Watching sports online is a growing trend. After all, many people are fans of sports teams from all around the country yet don’t live in the market where their games are broadcast. Major League Baseball is having trouble keeping up with that growth as just a few days into the new season, its MLB.TV online service has had two straight days of outages.
MLB.TV is currently using a product called Mosaic to deliver the games online. Yesterday, a message was posted on the site’s blog letting users know that the application had been disabled while a team looked into difficulties that were popping up. A few hours later, the application was up and running again, but users were still reporting problems, according to IDG News Service.
MLB.TV site problems caused users to miss games last year as well, adding to the frustration.
Users of MLB.TV pay a subscription fee to watch the games they want in real time or on-demand. These fees can range anywhere from $14.95 per month all the way up to $119.95 per year. Paying these prices, fan certainly expect to see opening day for their teams, but many missed out.
As such, it should be no surprise that the users are not happy. Judging from the comments on the blog posts, the umpires and players fans traditionally heckle at games have it easy compared to what MLB.TV is now getting.
MLB.TV looks especially bad when compared to the ongoing NCAA Tournament which has had great success in its presentation of games online through CBSsports.com. Traffic numbers have been huge and that service is also available to everyone for free.
Major League Baseball had been heavily promoting MLB.TV Mosaic’s new support of Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. This partnership was to bring higher quality video to users — which of course doesn’t matter if they can’t see it.
Tags: co:microsoft, co:mlb.tv23 Comments
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TH said:
Why are people using SilverLight? Try using a non-Microsoft product and maybe it will work.
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xxdesmus said:
@TH
Did you even bother to read the article? This has absolutely nothing to do with Silverlight or Microsoft. …some people are just ignorant, wow.
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MG Siegler said:
While MLB.TV hasn’t said what the issue was yet, my guess would be that Silverlight wasn’t a main culprit, if one at all. At least some of the issues commenters are pointing out on their blog posts are JavaScript errors.
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Mike Reynolds said:
I tried this last year but opted out b/c they couldn’t deliver the bandwidth, even in audio only.
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Pete said:
From the stories I’ve read, they’ve shown themselves incapable of delivering a quality solution for two years in a row. The technology used doesn’t matter, as the problem is obviously deeper than that.
Silverlight is a development platform. If you write crappy code on Silverlight, you can’t blame it on the platform, at least not if you want to be even remotely credible. :)
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Shawn said:
I agree crappy code is a crappy app no matter what platform you use. They were however, promoting this as a silverlight “revolutionary” improvement in video delivery, and as a subscriber, they definately struck out. Silverlight is part of the .Net framework, and I think this is a big hit to the whole platform to be used in any type of major video delivery system.
I experienced not only a lack of video, but tons pop-up errors, and in my opinion, for the rates they claim I was streaming for the split second it was working, .flv’s provide better quality. I think the solution was very poorly thought out and not researched, and to fail at this level of usership is unheard of. Makes you wonder who called the shots at MLB.tv, as it has a huge budget that could have easily avoided all this.
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MG Siegler said:
@mike - i heard the same thing from others
@pete and @shawn - i think you both make good points, it’s probably not silverlight’s fault in anyway, but mlb trumpeting it as the breakthrough they needed and then the system failing isn’t helping them any.
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Ms B said:
First of all you guys should give MLB a break. You all act like they actually planned for this to crash like it did. They are not Microsoft and therefore did not create the program they just purchased it and were just as disappointed as everyone else. And even though it wasn’t reported they have been trying, and succeeding in some cases, at fixing these issues. All it seems they were trying to do is make the site better. Be human and realize that even Companies make mistakes! And if it isn’t Silverlight (which is where the problem lies) what do you genius’ think it is. You start a website and then tell me how everything should always be perfect!
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Ms. K Rich said:
Be advised that people are working their hardest to fix the problem. No one planned for this problem. But I’m sure you all wouldn’t appreciate it if someone sent you hate mail about YOUR performance at your job. Trust and believe that someone..somewhere..has paid either directly or indirectly for a service that you provide, and at one time or another, you weren’t up to par. Computers aren’t people. They are flawed. No operating system is perfect. The people at MLB at NO TIME decided “Hey let’s launch some software, cause a few things to crash, and then laugh when all the users call and complain.” No..that wasn’t the case. In the future, let’s try to be more adult-like, understand that nothing’s perfect, and be patient.
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E.G. said:
I’ve had MLB.TV for the past three years and have been pleased with the service, but this season is awful. Audio and video worked fine until one day before opening day and then suddenly nothing works. They had all winter and spring training to do testing and debugging, as well as to prepare the customer service staff for potential problems. But now they act like the troubles are an act of God. Very bad planning.
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tony said:
i have mlb.tv premium and up until yesterday it was working fine but now i am getting nothing but the box scores and the blue background when i try to watch games live…
i reinstalled silverlight but it didnt solve the problem…
my daughter has a laptop so i tried that and it worked but i need to get it back on my computer as my daughter needs her laptop, it just seems strange that it was working fine then nothing…?
very frustrating
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JimmyJo said:
This problem is all on MLB and whoever they hired to do the development for this product.
MLB hired a 3rd party to develop this program and all blame should be on them and MLB.I don’t believe the Mosaic viewer even uses Silverlight. According to their support team it doesn’t. But even if it did that doesn’t mean it should be blamed. That’s like blaming the pen someone used when you can’t read their handwriting.
Maybe the pen had something to do with it but it’s also likely that it’s the person using the pen who deserves most of the blame. -
Trevor said:
Is there any updates on the MLB.TV situation? I’m an avid Yankee fan and living in Virginia I’m lucky if I get to watch 1 game a week on cable, let alone HD. Has the performance gotten better? Can anyone with MLB.TV premium comment on video quality vs an HD cable picture? A 1.2MB stream is pretty hefty I imagine that could stack up to a 480i or 720p cable picture, but that’s just a guess.
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Mike said:
I’ve had MLB.tv for the last two years and I’ve never had a problem with video quality until I installed Silverlight this year. The video is choppy, and the quality is worse than what it was for the previous two years. It’s ridiculous to upgrade to premium and (hopefully) get the same product that I used to. I can’t even get video at all on other computers that I’ve tried besides my own.
Also, how are they getting away with making Mosaic available to premium subscribers only? It used to be available for everyone.
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David said:
I too have been having serious problems with mlb.tv. Very choppy, despite a top-notch broadband connection. I think the most frustrating thing, after spending many hours attempting to resolve this, is the technical support there. Very nice people, when you finally reach someone (extremely long hold times), but they’re not equipped to advise on how to resolve the problem. Their solution: post my problem on a mlb.com discussion board, which I did. Now waiting to hear back.
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Rob said:
ANYONE WHO ALLOWS MLB TO CHARGE THEM FOR THEIR DISGRACEFUL SERVICE IS A FOOL. THE ONLY WAY TO GET THEM TO RESPOND IS HIT THEM IN THE POCKETBOOK. AFTER MANY UNANSWERED CALLS AND EMAILS, (EXCEPT THE ANSWER THAT SAID I HAD 5 DAYS TO CANCEL–I STARTED CALLING AND CANCELING AFTER TWO DAYS!)I’M DEALING WITH IT THRU MY CREDIT CARD COMPANY. DO THE SAME. DON’T PAY!!!
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Aftergrass said:
We’ve got 5 members of a band who all like different teams, so MLB.TV seemed a perfect choice for our studio/rehearsal space. We have a dedicated T1 (that’s 1.5megs) and the 1.2 meg stream does not work at all, despite having no other bandwidth being used. The 800k stream looks ok, but the picture quality is not so good. The plug-in seems very processor intensive responds badly to other programs being used at the same time. I wrote to MLB this year saying i’d never subscribe to their product again, etc etc etc. Then I realized that we had baseball addicts who needed their fix. Never trust a junkie. I stupidly subscribed thinking that it would be better, but really the quality just isn’t there. I highly recommend avoid this service unless it is the only available way for you to watch baseball.
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Leisa Winrich said:
Gameday Audio isn’t working either. Contacting mlb.com with specific inquiries only earns you a referral to mlb.com FAQ’s - which obviously do not help. It is frustrating this far along into the season — especially since Gameday Audio worked fine during Spring Training.
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Mark said:
I had same issue with sudden blue screen and no video. I finally went to Mozilla Firefox and uninstalled Explorer and now everything works. Though, while I pay for Premium subscription, the quality at 800k isn’t that great even with 24″ screen (HPw2408).
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Rob said:
mlb.tv used to be a great service but it sucks now plus the people they have working there are the dumbest I have ever talk to.If you are considering this don’t its not worth it.
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andy said:
Compared to the webcast of the US Open, MLB is in the dark ages…….the US Open was incredible quality, almost as good as a TV……very impressive. MLB Premium is choppy, I have a fast connection and still miss half the plays.
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fxhllv said:
There have been many blackout issues with mlb.tv too. I’m in philly and was blacked out of the cubs-sox games. If you’re considering purchasing, go and read the mlb.tv help forums first, where there are countless complaints from customers. I’m with Rob, don’t waste your money. If you’re lucky you might get a choppy video feed with a 10 minute delay
7 Trackbacks
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