MLB.TV - Worth the 100-120 bucks for the season?
by sowingwildoats on Feb 24, 2010 9:07 PM CST
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PrintAfter moving into a new place and attempting to cut down on expenditures* I have foregone cable**. This seemed logical at the time, and no major problem until spring training rolled around and the season approaches. So rather than pay 60 bucks a month for a basic cable package for all of baseball season, I figured maybe the online package would be a better deal. Who has it and likes it? Pros? Cons? Protoss?
*I don't need to, but it's just in my blood.
**I can't believe how much I miss Iron Chef America.
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Based on my experience last year
I wrote this whole post then realized the first question is whether you’re in a blackout area for the team you plan to watch. If your uwp.edu email address is current, you can’t stream the Brewers games live. You might still be able to watch them archived the following day. Your best bet is probably 620 AM WTMJ for the radio broadcasts. Those are free over the airways and Uecker rocks. I’ll put my original post here anyway in case anyone else is curious.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
I was one of the first subscribers to MLB Audio when they kicked it off over 10 years ago. I was an MLB.TV subscriber 2 years ago and an MLB.TV Premium subscriber last year. I’ll probably be going for their premium service this year since I live in Chicago where Brewers games are not shown on cable and it’s the only option for watching them that I have, but I’d give their premium service only a 2 out 5 last year.
$$$$$$$$$$$
I’ll start with the positives first:
Their regular live stream and archived stream worked perfect and was totally awesome almost every time I used it (games are available in the archive 3-24 hours after the games ends).
The rare times the HD stream worked, it gave a spectacular image and I was blown away by its quality. With the advent of HD YouTube it won’t be as impressive, but at this time last year, it was amazing.
The MLB audio is awesome when the regular feed wasn’t the home feed or when I couldn’t handle Brian Anderson’s babbling anymore. Ueck = awesome.
$$$$$$$$$$$
Now the negatives
MLB’s vaunted HD quality streaming rarely worked properly last year and I completely gave up on it by the end of July. Their DVR functionality was similarly completely and totally useless. I’d like to think they have the bugs worked out for this season, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Their customer service is some of the worst I’ve ever had to deal with so count on your money after the trial period as a sunk cost and they won’t listen if you have a problem.
Their servers melt at the beginning of the regular season every year so don’t expect any of the video to work at all for the first few days of the regular season and the first weekend (the audio stream works). Performance will be normal after the first weekend.
The HD streams lag well behind live TV – up to 60 seconds at times – which means posting on game threads here is far, far less fun. Everything’s already happened by the time you want to post about it! The standard video stream and audio stream are much closer to live TV.
They have only 3 or 4 unique commercials to show at every break and you’ll see them at EVERY … SINGLE … BREAK. You’ll watch the same damn MLB.TV commercial 15 times a game (which pisses you off so much more, because they’re advertising a product that everyone viewing the stream, by definition has already purchased! It’s soooooooooooo sooooooooo annoying). I wouldn’t be surprised if they squeeze in more advertising somehow this year, because they’ve found a place to add more ads with each succeeding year.
$$$$$$$$$$$
Overall, the ability to be able to choose to watch the home stream is probably worth the extra $20, as well as the gamble that they might have actually worked out the bugs in their high quality streaming. The audio stream will always be there to bail them out when the video sucks. If you find you don’t like the video streaming after your trial period, the MLB Audio is the best entertainment deal you’ll ever find.
One last thing to note is that MLB.TV is a bandwidth HOG. If you use VOIP, you’ll need to double check that you have enough bandwidth for the video stream and the phone. If your internet provider has a bandwidth cap under, say 150 GB / month, you’ll want to get a free bandwidth meter. I think I clocked a full HQ game (one that actually worked) at 2-4 GB downloaded. Stretch that out over a month and you’re looking at 50 or 100 GB down per month from Brewers games alone. Add in other teams’ games and the Hulu you’re probably already watching and you shouldn’t be too surprised if your ISP sends you a polite letter telling you to cut it out.
by ecocd on Feb 24, 2010 9:49 PM CST reply actions 7 recs
I'll be really honest here: I have no intentions of getting MLB.TV
But for some reason I stopped by on this thread. And, for some reason, I read your entire post. And you get a rec, because this is perhaps the most well thought out, helpful, well-written thing I’ve seen in quite some time, and I know that if I was looking for advice if anyone posted something similar I’d be very grateful.
So, nice job!
"If we want to sign a Type A free agent, we would lose a second-round pick, but we don't have a way to get picks back. Our whole Draft process needs to be redone."
~Doug Melvin
by Charlie Marlow on Feb 24, 2010 10:56 PM CST up reply actions
I got bored after reading your "And"
"That's not a weird stat. Rickie is a run-scorer," Yost said. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter," Yost told reporters. "See, you guys have no concept. He's a run-scorer. So there's nothing weird about it. That's what he does."
by Hyatt on Feb 26, 2010 2:05 PM CST up reply actions 3 recs
well that was a mouthful.
and unfortunately the email address is correct. I did the mlb audio last year to listen to while at work. i was hoping there weren’t blackouts since you’re, you know, paying them 100 bucks directly but oh well. looks like i’ll be kickin it with grandpa to drink his beers and watch his tv.
thanks for a really informative review though!
"I'll be glad to have Ryan help if he wants to. I'll give him a badge and he can be my deputy."
-Sheriff Melvin
by sowingwildoats on Feb 24, 2010 11:19 PM CST up reply actions
question
A friend of mine who did the MLB.TV thing for the 2008 season said that she could look at past years’ archived games as well as this season’s. Was this true for 2009? I’ve been thinking about getting it this season for that reason (and, yeah, spring training, why are all my players NRIs at Marlins camp this year? rrr)
Not sure
When I try to access the 2009 games, it’s fine, but I get an error message on 2007 and 2008. “We are sorry, but you have reached this page in error.”
They changed streaming technologies last year (hence the bugs) to a Flash-based player instead of Microsoft Silverlight. They may have lost all archived games in the move. They still show up as available, though, so the archive might just be down for now.
I watched an 2008 game last week
I watched the Braun Grand Slam game against Pittsburgh do you have MLB TV basic or Premium I THINK that if you have premium you can go back to other seasons.
Moving on ready look forward not backwards The 2009 season is over it never happen as far as I am concerned so lets boldly look forward to the 2010 season
Just to add one thing...
in addition to the servers being overloaded for the first few days, count on whatever new features they’re introducing to be horribly buggy for at least the first couple of weeks. Happened with Mosaic a few years ago, happened with HD and the DVR last year (and as ecocd noted, never really got any better this time, at least for a significant number of people), and I’m certainly forgetting other feature introductions from the interim years.
BTW, back in 2005/06 they were still showing the commercials from the TV feed, then dropped them during the first month of 2007 IIRC. I fail to understand how they still haven’t figured out a way to monetize that airtime and continue to just show the same old ads for their own product. Oh well.
It has to do with salaries
The way that actors are compensated for ads makes it cost prohibitive to use them on the Internet unless they’ve signed a contract stipulating their use online. This goes for audio ads as well. I think there’s no way for the local stations to pick out which Snuggle ad has the correct contractual wording/compensation for airing over the internet so they have to simply block all of them.
I never thought I would be happy to see commercials, but after a few weeks of MLB dot TV! MLB dot TV! MLB dot TV! I’d gladly welcome a Bud Light commercial or two.
That said
There are definitely tons of companies with video ads they’re running online that I imagine would be happy to buy space on MLB.tv; you point out why they can’t run the original TV ads, but I wonder why they don’t start selling ads for it on their own.
Brewers Baseball and other assorted nonsense (mostly the assorted nonsense) at my blog, What's a Tararrel?
do you not remember the evil Dicks Sports Ad
I would rather watch the bouncing ball than an ad like that
Moving on ready look forward not backwards The 2009 season is over it never happen as far as I am concerned so lets boldly look forward to the 2010 season
Same here.
But if they added more advertisers, so it’s not just the same break after break after break, it would be much more bearable.
Cards Announcers On Gamel's First Career HR, "That’s all they need is another home run hitter".
I agree a little variety would make the ads less painful
That Dicks Ad a hundred times a night was hell on earth I still will not shop there.
Moving on ready look forward not backwards The 2009 season is over it never happen as far as I am concerned so lets boldly look forward to the 2010 season
sopcast
justin.tv, etc, etc work if someone puts up the stream. Then you have to FIND the feed-of-the-day (which is typically non-trivial without automatically downloading some porn e-mailer)
In any case, I caught most of the packers games online this last season this way, but I was leery about occasionally seeing the Other “Packers” play.
Also saw a few Brewers games online at the close of the 2009 season, so it sorta worked out. But yeah, vid quality isn’t always crisp, and it does lag a couple seconds behind the gamethread:P So…you’re best off NOT blogging as you watch.
by PagsBrewCrew on Feb 26, 2010 5:53 PM CST up reply actions
eh...
i only blog here when I’m watching the gamecast animations of what’s going on to get others’ reactions. when I watch a game, you’ll only seeing me drop by if fielder (or counsell:P) hits a bomb or something.
by PagsBrewCrew on Feb 27, 2010 7:33 AM CST up reply actions
I would echo ecocd's sentiments. He basically covered everything.
I haven’t run into some of the problems he encountered. The mlb blackout policy is absolutely horrible, so if you are buying it with the intention to watch Brewers games and you live in the blackout zone, then you’re going to find yourself disappointed.
However, if you’re thinking about getting mlb.tv because you simply love baseball and can’t get enough of it, you’re going to find yourself very pleased.
I split mlb.tv premium with a friend, so it’s half the cost. I’ll watch it 3-4 nights a week, and I’ll watch 2-4 games at a time. It’s fantastic. The quality is incredible. I’ve received multiple comments from people who were astonished by how good the quality is. If you have a nice tv, and the capability to hook your computer up with an HDMI cord, do it.
If you’re really unsure about it, just buy one month and see how it goes. You can always continue to purchase it month-to-month at basically the same cost as the yearly subscription if you like it. If you don’t; just cancel.
Cards Announcers On Gamel's First Career HR, "That’s all they need is another home run hitter".
I'm glad to hear it's working for someone else
Only the people that don’t have it working spend time on the support forums so I spent enough time there to get a rather one-sided view of the performance. Maybe I’ll give them a little more credit.
I think a lot depends on the computer and the connection speed — if you are unsure of either of those I’d definitely try a month before committing for the year.
I have an older laptop and predictably had all kinds of problems with it. When I used a friends computer or used it at work it worked like a charm and I never had any issues with it.
Get a ife broseph
Just FYI, the blackout check is done at login (or at least it was for the past few years.) So, IN THEORY, were you to happen to stumble across some kind of proxy, if such a thing existed, you would just have to connect to it, log in to MLB.tv, then disconnect and enjoy blacked out MLB.TV
THEORETICALLY SPEAKING OF COURSE
Yup.
Just try typing some random letters into a search engine. Like maybe, T-O-R. I doubt anything will show up, but hey, it’s worth a shot.
Cards Announcers On Gamel's First Career HR, "That’s all they need is another home run hitter".
i'm not quite sure what you're hinting at
because the last thing i would ever do is circumvent FCC/baseball regulation.
"I'll be glad to have Ryan help if he wants to. I'll give him a badge and he can be my deputy."
-Sheriff Melvin
by sowingwildoats on Feb 25, 2010 5:22 PM CST up reply actions
battlekow used to post a site for this but i forget what it's called
Get out of my dreams and into my Chuckie Carr
-Molitorfan 12/23/09
where did BK go?
Moving on ready look forward not backwards The 2009 season is over it never happen as far as I am concerned so lets boldly look forward to the 2010 season
I thought there was a rift created here, but I'm not entirely sure
Get out of my dreams and into my Chuckie Carr
-Molitorfan 12/23/09
12 webcasts makes it worth it for spring training. +4 broadcast games
16 games for 25 bucks.
"Cubs suck. I own them" -Doug Davis
MLB.tv
this will be my 3rd year buying mlb.tv. I go to college in DC and live in NY during the summer. The first year I went with the regular package – OK, but the crappy quality of the games was annoying (especially with super HD yankees 24/7 bullshit coverage, but I digress). Last year I went with the premium and couldn’t have been happier. Since I’m well out of the blackout zone I never had any issues, and found that most days I could get an HD feed solidly. If anything, the few problems I had were with the viability of my local internet provider as opposed to mlb.tv.
I am definitely going to get the premium package this year. Like those proxy talkers, I have heard rumors of sneaky kids teaming up to split the cost of one subscription. However, I would never advocate reducing the profit margin of greedy cable corporations and MLB by doing so… but you can log in at multiple locations at one time (or, you could last year).
My conclusions:
Go Premium.
"I'll warm up with you anytime"
-JJ Hardy
A cool feature of mlb.tv
You can load your fantasy team into mlb.tv. They will alert you when your players are coming up to bat or are pitching so that you can watch their at bats/innings. It also shows each player’s box score.
Cards Announcers On Gamel's First Career HR, "That’s all they need is another home run hitter".
MLB Network
I liked MLB network to watch certain games out of market but ran into huge issues in canceling the service. I waited on a weekday afternoon for almost four hours trying to cancel it only to be disconnected with their service rep. I then tried canceling online but was instructed to call to cancel. I called back and waited another 2 hours before finally getting it canceled. My biggest problem however was that when I traveled out of town to work, I still couldn’t watch the Brewers. I was told I was an in-market customer and had to call to get it changed when I traveled out of town. You would think with how far technology has come, MLB Network could simply trace the location of your current IP address, but no, they used whatever address you gave as your billing location. Total crap, maybe they fixed their garbage this year but I would never get it again.
by Prince Fielder is Skinny on Mar 2, 2010 4:58 PM CST reply actions
You're talking about mlb.tv, not the MLB Network, correct?
Cards Announcers On Gamel's First Career HR, "That’s all they need is another home run hitter".
FWIW, using the billing address for location purposes went out several years ago.
It worked the other way around, too – when I lived in Milwaukee in 2005, I was able to watch Brewers games as my credit card was a non-US one. As for cancelling – this year’s renewal emails included a link for online cancellations, which may be a fairly new development; I don’t know when they stopped requiring calls to cancel service. (Of course, I have no idea if those links actually work.)
Word of warning
I’ve subscribed to MLB.TV on and off over the past several years. I didn’t last year because of my experience in 2008. I paid for my subscription with my debit card which is tied to my checking account. Well for some reason, apparently I am in an area where MLB.TV can’t pinpoint my location, so every time I switched to a new game,a location check was run by issuing a ping to my debit card. Well, a ping is really a $1 hold that goes away after a few days, but after a few nights of surfing through games I had, unbeknown to me, run up over $250 of holds, causing a couple of overdrafts, my bank calling me to report suspicious activity, and a complete and utter financial mess.
I eventually got a hold of someone in support and they told me there was nothing they could do about it – that I just had to live with it. I canceled my service and got a refund in about a month.
I’m going to try again this year, but I’m first going to try to talk to someone there about this to be sure it doesn’t happen again.
www.inbetweenhops.com
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| W | L | PCT | GB | STRK | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Chicago
|
0 | 0 | .000 | 0 | Lost 0 |
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Cincinnati
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0 | 0 | .000 | 0 | Lost 0 |
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Houston
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0 | 0 | .000 | 0 | Lost 0 |
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Milwaukee
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0 | 0 | .000 | 0 | Lost 0 |
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Pittsburgh
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0 | 0 | .000 | 0 | Lost 0 |
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St. Louis
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0 | 0 | .000 | 0 | Lost 0 |
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