You're right - it was called FoxTrax, it's a fairly interesting piece of engineering.

It's pretty wild they were able to convince the NHL to use a modified puck with a battery and PCB inside, all so American viewers could better follow the action.

It was not well received in Canada :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoxTrax

As someone with low vision I loved when they added that and missed it when it was gone.

I can't see the puck at all at a game and have to be very close to a television to see whats going on.

As a result most sports are boring.

It was not well received anywhere. However, in a bit of defense of the idea, TV at that time was still NTSC (~480p resolution at 24 frames/s) and it was pretty hard to see the puck even if you knew where it was.

Just a nitpick: analog NTSC was roughly 480i at (just under) 30 FPS. The latter is significant, as 3:2 pulldown (as would have been necessary if the station's cameras were scanning at 24 FPS) would have introduced judder and made tracking even harder. To its credit, interlacing also improved motion clarity at the expense of loss of detail, but whether that's a net benefit ultimately amounts to a matter of preference.

Well, the current puck still has emitters inside of it.

> [1] Puck and Player Tracking became fully operational in 2021-22, with up to 20 cameras in each arena and infrared emitters in each puck and sweater.

The player tracking is fairly easy to see; there's often an airtag sized bump on a player's jersey.

The puck tracking can be a bit more difficult but sometimes the puck looks like it's melting the ice behind it. That's just them giving it a grey shadow instead of the neon shadow.

[1]: https://www.nhl.com/news/nhl-edge-launches-website-for-puck-...

> You can't see the ball in American football, either.

The average play must be what, like 5 seconds? So if you lose where the ball is you're not going to be confused for long.

In far fewer than five seconds, one team can suddenly have the upper hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O34BnFu8Kk

The effect is so powerful, it fools professionals and the camera-operator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fioVbt7eF8

Even when the technique is known, everyone remains susceptible (the victim team in the above video is the trickster here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSNTfFg4XW0

What I’ve always found fascinating is that I could always clearly see the puck in any stadium, no matter how high up I sat. It was impossible to miss.

However, when watching hockey on TV, it’s incredibly difficult to see the damn thing.

As a gamer this seems obvious to me. It's long been clear to me that our eyes are very adept at processing high-speed motion. Even the first 120Hz LCD gaming monitor, as sucky as it was, was miles bette than the 60 Hz on the market.

So while technically our eyes might not discern individual frames higher than 25 FPS or so, our brain can absolutely process data from a much higher effeice framerate. The motion blur fast thing naturally produce for example, provides critical context clues.

In gaming, sure 240 Hz won't help you see more as such, but it allows your eyes to do what they naturally do and give a much improved experience of fluidity and superior motion prediction.

I find this interesting - before we switched from 5/4 aspect ratio, it was hard to find the puck because the camera was always chasing - but if you know hockey (e.g., watch enough of it) there are a lot of cues about where the puck is or will be, now that we have a wider aspect ratio.

pretty common with my crowd of fans to even get a little giddy when the play is so deceptive that it fakes out the camera man and they dont realize theyre focused on the wrong player until a second or two passes

That's the exception. not the rule.

So yes, in "trick" plays you can't see the ball. But neither can the defense.

Having watched hockey AND US football my entire life, you can't compare the two. Totally different styles of sports and thus comparing your ability to see the 2 doesn't make sense.

to add: There has never been a football in history that had the ball going from one end of the field to the other and back. And yet, this happpens in hockey regularly and within seconds.

I'd go a step further and say the ball/puck is not the interesting thing to watch.

Imagine if you couldn't see the players, and just saw the puck. Would that be interesting at all?

Think about tennis. There is the trope of people's eyes going back and forth following the ball, but I don't think they are following the ball directly. They are going back and forth looking at the person who is going to hit the ball.

I think you might be conflating knowing where the puck is with being able to fix your eyes on the puck at all times. The complaint is usually about the former. People are complaining that they don't know where the puck is.

you dont know what you dont know. walking into hockey for the first time, you may think you should be looking for the puck.

but really, what you want to look for is how the players are moving. it's sort of a "which one is different from all the others." one person will clearly be moving in a completely unique way, as the others chase them or vie to get open or get in somebodys way. to acomplish this identification, youre looking at their legs, shoulders, hands, feet, and heads.

> Imagine if you couldn't see the players, and just saw the puck. Would that be interesting at all?

Honestly, I don't know. Is it really the players people care most about? More than the score? The players come in and out of teams so often that caring about any specific player seems strange. Teams seem more important. I suspect that just seeing colored sticks (with colors signifying the team) and the puck would probably work just as well but then I don't get the appeal of watching sports in the first place.

> American football

handegg*

The leading theory for the etymology of the “foot” in “football” is because it’s played on foot unlike, say, jousting or polo.

It gets the name from "rugby football" from the time where both rugby and international football ("soccer") were considered related sports and often shared rules and associations (such as the London Football Association, from which Princeton imported rules to the US, and which eventually started to split as the sports split further).

The change in shape from a round ball to the "handegg" eventually derived from the first American innovation in "rugby football" of the forward pass. Even with the forward pass, the game required kicks into goals for a long while with the "touchdown" a further later innovation (though also influenced by reimporting rugby rules, as it relates to the rugby "try"). Kick offs, punts, field goals, and extra point attempts all still vestigially remain from the rugby origins even as most of the play in between them changed drastically.

American Football is called "football" because it evolved from the "football family". It's like using the term "romance language": Spanish and Italian sound very different today, but they both share roots in Latin. They've also both changed a lot since the days when Latin was a living language.

Also:

basketball -> handball

hockey -> stickball

volleyball -> handball

rugby -> handegg

baseball -> stickball

cricket -> stickball

golf -> stickball

Hopefully this will finally appease the football literalists and make things simpler for you all to understand :)

I like the basketball, volleyball, and baseball way where the noun before ball has some leeway but should be clearly identified with an aspect of the sport.

football -> tackleball rugby -> tossball cricket -> paddleball golf -> clubball hockey -> icepuck

Handball’s already taken though.

I find it werid that you keep calling soccer football.

> You can't see the ball in American football, either.

Tell me you're not from the US without telling me. This is apples and oranges.

Unless it's a trick play, you 100% know where the ball is.

How many times in football does the ball go from one end to the other and back? Never. In hockey that happens regularly, and in seconds. That's why comparing them in this context isn't correct.