Did you get to look at any of yesterday’s free previews of the MLB.tv Premium service?
It was a bit of a shaky debut by all accounts. While my installation of the NexDef plug-in went without a hitch, I know other people were not so lucky. The picture quality was very good at 1.2MB when it wasn’t buffering (which, of course, can be the product of many different variables relating to your system), but the size of the largest screen mode was extremely disappointing. It probably stretched to about 65% of my monitor. Even more frustrating was that this setting was used for the 800 and 400K feeds as well.
Personally, I don’t mind the picture quality of the 400K feed (especially as it doesn’t buffer much on my set-up), but I prefer to use it by setting the viewer to full screen and sitting further away from the monitor (watching it like it’s a TV).  The largest viewing setting wasn’t really big enough to do this last night. When you consider that the previous media player could expand to a genuine full screen display, it seems a case of “going backwards while calling it progress”.
Another source of disappointment was encountered while watching the Orioles-Nationals preview (Nationals Park still looked a glorious sight though!). The picture looked like it had been stretched to widescreen, causing everything to look a bit out of proportion.
What surprised me most about the preview yesterday was the Silverlight player itself. One of the proposed main benefits for a user of the new player is that MLB can build in various features around the main video window, such as an updating score bar and widgets for lineups, linescores etc. These had been available through the Silverlight player during Spring Training, but they were absent last night. This leads me to believe that last night’s preview was still something of a work in progress.
Hopefully so, because it was all a bit frustrating. As a product in general, I think MLB.tv is fantastic and the Silverlight player did seem to be adding something extra to the experience. Your main hope with a change like this is that they don’t add something while taking away current features that users enjoy. Certainly I will be annoyed if the largest screen mode on offer last night is the best we will get from this point onwards.
As I say, it may have been a work in progress and with a bit of luck things will be back on track for tonight’s opening game (although I’ll be watching and enjoying Five’s coverage) and the horde of games on offer tomorrow.
26 comments
Very much appreciate your comments. Just a quick note – the silverlight player has full screen mode as well – which is “true” full screen (though aspect ratio constrained, so there will be some black space if you’re not on a 16:9 monitor). In the player control bar where the play button is, on the right side, you’ll see three view buttons – the far right is full screen.
Thanks for your comments Justin.
It’s a fair point about the full screen mode, as I don’t have a 16:9 monitor. I’ve just watched some of the Orioles-Nats game on archive (the 800K feed) and the picture is actually larger than it was when I watched it live yesterday (unless I’m going mad!). Previously I was also getting black strips on both sides of the video screen, as well as at the bottom. Now the picture extends to both sides of my monitor screen, which is a big improvement.
I should add that I’ve just checked the Padres-Angels game and this produces the black strips on both sides of the video. I guess it depends on the nature of the actual footage. Although I know MLB.com is keen to push Silverlight forward (and there are lots of beneifts to it), it’s a shame that the option to use the previous media player has seemingly been taken away.
thats exactly right. not all of our games are HD, which is why you see them letterboxed (the black lines on the sides) and in 4:3 aspect ratio. The trend is moving quickly towards HD, and thats why we made the change on the site this year, as we didnt want to keep the great 16:9 content from our users.
Thanks for the explanation, Justin. While it ultimately makes for a smaller display to what we had been able to use in the past, I understand the reasoning behind the move. I look forward to seeing what future developments MLB.com has in store for us(further widgets etc).
Huge disappointment, MLB sells us TV quality and we can’t even get full screen on our PC screens anymore? come on, mister Justin Shaffer, you can’t be serious! Just fix it please or MLB.TV will not see my money again. I hope you have not ruined the Mosaic too…
I’ve just found this site while searching for forums that talk about the current problems with MLB.TV. For some reason I can’t view the 1200k feed, everytime i try to load it, the player either freezes or just stays blank without loading the video. When I try to view it in 800k it buffers alot too. This problem has been going on since Saturday and has continued into today. Needless to say, I am quite upset. I’m a returning customer who has stuck to MLB.TV since it took off, and am dismayed at the the downgrading in the name of upgrading that has taken place. I’m at the point that if things don’t get fixed up quickly, I will demand a full refund. I agree with you regarding the size of the full-screen mode (which basically just removes anything from the sides without actually full-screening), and that it should be offered to those who wish in standard Windows Media Player mode. If you have any info for me, or have spoken to other people who share my problems, please post here. I tested it on 2 different computers and found the same problems.
To the editor: I find this site extremely informative and will return to see updates and new posts.
we’re working on it, thanks for the comments. if you’re in the uk, id be especially curious to hear how your nexdef streams are working.
thank you Justin, “working on it” sounds like an improvement but can you please tell us – the 4:3 people – when we will be able to fully enjoy our MLB.TV subscriptions? one day? one week?
As for nexdef I’m in Italy and I have to say I cannot see the difference: the stream works fine but 1.2 doesn’t look better than 800. It is a pity because the 1.2MB demo looked great. From what I read on the play.itusa forum everybody here in Italy is complaining about the loss of full screen display and no one is noticing the picture quality improvement.
Most of all I want a 4:3 friendly Mosaic.
Justin, I’m in Italy as well. These are the problems I’m noticing:
1) I get black stripes all around the screen. “Full screen” is really 50% of it or barely more, since I don’t have a 16:9 computer screen (and didn’t know I was supposed to have one).
2) The 1.2 stream is jerky when I install Silverlight and NexDef. In fact, when I watch games with Silverlight, every stream is jerky. Even without considering the jerkiness, the quality at 1.2 doesn’t seem to be any better than the 800K one, like Maurizio said. It is nothing like the fabulous demo on the site (which isn’t even 16:9, by the way), not even close.
3) The only way I can watch games properly is by uninstalling the two plugins and watching games at 800K with the old mediaplayer. It works fine, but honestly I thought I was paying for something else.
So far it has been quite a bad experience. Of course still not quite as bad as last year’s mosaic (which I wasn’t able to use all year long without customer support even getting the faintest clue).
Please bring back the old player. I like not having the sidebar in Archive mode telling me everything that happened (I used to click “My Team” at the top, which I had set to the Orioles, a team I don’t care about, just to avoid knowing everything that happened in the game, but now that appears at the top, so I have to change to the middle tiny option. I also enjoyed being able to open video in a Windows Media Player last year so when the TV feed had opposition commentary I could watch the game with my team’s radio feed. I’m disappointed this option has also been taken away (If you try right clicking the feed and getting the mms stream, everything goes grey). But my biggest problem is that there’s no proper full-screen mode any more. I don’t mean a difference between a widescreen feed, like the Padres’ channel, and normal FSN size, I mean the black bars above and below the picture. I am extremely disappointed about this and you should rectify it as soon as possible. The ideal solution in my opinion would be to bring back the option of the original player for those who want to use it.
Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to post their comments. I think we all know that any changes made to a service like this will be popular with some people and unpopular with others.
Personally, I have to agree with the comments relating to the new 16:9 view. If I had a 16:9 monitor no doubt I would love it, but I don’t and therefore the net result is that I get a much smaller display than what I had previously been able to enjoy. It would be very interesting to know what proportion of MLB.tv subscribers currently use a 16:9 monitor. If it’s not the majority then maybe this change has been introduced too early? (I’ve done a quick bit of research with people I know – general PC users rather than specifically MLB.tv – and none have a 16:9 monitor. Maybe they are more prevelant in the States?) In an ideal world the user would be able to choose between the two so that they can best match the feed to their monitor.
As I posted above, I can understand why MLB.com have made the change. I guess they are primarily looking at MLB.tv in relation to the US market in which more and more viewers can watch baseball games on a HD tv. So there’s an obvious desire to want to keep up with that technology, although I’m sure it’s much less of a priority to international baseball fans for whom simply having access to many more games is the great selling point of the product.
I’m stil a big fan of the MLB.tv product, but for me the 16:9 is a step backwards and sadly I don’t have the spare cash to go and buy a new monitor!
I’ll have a look at some games using the 1.2MB feed today and report back on how the NexDef plug-in is working.
I like the way you have put it, Matt
“In an ideal world the user would be able to choose between the two so that they can best match the feed to their monitor.”
But let me add this: we are customers of MLB.TV so it’s our right to expect MLB.TV will make this ideal world a real one on our computers.
What happened tonight is simply unbelievable, I think people prefers less quality with stability and the possibility to see every game without problems. I hope it’s only a false start
And another thing, condensed games are still in the menu? Or you take them away from the offer?
Yep, I’m with all of u out there and am thinking of making a cook-out with a 90 inch screen in the park for every MLB game that’s on. If someone is willing to help with the barbeque, I’ll take care of getting the MLB extra-innings package all setup.
Seriously speaking, wtf is going on here. I shelled out 120 bucks, and am being taken for a ride. I’m a big baseball fan “I live for this” and am utterly distressed at the situation. It’s the 5th year that MLB has been offering live games online, and u’d think the basic theory of evolution would by now have turned out a better product.
1)Silver light is the devil’s pitchfork, it’s either choppy or freezes my computer.
2)Full screen, just by taking away everything else from the page and leaving a small picture of the game doesn’t make it FULL SCREEN
3)No access to the games on opening-day for a few hours (the entire MLB site was acting up too). Damnit don’t u remember the excitement of what opening day was as kids? It feels like a funeral here.
As I get down on my hands and knees, I beg the MLB.TV owners/managers:
PLEASE CAN U BRING BACK THE OLD PLAYER, ALL WE WANT IS TO WATCH THE GAME WE LOVE. IF IT AINT BROKE, DONT FIX.
Respectfully urs,
An avid fan
I live in the US and totally agree with all the complaints about the new Silverlight MLB.TV player. The quality is very choppy and much worse then what I experienced last year. During spring training games I switched back and forth between the old player and the new one and in my opinion the original windows media player was the clear winner. I figured I’d just keep using the old player but now it looks like they’ve removed the link to it which is extremely frustrating. Also using the silverlight player seemed to really bog down my system at times if I tried doing much else. Very frustrating.
Upon all the others, very annoying problems, the lack of the condensed game is a huge loss for the quality of the service. I really hope they will be back very soon. Very frustrating. MLV.TV 2008 is really a step back, an huge one. Please get back 2007!
Has anyone figured out how to click on to the old media player. My screen is half cut off and I cannot scroll to the right hand corner to select it. Please help.
Hi Tom. Someone asked this question in another thread just now. Here’s my response:
You can get to the old player by uninstalling Silverlight from your PC. When you go back in to MLB.tv, it will ask you whether you want to download Silverlight or use the old media player.
BUT, when I last checked, the size of the screen is now no different to that of the Silverlight one. It’s all to do with the fact that they want to use video with an aspect of 16:9 and its the same in both media players. Sorry!
I agree with all points regarding (i) picture quality – when 1.2 didn’t hang my browser it didn’t seem much better and (ii) full screen.
Proper full screen is essential and if things don’t improve I will be demanding a refund. I don’t care about marginal improvements to picture quality if I can’t go full screen TV-style.
But on top of all of that – NO CONDENSED GAME! No watching by inning after the game.
This leaves anyone outside the US time zones horribly disadvantaged as they are unable to watch the game after the event. Equally special moments can only be replayed if designated as a “top play”, in which case you get 30 seconds. Is this a case of not having the storage space now its is “1.2”, or other factors?
Very poor service now. Very very poor
Hi Matt. I think currently it is better to uninstall the disastrous Silverlight and use old media player since the latter provide more room for self configuration and adjustment by users. And the ‘black strips’ can be removed by re-directing the mms stream to other media players capable of pan-scanning and aspect ratio adjustment. My choice is to use firefox as my default browser with ‘MediaPlayer Connectivity’ add-on (to be found on http://addons.mozilla.org), and then play the stream link on KMPlayer (to be found on http://www.free-codecs.com/).
I’m not a IT guy and my system’s language is not English so I lack some necessary terms for giving detailed guidance. But there’s a similar, step by step instructed solution here: http://mlb.ensequence.com/showthread.php?t=702
I’ve post a similar message on the forum of UK MLB Supporter’s Club.
I hope it is helpful. Good to see a great blog for UK baseball fans!
Just a quick supplement to my last comment and to answer Justin’s question:
I’m in London and it seems the NexDef Plugin does improve the mms stream and shorten the buffering time by higher and steady streaming speed (at least on my machine).
Thanks for passing on those details. I’ll try it out over the weekend and see how it works.
As a loyal subscriber to MLB TV since its inception, I must say that with the withdrawal of condensed games the standard of service has plumbed new depths. Not only that, but my email from MLB in February from MLB encouraging me to renew my subscription, specifically mentions access to condensed games – this is both duplicitous and a case of false advertising. In a season that was opened in Japan to encourage growth in international markets, this is an incredibly short-sighted decision which will undoubtedly make a large number of European subscribers such as myself (who enjoy watching the condensed games with breakfast) reconsider their subscriptions
I also live in the UK, and have been using MLB.tv for two years. I have never had any trouble at all until this Silverlight mess. I don’t mind the re-sizing options, but the feed is so choppy (at any speed) that it’s unwatchable. I have plenty of bandwidth, and a brand-new operating system, yet the tech support keeps trying to tell me it’s my fault. It’s nice to know that other people are having the same issues, but do we just hope that MLB.tv will fix what they don’t seem to acknowledge as a problem? Also, condensed games were great–are they really done?
Like all other users, this year is a distinct step back for MLB.tv.
Last year I cancelled my NASN subscription because I could watch the games through the media computer hooked up to my plasma.
This year the picture is worse, the “full screen” is rubbish, and the system is incredibly buggy. Yet again, as with the launch of Mosaic are we, the paying end users, being used as unwilling beta testers.
Pathetic.
I will probably cancel my subscription and go back to NASN.