Watch Live! NOT!!!

We had to watch an “archived” replay of the game instead of seeing it live, due to some strange calculation that put us in a “blackout area” for Cincinnati games, although the Braves game was just fine (figure that one out. We are in Nashville. Atlanta is closer thwn Cincinnati.) Cincinnati is two states away from us…..TV is never blacked out for games at Cincinnati with the Cubs on WGN or the Braves on TBS, or any of the ESPN games. It makes me suspicious that MLB.com is simply trying to be as conservative as possible so they will have as few games to handle as possible……of the 8 games supposedly available as of about 9 pm last night , 5 of them would not even work……I have a Cable modem connection with plenty of speed. I spent a couple of hours last night looking for a way to “save or download” the streamed file of the game without having to “Play it” like recording onto tape. Media Player will allow you to save to CDR, but I wanted to save the file (much quicker). Anyway, with the Reds being a “blacked out” team, I guess MLB.TV is kind of useless unless we want to see a game replay after the fact. MLB.com is missing out on a WHOLE LOT OF OPPORTUNITIES by not offering more “sneak peeks”; and also failing to inform of limitations in thier service that could have kept someone like me from getting disappointed …..if they knew I was in a blackout area (which they did….since they blocked me), they could have also known NOT to advertise that game to browsers in my market. But then, they KNEW that, and did it anyway, so they could get my money (not that much, only 2.95 for the day…..but still, I’m not too impressed with their sudden “lack of availability” on several items once I gave them my credit card number….on the Reds game “blackout” and on the failure of half of their “available” feeds to actually play).

If there’s any area of consumer activity where “samples” work to entice, it’s with sports fans. GIve ’em a little and they’ll want more. They need at least a 3 or 4 day trial in order to let potentail users SAMPLE the features, but also , ikf they’re going to suddenly limit the offerings , a pre-warning would be nice. They could easily keep certain ads for games that are NOT AVAILABLE to me out of my view, or display a different ad that says “Archived Replay Available” when I am gloing to be blacked out from live coverage.

So, my warning would be, that unless you are in a different hemisphere from the team you wish to see live, forget MLB.TV. They aren’t there yet with on-demand sportscasts.

And, another thing: The “Day Pass” is not actually a day (24 hours). It expires at 6 am (I signed up about 4pm yesterday, but gthe archives from last night are no longer available to me.) They took the poorman’s route. Instead of expiring my login after 24 hours by simply using an if Time > 24 hours, they simply expire them all at the start of next day, whcih effectively loses them business, since very fewe people are going to logon for a “day’s worth” if their only going to effectively get the rest of the night, and , if they want to stay up all night, the wee hours. 24 hours makes it much more “usable” and logical. Lazy programming, just like their failure to use the same mechanism they use to “black me out” to also change the ads I see so that I’m not “deceived” into thinking I’m going to get a Reds game. A small bar at the bottom of the ad that says “Balckout Restrictions apply” would not logically throw up a flag to a baseball fan who knows that blackouts are only used in a team’s metropolitan area, with reasonable limits.