It happens.
Anyway, let’s not assume that it’s necessarily ESPN that’s screwed up, since it appears that WatchESPN is working on Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Android…perhaps the issue is compatibility with Internet Explorer? There are continuing evolutionary changes in HTML and/or CSS – you’ve probably noticed that you don’t get pop-ups telling you to update the Flash player anymore, for example (generally it's no longer used) – so perhaps the problem is that Internet Explorer has changed and not WatchESPN; where I work some of our home study material can only be run on Internet Explorer, while other programs must be run through Chrome or Firefox only – it depends on the vendor.
Other than DVR, as sarals24 pointed out by far the best place to watch a replay is the UConn Husky Games website – they’re all archived there reasonably quickly and whatever problem some of you are having with WatchESPN wouldn’t apply there. An additional benefit is that they are archived there “forever” whereas I’m pretty sure ESPN only keeps them for a week or so. Also, UConn Husky Games has all the games including those on Fox and CBS – for all of our lovefest for the Fox broadcast of this year’s DePaul game, as near as I can tell Fox does not archive the games and I wasn’t able to watch it until the next day…on UConn Husky Games.
As Cabbie191 said, the downside of either WatchESPN or Husky Games is that you end up watching on your computer or tablet and that’s not nearly as nice as the big screen, and if I’m actually working on the computer and/or tablet then I can’t watch the game; this is where dongles come into play. Because I travel for a living I have an Amazon Fire Stick and a Google Chromecast. Both plug into a TV’s HDMI ports – they need to be externally powered but that can be directly from the TV’s own USB port (if it has HDMI ports it almost certainly has a USB port) or from a regular wall outlet.
The Amazon Fire Stick runs its own WatchESPN app directly and has its own remote, and I’ve never had any problems with it being “jumpy”. It also has a Youtube app so you can run the archived games from UConn Husky Games though that’s a little trickier, because the actual Husky Games Youtube account isn’t public – you can’t surf Youtube to find it, but there are work-arounds, including third-party apps that allow you to send what’s on your browser to your Fire Stick (or directly to a “smart TV”).
The Chromecast is even simpler in that it allows you to send anything that you’re viewing in the Chrome browser directly to your TV; the only issue that I’ve had is that the earlier ones were often incompatible with hotel wifi networks; it works great at home but on the road I had to bring a small travel router to get on the same node. Supposedly the new Chromcasts don’t have that limitation.
There are also third-party apps that can get the game from an internet browser to a dongle; I use AirReceiver for my PC and TVCast for my iPad.
I haven’t tried Apple TV or Roku but I assume that they would all work as well as the Fire Stick or Chromecast; in my profession portability is essential.
