MLB Extra Innings 2012 Now Available

[king3pj]

one thing you have to remember with streaming the games over the internet is some like me have bandwidth caps that we have to watch. comcast limits me to 250gb per month.

I don't know but I assume charter also has a similar data cap.

We have 3 laptops (2 of them connected to office computers through gotomypc.com for several hours at a time almost every day), Vonage, 3 Dish receivers that occasionally stream VOD, a PS3 and XBOX 360 both used for online gaming and Netflix streaming, 2 iPhones, and a Bluray player that streams Netflix all connected to our home network. We also stream Pandora on my Oknyo AVR pretty often.

Between the hours of 5:30PM and midnight on weekdays and all day on weekends there is almost always someone in the family streaming Netflix. We often have 2 and occasionally 3 devices streaming Netflix HD at the same time.

I have no idea how many GB this adds up to per month but I am pretty confident that our household uses far more bandwidth than the average house. We have never been cutoff or contacted by Charter about excessive bandwidth use. If we are being throttled after we hit our cap they aren't limiting our speed enough that we notice it. If other ISPs handle their data caps similar to the way Charter does I would think the vast majority of MLB.TV subscribers will have no problem. If the other ISPs do something different I strongly suggest switching to Charter if it is available in your area.

 

[king3pj]

I just got this image in an email from MLB.com. For those of you interested in MLB.TV this year here you go.

MLB.TV. Baseball Everywhere. | MLB.com: Subscriptions

MLB.TV is now available for 2012. Premium is $124.99 for this season but it now includes the MLB at Bat App for free (I bought it last year for $14.99). Standard is $109.99 this season but doesn't include At Bat. It also mentions that the Xbox 360 is a supported device this season. I will definitely be getting premium before spring training starts this season. It specifically says it will have coverage of over 150 spring training games with no blackouts.

Edit: the image didn't appear how I expected it to so i linked the website instead. I just don't know how to remove the image now.

 

[Ronnie-]

MLB.TV. Baseball Everywhere. | MLB.com: Subscriptions

The latest info with pricing for MLB.tv

 

[DodgerKing]

I wonder if the AtBat APP is just for one device? IOW, if I get the AtBat APP for my iPhone for free do I still need to buy the iPhone one separately?

 

[Ronnie-]

I wonder if the AtBat APP is just for one device? IOW, if I get the AtBat APP for my iPhone for free do I still need to buy the iPhone one separately?

I would guess it is per itunes account?

 

[king3pj]

I always thought it was ridiculous that they made you buy the app for both the iPhone and the iPad if you have both. I also thought it was ridiculous that you could buy a $120 package and not have At Bat included. Looks like they have fixed at least part of that.

Last season I didn't have mlb.tv but I did buy at bat for $14.99 on my blackberry and then another $14.99 when I switched to iPhone. At least these were two separate marketplaces though. I would hope they let you have the app on both the iPhone and iPad this season.

 

[king3pj]

I would guess it is per itunes account?

That's not how it worked last season. I think he meant to say if I get it for my iPhone do I need to buy the iPad version separately. Last year they were treated as separate apps and you had to buy both the iPad and iPhone version separately. If you had multiple iPhones on one iTunes account than I believe you only had to pay for it once to use it on all iPhones.

 

[DodgerKing]

I would guess it is per itunes account?

iPhone and iPad APPs are separate purchases

 

[king3pj]

I just signed up for MLB.TV premium 2012. Here is part of my confirmation email.

"[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] NEW 2012 MLB.TV PREMIUM FEATURES: MLB.com At Bat 12, the top-ranked sports app in the Apple App Store and recent inductee into the Macworld App Hall of Fame, is now included with your subscription (separate purchase not required). Enjoy complete mobile portability to iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and most Android phones and tablets (a $14.99 value). Simply download the MLB.com At Bat 12 app to your supported smartphone or tablet and log-in with your MLB.TV username and password to access live and on-demand baseball. Click here for a list of supported mobile devices."

To me this sounds like you will be covered on all your mobile devices because you will be able to just log in with your MLB account after you download the apps.
[/FONT]

 

[DodgerKing]

Technically you can use the iPhone APP on your iPad. You will just not get the full resolution. So you will be able to enjoy portability on your iPhone and iPad. The previous years you had to purchase the iPhone and iPad APPs separately which ended up being $30 total

 

[jcrandall]

I'm going to MLB.tv this year for the first time. I've had EI with DirecTV the past three years or so, but I now have an iphone and ipad, so the easier streaming (vs the slingbox) will be nice. $90 cheaper, and my account with Directv isn't eligible for any discounts, so it just makes more sense. I was going to switch last year but Directv game me $20 off each EI payment so I stayed with EI.

 

[dodger72]

I don't know but I assume charter also has a similar data cap.

We have 3 laptops (2 of them connected to office computers through gotomypc.com for several hours at a time almost every day), Vonage, 3 Dish receivers that occasionally stream VOD, a PS3 and XBOX 360 both used for online gaming and Netflix streaming, 2 iPhones, and a Bluray player that streams Netflix all connected to our home network. We also stream Pandora on my Oknyo AVR pretty often.

Between the hours of 5:30PM and midnight on weekdays and all day on weekends there is almost always someone in the family streaming Netflix. We often have 2 and occasionally 3 devices streaming Netflix HD at the same time.

I have no idea how many GB this adds up to per month but I am pretty confident that our household uses far more bandwidth than the average house. We have never been cutoff or contacted by Charter about excessive bandwidth use. If we are being throttled after we hit our cap they aren't limiting our speed enough that we notice it. If other ISPs handle their data caps similar to the way Charter does I would think the vast majority of MLB.TV subscribers will have no problem. If the other ISPs do something different I strongly suggest switching to Charter if it is available in your area.

i have charter 15mb and i know the cap for me is 100gb and i think the faster speed you have the higher your limit

 

[king3pj]

We are on a 20mb up and 3mb down plan. We have had our internet through them for about 10 years now because they are the only broadband provider in my area. We used to have them for TV and I had plenty of complaints about that. The internet has been rock solid though. We get great speed, barely any downtime, and we haven't had any problem with caps. We don't torrent but we obviously use a fair amount of bandwidth. We just don't worry about it and use it how we want and have never felt the need to check how much bandwidth we're using.

 

[king3pj]

Ok, I wanted to test out MLB.TV quality on my PS3 because I have never had it before so I watched Verlander's no hitter against Toronto from last season. I thought I would share some of my thoughts on my first experience with the service for people who are thinking about buying it.

First, the picture quality was good for the most part. It definitely had more artifacts than FS Detroit on Dish but most of the time it was close enough. If it looks like that all season it will definitely exceed my expectations. It was comparable to the Netflix 1080p streams on my PS3 for almost the entire game. My only real gripe was that it wasn't as consistent as Netflix. About 3 or 4 times during the game it turned into a horrible blurry mess that is far worse than Dish SD. This only lasted for about 30 seconds at a time and I can live with but it would be nice if they could get it as rock solid as Netflix. I'm hoping they are just working kinks out because it was the first night of the 2012 package and it will improve during the season.

When I watch Netflix HD through my PS3 the quality is solid and people watching with me would have no idea that I'm watching an internet stream. If my first test of MLB.TV turns out to be the norm you couldn't say the same thing about this service. The quality is very good for the vast majority of the game but those 3 or 4 times the quality dropped took away from the experience a little bit.

Second, I put a lot of money into my sound system. When I watch TV or movies sound is just as important to me as picture. That being said I wasn't expecting bluray quality sound from this streaming service. The sound wasn't great but it wasn't bad either. I was happily surprised to see that my Onkyo receiver was getting multichannel PCM 5.1 from the PS3. FSN Detroit doesn't use the rear channels but this gives me hope that this service is capable of using them for channels that do take advantage of them.

Overall I think it is a good value for me. Dish doesn't have EI so it is a no brainer if you want out of market baseball. If I had Directv it would be a closer call but I think I would still go with MLB.TV and save the $90. If they don't change anything quality wise it will be acceptable to me. If they can get it to stay at its top quality like Netflix does throughout the entire game I will be extremely happy with my purchase. I do have 20mb cable internet service so my internet speed should not have been the problem.

Edit: One small thing I forgot to add. It would be nice if they would edit out the commercial breaks on archived games since they aren't actually showing any ads anyways. Every time the game went to a commercial they showed a blue screen that said commercial break in progress for a couple minutes. I understand why this is necessary for live games but it seems a little dumb to look at a blue screen for 2 minutes every half inning or pitching change for a game that was on May 7th. This isn't a huge deal to me because 90% of my use will be for live games but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard for them to edit out the commercial breaks on archived games.

 

[DodgerKing]

Very good assessment of the product. I remember last year I had more issues with PQ on MLB.TV through the PS3 before the season and then a software updated fixed most of it. I still got occassional blur but that was mostly due to buffering and network congestion. What seemed to fix that was setting up a static IP for my PS3, putting it in a DMZ, and giving it the highest QoS

Another advantage to MLB.TV compared to EI other than price is that you can watch archived games.

On archived games you can FF through the game and select any inning or part of the game you want to watch.

 

[king3pj]

Well this is a little disappointing. It looks like spring training games won't be available on the PS3. I also have an Xbox 360 but that doesn't get spring training either. Add the roku in there and probably the 3 most owned mlb.tv devices don't get spring training. Last yeah MLB.TV carried several Tigers spring training games that weren't available on FSN Detroit. I was really looking forward to watching spring training games to get my baseball fix a little early this year. Looks like I'll have to watch them from the comfort of my desk.

"All Spring Training games on MLB.TV are subject to change.
Spring Training games can be viewed using the following devices: PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Apple TV
To watch Spring Training games online, click here."

Why would every device not get spring training games? I assume they are being broadcast in the same way as regular season games.

 

[tj218]

Ok, I wanted to test out MLB.TV quality on my PS3 because I have never had it before so I watched Verlander's no hitter against Toronto from last season. I thought I would share some of my thoughts on my first experience with the service for people who are thinking about buying it.

First, the picture quality was good for the most part. It definitely had more artifacts than FS Detroit on Dish but most of the time it was close enough. If it looks like that all season it will definitely exceed my expectations. It was comparable to the Netflix 1080p streams on my PS3 for almost the entire game. My only real gripe was that it wasn't as consistent as Netflix. About 3 or 4 times during the game it turned into a horrible blurry mess that is far worse than Dish SD. This only lasted for about 30 seconds at a time and I can live with but it would be nice if they could get it as rock solid as Netflix. I'm hoping they are just working kinks out because it was the first night of the 2012 package and it will improve during the season.

When I watch Netflix HD through my PS3 the quality is solid and people watching with me would have no idea that I'm watching an internet stream. If my first test of MLB.TV turns out to be the norm you couldn't say the same thing about this service. The quality is very good for the vast majority of the game but those 3 or 4 times the quality dropped took away from the experience a little bit.

Second, I put a lot of money into my sound system. When I watch TV or movies sound is just as important to me as picture. That being said I wasn't expecting bluray quality sound from this streaming service. The sound wasn't great but it wasn't bad either. I was happily surprised to see that my Onkyo receiver was getting multichannel PCM 5.1 from the PS3. FSN Detroit doesn't use the rear channels but this gives me hope that this service is capable of using them for channels that do take advantage of them.

Overall I think it is a good value for me. Dish doesn't have EI so it is a no brainer if you want out of market baseball. If I had Directv it would be a closer call but I think I would still go with MLB.TV and save the $90. If they don't change anything quality wise it will be acceptable to me. If they can get it to stay at its top quality like Netflix does throughout the entire game I will be extremely happy with my purchase. I do have 20mb cable internet service so my internet speed should not have been the problem.

Edit: One small thing I forgot to add. It would be nice if they would edit out the commercial breaks on archived games since they aren't actually showing any ads anyways. Every time the game went to a commercial they showed a blue screen that said commercial break in progress for a couple minutes. I understand why this is necessary for live games but it seems a little dumb to look at a blue screen for 2 minutes every half inning or pitching change for a game that was on May 7th. This isn't a huge deal to me because 90% of my use will be for live games but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard for them to edit out the commercial breaks on archived games.

I am tempted to cut EI for MLB.tv. But last season on all the free preview games on MLB.tv I tried through my Roku there was heavy pixelation anytime the ball was put in play. In addition the pitchers arm was blurry during a pitch. I wonder if your experience is more because of the off-season and less bandwith on MLB servers...

Did anyone else have this problem during the season?

My take on the two:
MLB.tv
Poorer Quality
More viewing options + audio (Is it possible to watch the video, with the radio announcers? If so, is it out of sync?)
Fantasy tracker
Archived games
About 60 seconds behind real-time (at least DTV's EI)

EI:
More expensive
Better picture quality
Plus they throw in the MLB network for free (I am on the family plan and don't normally have it.) which is better than ESPN during the season (I love Quick Pitch and MLB tonight)

Tough call.....I think I will try to get a discount from DTV before making my final decision.

 

[jcrandall]

One thing to remember when you try a free trial there are many more people using the service than typical. Look at DirecTVs Sunday Ticket to-go, it is practically a failure in week one and works fine week two on. Serving it up to way more people than usual (paying) crimps the streaming services.

At least I hope that theory is accurate, the people that mlb.tv reported pretty good service and not too many breakups, and I plan on getting it this year.

 

[DodgerKing]

It was good enough for me to use it again this year over EI. With that said, if EI were to match the price of MLB.TV and since I have a SlingBox, I would have went with EI instead mainly because of convenience factor.

 

[tj218]

It was good enough for me to use it again this year over EI. With that said, if EI were to match the price of MLB.TV and since I have a SlingBox, I would have went with EI instead mainly because of convenience factor.

Since they gave away Sunday Ticket for free last fall (I didn't do that offer) I would hope they will offer something similar through retention for MLB.