For fans who don’t live in the same area as their favorite team, the glorious beginning of a new baseball season is tarnished by the flawed methods for keeping up with games. And once again MLB.TV, the official package from Major League Baseball, is making its case for the worst option.

Sharon writes:

I wanted to pass along a tip about an ongoing situation with MLB.tv, the highly promoted streaming video service for Major League Baseball. The service has struggled in years past and it’s happening again this year (despite switching from MS Silverlight to Flash and promising changes). Games are unavailable, freeze, or are so pixelated that they’re unwatchable. All for $109.99!

For many fans (myself included), Opening Day was unwatchable and the problems are still not resolved. To add insult to injury, every day MLB releases a puff piece about how great their service is. But check out the comments on the latest article for a more accurate picture.

Here are some of the comments:

So far it stinks. I spent the WHOLE night just trying to get on and all it kept saying is install adobe which I already have. Dont think anything has improved as I have subscribed for several years and they always want to blame your pc

Maybe some of these deep pocketed executives can come and tell my 12 year old son why he can’t watch his favorite team. WHAT A SCAM!

I think that you have a typo in the headline for this article. It actually should read as: MLB.TV: Day 2 brings more excrement

This was supposed to be MLB.TV’s year. They lowered the price and they got rid of awful [in my experience—ed.] Microsoft Silverlight in favor of Flash so people could watch it at work. Instead, it seems like the same buggy crapshoot that made this three-year customer decide not to renew.

Last year, we wrote about MLB telling customers who paid for its “premium” HD option that the HD games were a “bonus” that they weren’t required to provide. Before that, we wrote about MLB’s tendency to overcharge customers or autorenew their MLB.TV subscriptions without permission.

The other options for watching games aren’t much better. You could just catch the games on ESPN and Fox, but anyone who’s sat through Joe Morgan or Tim McCarver on their respective stations knows that’s hardly an attractive choice. There’s also the Extra Innings package available through providers like Comcast and DirecTV, but they didn’t have such a hot start last year, and a lot of Comcast’s games aren’t in HD. Short of moving to your team’s hometown, your best bet for now is using the free game tracker services that MLB, Yahoo!, and ESPN offer.

(Photo: afagen)

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