Tech publications today are having a bit of a lovefest with Major League Baseball’s web site, MLB.com. It’s because it’s the start of baseball season — for die-hard fans, the most important day of the year. And given how mobile we are here in America, many of us follow our teams from afar.
The Internet, of course, has made that easy, and as a result, MLB.com has become a part of every hardcore fan’s daily life for everything from checking scores to reading blogs, but mostly for watching live games. Every year I fork over a lot of money to see the games I absolutely can’t live without. And every year, MLB.com has done a good job of enhancing that experience.
Except this year — for the last three days, I’ve been trying to get their video service to work, with little or no success. I use a Mac and Firefox browser, and every time I bring up the video page, it freezes the browser. On Safari, the problems are even worse: I need to reboot the entire computer. The problem could be the Adobe Flash plugin, which has had a difficult relationship with Firefox and other Mac browsers. MLB.com also seems to be utilizing a new plugin that adds DVR-like functionality to the video streams. The problem has to one of these two products.
Dan Frommer says MLB.com’s web video puts everyone else’s video to shame — including MLB.com’s video circa 2008, which used the dreaded Silverlight technology from Microsoft. My full review of the new MLB.com experience will appear on NewTeeVee later today.
That sucks. MLB.TV has worked in all of my browsers (Firefox, both Safaris, Fluid SSBs) on my Mac all spring and all day today.
I totally missed the games this weekend and also today. something is rotten… man! anyway the review waits for another day.
I think your situation may be unique or limited because I have had fantastic results with the exception of today which was worthy of some sort of explanation (at least) as to what the fix is when it’s fixed from mlb.tv folks. I am running a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.5.6 and I can launch the viewers in Firefox and Safari without any issue that are browser related.
It’s launch day, I’m sure over the course of this week most all the issues we are seeing today will be fixed and our short american memories will not remember how painful it was one day in April 2009 when we could not watch that 1 game of our nearly daily 8 month long season.
Lets Go Yankees!
Hi Om, sorry for the brevity, I´m on vacation. Your headline should have a ¨for me¨ appended to the end, right?
Your description didn´t say whether you could see other Flash sites normally. That would be a key diagnostic about whether it might be the page (a corrupted browser cache, eg) or might be the Player (in which case the usual troubleshooting tip of using the installer to clean out damage before a clean reinstall would help).
Sorry for the hassle, but one of the two paths above should do the trick, unless thereś´some deeper and statistically-rare problem on that system. Play ball!!!! 😀
jd/adobe
I only use a Mac and I’ve been watching games for days in both Safari and Firefox with no problems. I’d like to see the HD video quality improved though as there is still too much pixelation for a 3MB stream.
There are a number of posts about this on the MLB site: http://www.mlbsupport.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=27&sid=e29cd7f47adddfd91f5ba8af2360553e
Awwww. How cute. It’s like a community of users who think that baseball was still relevant like in it’s pre-steroid days.
Thank god someone wrote a real review of this buggy, rushed-to-market piece of junk software !
Before you pay anything be sure to read the posts at the link given above.
I’m sorry to say this, but the 2009 season got off to a tremendous failure for MLB.TV. In its current state, MLB.TV is almost completely unviewable when using the NextDef plug in, which is the prerequiste for using the premium services. I can understand a few wrinkles early in the season, but not a complete collapse of the servers, leading to out of sync audio, stuttering and/or frozen pictures, even at the lowest quality levels. If this turns out to be a browser or operating system problem, then the technical staff and the programmers will really have egg on their faces.
I say this as a programmer for a major European production house, which streams European football in high quality, besides doing the television production.
Good riddance to extreme buggy and unreliable Flash and Silverlight in the future.
HTML5 and native Ogg Theora & Vorbis pluginless playback that just works is so much better than the unreliable, buggy crap that monkeys at both Adobe and MS puts out.
would you mind linking to mlb.com (for the sake of your readers?) if you dont want to give them link juice then at least with a no follow link.. thanks
Still no archives for many of the opening day games. This is an atrocious product unveiling and refunds should be offered. Just look at all the issues on their forum:
http://mlbsupport.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3&sid=e6b9251ed5d915e3aee2f9f69156390c
Check out MLB app on iPhone. It’s very slick.
This service is a bust right now for many subscribers. After numerous issues – obviously shared by many given the amount of posts on their board I received this email from the developer of NexDef plug-in a critical component required for getting quality MLB feeds…
“We have been working with MLB to help solve issues such as the one you are experiencing. The good news is, that it, more then likely, has nothing to do with your system. The bad news is that it is still a problem and it needs to be fixed. Please be patient and the problem will be solved as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.”
For $109.95 I have no patience. I suggest disgruntled patrons initiate a chargeback from their credit card company as MLB is totally unresponsive vis-a-vis refunds. BTW, MLB will not refund your money after a 5-day trial policy.
its a piece of junk. it worked well in past years. mlb trys to work with you to get it to work and get you past the refund canncellation period of 5 days. then they keep your money. file a complaint with the federal trade commission. http://www.ftc.gov the more complaints the better chance of getting your refund.
SAME EXACT PROBLEM, DIFFERENT YEAR!
I was having a look about to see if it was just me and stumbled across your blog. It appears to work if I re-install Nexdef every single time I want to watch a game. It is an awful, awful product with no competitor.
I grew up playing baseball! I love the game! I even got to triple A out of high school! However I have a problem!!!!!
How can a man lose a NO-NO & Yet, the umps in N.Y. can retreat to the clubhouse and reverse a call on the field and then later in the same game in another disputed call give them both to N.Y. Without going back to the clubhouse to view the 2nd call? It’s because if your Detroit or San Diego you don’t matter!!!!!!! Baseball should be fair always!! If you’re going to review something then review everything! Otherwise let the call on the field stand! THAT’S FAIR11111