MLB TV 2012 Launches

[Colonel Angus]

Signups are under way for MLB.TV 2012, and Dan Nesbitt has been eagerly awaiting this moment like so many other Major League Baseball fans who watch live out-of-market games anywhere.

Nesbitt is a 25-year-old Tigers fan transplanted in Pittsburgh, where he performs with the Steel City Brass, musicians who play in symphonies worldwide. It just seemed appropriate to let him "trumpet" the virtues of MLB.TV, because you probably will relate to this:

"I've used MLB.TV for the past three or four years, in conjunction with the MLB.com At Bat App for iOS, and it's really a fantastic combination," Nesbitt said in an email to MLB.com. "The multi-platform capabilities of MLB.TV allow me to jump from watching on a PS3 to my iPad or iPhone, and that's one of the best features. I'm a professional musician, and I've been able to follow a big game from a rehearsal or orchestra pit with the iPhone."

Yearly subscriptions are $124.99 for MLB.TV Premium and $109.99 for basic MLB.TV. Both packages will let you watch more than 150 Spring Training games, without blackouts, plus every out-of-market regular-season game live or on-demand, generally in HD quality. Monthly subscriptions to both services will be available starting in March.

This will mark the 10th-anniversary season of MLB.TV, a technology that broke ground when MLB became the first sports league to stream live video broadcasts of its regular schedule, starting with a Rangers-Yankees pilot stream in August 2002. The technology has improved in numerous ways every year in terms of quality and availability, and here are a couple of important new reasons to go with MLB.TV Premium in 2012:

• 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, will be included with your subscription at no additional cost. At Bat is due to launch on Feb. 29. At that time, download the app and then your MLB.TV subscription will be authenticated, so you can enjoy complete mobile portability to iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and most Android phones and tablets (a $14.99 value).

• MLB Advanced Media continues to listen to fans' needs regarding usage habits, whether watching live on your favorite mobile, online or connected device. Now you will be able to add another major platform to the list: Xbox. This feature will be coming when games begin, and at that time you will simply log in with your MLB.TV username and password to access live and on-demand baseball. A real game is even better than a video game.

"I'm a diehard Tigers fan, and since moving out of state several years ago, MLB.TV has allowed me to keep up with the games," said Nesbitt, whose wife promised him the 2012 package as a birthday present on Tuesday. "I travel quite a bit, all over the country, and with my mobile devices, I'm able to access that account anywhere, which is absolutely the most valuable thing about MLB.TV, and worth every penny of the subscription."

Jon Campbell is an A's (and Tigers) fan in Sacramento, Calif., and he is ready for his third season of MLB.TV. He has a 3 a.m. PT watch party planned at his house for March 28, because that is the first of two games Oakland plays against Seattle to officially christen the regular season at Tokyo.

"That is made possible because of my MLB.TV package," Campbell said. "I originally signed up because I want to watch baseball without the giant, cumbersome cable bills that usually come with the bundled packages traditional cable and satellite companies force you to subscribe to to get the programming you actually want. ... I enjoy the great coverage during both the regular season and the postseason. With MLB.TV I can watch games on the go on my laptop, listen to the great local radio coverage of various Major League teams throughout the country, or watch the games on my big-screen television through my Apple TV."

Campbell added that when the regular season gets under way, "I will watch an average of three games per day, making the cost of MLB.TV pennies per hours entertained."

MLB.TV Premium lets you choose between home or away broadcasts. DVR Controls allow you to pause and rewind live games. Multi-game View lets you watch two games at once in picture-in-picture mode or split screen. With Quad View, watch up to four games or highlights at once.

Both packages give you in-game highlights and stats update automatically in the media player. Full-game archives and condensed games are available. You'll have access to Gameday Audio and the Pitch by Pitch App, which includes PITCHf/x and batter/pitcher tendencies. Managing a fantasy roster is easier because you can watch live at-bat look-ins of your players.

Twitter is incorporated, so watching live games is always a social event as well. Use the official team hashtags when you tweet, and be sure to follow @MLBTV for ongoing updates.

If you want to watch Minor League prospects throughout the season, then consider bundling an MiLB.TV subscription with your MLB.TV signup. MiLB.TV is normally $39.95 yearly, but it costs just $20 if you bundle it with an MLB.TV subscription. The monthly MiLB.TV bundle price will be $5 (available in March), half the normal monthly cost. You'll get access to more than 2,500 additional baseball games, including nearly every Triple-A game, live online. MiLB.TV will be available when the Minors get under way on April 5.

For fans who want only Gameday Audio, signups are under way for a yearly cost of $19.99. You will be able to listen to 150 Spring Training games live online, plus every regular-season and postseason game, all with no blackout restrictions. You can choose from home, away or alternate feeds (where available), and listen to full-game archives.

Tony Marks is public relations manager for the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville, and he became an MLB.TV subscriber for the first time in 2011. You can thank the Rangers' World Series runs for that.

"It wasn't enough to root for them from another state. I didn't want to miss a game. I wanted to follow them and support just like a local," Marks said.

"I played baseball as a kid, listened to it on the radio when I studied in college, and caught as many games on TV as I could. Streaming stats doesn't do it for me. I love to hear the game. As my home and career life got busier, it became harder for me to watch in real time. With MLB.TV, my wife and I don't fight over the TV when a game's on, and I can catch a game even if it's hours -- or days -- later."

Now a tradition returns: that first chance for millions of fans to sign up for MLB.TV, watching any of the on-demand 2011 games as a refresher and then just waiting for those first pitches from Florida and Arizona to get it all started again.

"What makes signing up again this season so special is that I now have a 6-week-old son," Marks said in his email. "And Saturdays are Daddy-days. So I'm looking forward to cuddling up with him as we check in on how the Rangers are doing each week. I promise to watch other games as well in case he decides he prefers another team -- just not the Yankees. A dad's got to draw the line somewhere."

I think I will definitely be a taker on this before spring training and am thinking about getting it now just so I can watch some archived games since all there's left is NBA. Who's with me?

 

[Swarley]

I'll be purchasing. This will be my 4th year in a row buying it. I feel lost without it, and MLB Extra Innings is a fucking ripoff compared to this.

EDIT: Just read that MLB.tv is now coming to Xbox 360 (I don't know if it was mentioned in that article, it's just too long to read).

 

[Leftwich]

This is of little interest to me. I live in the market of my favorite team so i have no reason to watch out of market games. I'm one of those fans, i don't give a shit about watch another team play unless their name is The Baltimore Orioles. Following stats online is good enough for me.

I don't have to watch so and so pitch or bat to know how they're doing.

 

[Swarley]

This is of little interest to me. I live in the market of my favorite team so i have no reason to watch out of market games. I'm one of those fans, i don't give a shit about watch another team play unless their name is The Baltimore Orioles. Following stats online is good enough for me.

I don't have to watch so and so pitch or bat to know how they're doing.

Lucky you. Yeah I'm way out of NESN's area so this is the only way I can watch the Sox every night. I'm not big on watching many other games either except maybe a one here and there when Boston has an off night or a nationally televised game.

 

[Chrispy]

This is of little interest to me. I live in the market of my favorite team so i have no reason to watch out of market games. I'm one of those fans, i don't give a shit about watch another team play unless their name is The Baltimore Orioles. Following stats online is good enough for me.

I don't have to watch so and so pitch or bat to know how they're doing.

Same here, I also get the redsox and mets channels and the mlb netwrok channel so thats enough to keep me happy.

 

[Colonel Angus]

I live in Wisco so I've got the Brewer games but I love watching baseball. The archive feature is pretty sweet too.

 

[Swarley]

For $5 for a single month, I may have to grab the MiLB.tv a time or two this season to see what the Sox specs are doing.

 

[Len B]

This is the one that comes with PS3 app right? I'm strongly thinking of getting this. Can you watch game replays of the night before?

 

[Woy]

NAHSTE right now reading this thread:

 

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Here's the thing, even though this is cheaper, if i'm at home, I want to watch the games on my TV, from my couch, on my big screen, with my remote in hand and the ability to channel surf. And I want the ability to use my computer for other things during the games.

Maybe i'm old school or something, but I don't want to watch games on my tiny phone or tablet, or tie up my computer by hooking it up to the TV.

Plus, idgaf what any of you say, streaming technology still largely sucks. The picture is never as good as the TV broadcast. The audio is sometimes slightly out of sync. The video occasionally will 'hiccup', etc. Fuck that. I just want a nice, clear, steady picture and audio from my TV that I paid four figures for. Extra Innings is 100% reliable, streaming is not.

Plus, Extra Innings has the 8 game mosaic that I spend a lot of time on when the Reds aren't playing. I can't live without that. Plus home/away broadcasts at no extra cost.

Now, when i'm away on business, .tv would come in handy, but that's the only time I would ever use it and I can't see paying over $100 for like 2% of my baseball watching. I will just watch the game illegally and save $125. If they offered some sort of bundle I would probably buy it, but I guess the money goes to different outlets and the powers that be are not smart enough to cut a deal so everybody wins. Oh well, their loss.

 

[EmpireWF]

I don't know for sure how the connection holds up but I'd imagine it would be better if you get something like a Roku (theyre pretty cheap these days) and hook it up via ethernet to your internet.

 

[NAHSTE]

This is the one that comes with PS3 app right? I'm strongly thinking of getting this. Can you watch game replays of the night before?

:yep:

The archives go back to previous seasons actually. The PS3 app is top notch, btw.

Plus, idgaf what any of you say, streaming technology still largely sucks. The picture is never as good as the TV broadcast.

Oh it's absolutely as good on the ps3. The channel-surfing issue, I'll give you. It's a bit harder to navigate multiple games via the PS3 interface, but not much more so. As for picture quality there is really no quality loss. A 4-meg per second stream being displayed at 720p is going to look pretty much identical to broadcast quality. Everything else depends on your bandwidth. If you're on a laptop with a slow wifi connection, it's gonna adapt to your connection speed. But it is 100% reliable.

Enjoy spending twice as much though. :smug:

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Oh it's absolutely as good on the ps3. A 4-meg per second stream at 720p is going to look pretty identical to broadcast quality. Everything else depends on your bandwidth. If you're on a laptop with a slow wifi connection, it's gonna adapt to your connection speed. But it is 100% reliable.

Enjoy spending twice as much though. :smug:

Even if this is true, i'm still locked into one room of the house unless I want to lug the PS3 from room to room.

I really wish this was feasible for me but Extra Innings just fits my needs better. I don't want to jump through hoops to watch the games, I just want to turn on my TV and go.

 

[Goober]

Can you get away with two+ people sharing an account?

 

[NAHSTE]

Even if this is true, i'm still locked into one room of the house unless I want to lug the PS3 from room to room.

I really wish this was feasible for me but Extra Innings just fits my needs better. I don't want to jump through hoops to watch the games, I just want to turn on my TV and go.

Yeah I understand that. For the 10 days we have the free preview of Extra Innings I usually just watch on there, because having one device turned on instead of two is more efficient. Also like you said the ability to flip through with a remote makes it slightly quicker than when I change games on the ps3 interface.

MLB.tv is probably a better option for young people, college students, etc. who might not have 200 bucks to drop.

I wish they offered package deals but we're talking about two completely different companies, both of which are very profitable so there's no incentive on either branch to get in bed with the other.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

I wish they offered package deals but we're talking about two completely different companies, both of which are very profitable so there's no incentive on either branch to get in bed with the other.

Which blows my mind.

Maybe i'm missing key details, but I don't get why they choose to directly compete with one another.

I guess it would be on DirecTV to provide a streaming service if they want a piece of that pie, but at the same time you would think MLB would benefit from DirecTV constantly pimping a package deal to all of their customers. I'm sure there are a lot of people like me who would just say 'fuck it' and buy some sort of premium package that included everything for $50 more or whatever. But in that case, you would be cutting the price in half, so you would need to double your universe of current Extra Innings subscribers who also buy .tv in order to make that more profitable. Actually more, because DirecTV would require some sort of cut.

What are the subscription numbers for EI & .tv? Is that stuff available somewhere?

sidenote-doesn't NBA operate the same way? Not sure bout NFL. Maybe DirecTV is impossible to deal with in this regard. Gee, impossible to imagine.

 

[NAHSTE]

Which blows my mind.

Maybe i'm missing key details, but I don't get why they choose to directly compete with one another.

Basically MLB just drew a line in the sand between offline and online content 10 years ago.

The cable companies and MLB Productions (who run the Network and produce all the official World Series DVDs and shit) have been around for so long that all those contracts are pretty untouchable. The company known as MLB Advanced Media started 10 years ago, and other than the website and mlb.tv it delves into a ton of other stuff. (PitchFX and the Umpire Evaluation technology, for example.)

What are the subscription numbers for EI & .tv? Is that stuff available somewhere?

Not sure on our official subscription numbers, don't think they are publicly available, but I did read in a Forbes article that the company cleared $300 million in 2010. Subscription fees only account for a modest portion of the revenue. The rest comes from advertising and other partners that pay us to run their streams, like espn3 and all of the NCAA March Madness stuff.

In short, we're awesome, but the cable companies and FOX still have us by the balls.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

I also forgot that EI is not a DirecTV exclusive like Sunday Ticket. So now you are talking about cutting deals with a million different TV partners.

 

[NAHSTE]

I also forgot that EI is not a DirecTV exclusive like Sunday Ticket. So now you are talking about cutting deals with a million different TV partners.

Didn't that just develop recently? Seem to remember Comcast getting it last year or the year before and it being a fairly big deal.

 

[Swarley]

Didn't that just develop recently? Seem to remember Comcast getting it last year or the year before and it being a fairly big deal.

Cox cable has had it for quite awhile.