Date Period: 2012-06-20 - 2012-08-22
Period Usage: 3147.983333kWH
Per Day Usage: 49.97kWH

Date Period: 2013-06-18 - 2013-08-20
Period Usage: 1919.589789kWH
Per Day Usage: 30.47kWH

A whopping difference of 1228.393544kWH a month. A 39% savings.

It was further confirmation last week when all of my neighbors reported much higher hydro bills than we had for the same billing period. Now to get that number even lower. 

Hydro Ottawa's advise to customers is that by changing the small things in your house such as the time you turn the dishwasher on to turning off lights. In my opinion these things do not make a big difference to your overall bill. What I suggest is for you to look at the more non-obvious things in your house, as these things could be running 24*7 and eating up much more hydro than many small things running every few days during peak time.

Epic Journey Month 4.5

Ah, I feel like I have been slacking off lately in terms of both exercise and in this blog. But the time has come to change all of that, so this will be my second blog post in two days. Don't expect that all the time.

As for the gym, exercising, trying to get into shape and all of that fun jazz, I'm back to the gym and into the third week now. This may not seem like much, but I was not there for about 2.5 months due to a knee injury I sustained at hockey. My knee has been getting better so I have been slowly (twice a week) visiting the gym to get back into a routine and I think this is harder than what it was in the beginning to start. Next week I plan on starting to do three days a week. On top of the Epic visiting, I have been doing daily walks now that it is nice out with the dog.

Although getting back into going to the gym in the mornings (5:30 am) has been hard, the benefits from it have been enormous. I have been feeling much more alert and awake during the day, easier to sleep at night and still wake up feeling refreshed the next day. I think the below comic pretty much sums up how I feel after completing a workout.

So I guess that is the update for now, I hope to have another post up in the next few weeks, since I have been falling behind on this. But the next post hopefully will include a good progress report on the increase in Epic Fitness visits, the beginning of the running season (for me), before and after numbers, and possibility some before and after pictures (this could be scary).