MLB.TV Premium… yea or nay?

Author by nbjaysPosted in Baseball

Help me out here, fam…

How many of you subscribe to MLB.TV Premium, or have in the past?  I never have, but I am looking more seriously at it this year for a variety of reasons:

  1. Cost: MLB has knocked twenty bucks off the price and even with the shitty exchange rate right now, it is probably a good deal. (Actually, as we have a USD account at our bank, and we sort of stocked it up back when the Canadian dollar was actually above the USD, the exchange rate is not really a factor.)
  2. Bandwidth: On my old DSL connection, it was a non-starter, but now that I have a screaming fast fiber optic internet connection, it makes sense.
  3. Free money: I just had a small windfall of unexpected cash — only $300 — but I’ll take it.
  4. Perks: Free subscription to MLB At Bat Premium.

 

For those of you who have, or normally get MLB.TV, any tips/tricks/hints would be appreciated.  I will have the option of watching on my desktop, laptop, smart phone, 10″ tablet or my TV (via PS3).

So, tell me your stories of MLB.TV… sell me on the pros and cons of this.  (Although, with a bunch of rabid baseball fans such as you lot, I don’t see how you will find many cons with access to 2430 baseball games.)

Go ahead… enlighten me.

40 thoughts on “MLB.TV Premium… yea or nay?”

  1. I don’t have premium but good ole’ MLBtv is definitely worth it. The key being that one must use a vpn or otherwise reroute your ip address or else you’ll be subject to local blackouts. I normally can’t get O’s, Nats, Pirates, or Phillies games. All of Canada is blackout for Jays games. Iowa and Nevada are particularly bad.

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    1. All of Canada is blacked out for Jays games? Really?? Do they expect people 2500 km away to come to the ballpark?

      I have looked and there is nothing I have seen that states what the blackout areas are for each team, so if someone knows where to find that, I’d appreciate that info.

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        2. Well, all the Jays’ home games are on Sportsnet anyway, so I can catch them there. Looks like I am also blacked out for the Red Sox. Can you get around this by getting the away broadcast of the visiting team, or is it blacked out as well?

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        3. Yep, it’ll be blacked for you by location. You’ve got to conceal your ip address or run it through somewhere else. Really easy to do though.
          Fuck black outs.

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  4. i don’t know the names of the products, but I have the thing where you can watch games over the internet. (I don’t have cable)

    naturally I am blacked out of A’s and giants, so I don’t watch them (cough cough). this year if comcast is included in the “cable” opption, which last I heard it was not, I will likely be able to watch because my work subscribes to cable, so I can use that account as i do watch day games there when they are on. (well, its in a superviors office and she is a giants season ticket holder and pops it on, I wander in and sit on the couch with a computer in my lap )

    I enjoy having it. on the west coast I get games at 930 or 10 on the weekends, its nice to pop on the jays (syncing the radio feed)or Rays, or even the red sox (although didn’t they fire the PXP guy? the was good i thought) any game really in the morning while I am doing chores.

    in season there is always a great game that I want to see, so that is nice, towards the end, its fun.

    I think its well worth it

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        5. Really? That’s the reason? I’m only here because my brother is dying. She must be more game than me.

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  5. I’ve had it for several years. Blacked out of Astros and Rangers. I don’t have cable. Saturdays are baseball days. I can start with East coast games at 11 or 12 and end on the West coast at 10 p.m. I like to watch a variety of teams, not just National league or American League.

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  6. Think of it in cost per usage. How many games will you watch? I watch a ton of baseball, even the NL. I love baseball, not just the Rays. If you only want to watch the Blue Jays, it’s not worth it. If you want to watch everybody, it’s worth it.

    That’s the one of the way I contemplate expensive purchases. Cost per usage. If something is expensive, but I am going to use it a lot, it isn’t expensive. Divide the cost by how often I am going to use it and how much enjoyment I get it out of it and/or how practical it is. Something cheap, that I am going to use once? Nope. There ya go.

    Premium is worth it to me, because I like to pick my feed. I prefer to watch the Blue Jays home feed, for example. I will gouge my ears out before I listen to the White Sox home feed. Also, blackout restrictions have been lifted, so I can watch my team on my iPad. I’ve had to do that when my television has been commandeered by Nick Jr. Also, this “MLB.TV Premium subscribers will also get the Mosaic View — split screen or quad, available on PC or Mac only.” http://m.mlb.com/news/article/164389084/mlbtv-returns-with-more-features
    It’s a cool feature for us ADD types.

    I’m signing up today. 🙂

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    1. Yeah, ‘Burgie, the cost per usage isn’t a biggie because I will likely watch plenty of games, and the upside is my wife is a baseball fan as well.

      Like I said above… I got some free money. They held a draw at work for an XBox One console and I won it. I work in IT and the office is full of twenty-something gamers and they were all pretty jealous. But we don’t need another game console so I sold it today, still in the unopened package, to a woman whose 10 year old son was saving his allowance and chore money for an XBox One and was about 2/3 of the way there. They retail for about $450 at the local Best Buy and I sold it to him for $300. Free money for me… cheap XBox for him. Win – win.

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  7. I don’t have it because it would black me out of my local market teams, one of which is the team I watch daily. Remove the blackout, and I will happily sign up. Of course I would then ditch cable, which is kinda the point of the blackouts, so I guess Comcast wins this round…for now.

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  8. Without knowing where you live, are you going to be able to watch the Jays or are you blacked out? I can’t watch any of the Yankee games vs the Orioles because of the Time Warner Cable/MASN pissing contest, so while I pay for MLBtv, I lose 18/162 games a year plus any on Fox’s national broadcast.

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  9. I’m a yea with a caveat:
    I’m a cord cutter and Canadian, so I use a vpn to not have anything blacked out ever. I use apple tv and ps3 for mlb.tv. I can’t recall right now but I think the ps3 gives me tons of problems with the mlb app so I only use apple tv. I could be reversed on that, but I’m 90% sure.

    I also use it on my iphone and ipad.

    I love it. This will be year 4 of having it.

    If you’re on the fence about it, wait until Fathers day. There’s always a giant sale that weekend, 50% off or so.

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      1. Way out… about 1400 km if I go thru Canada. I’m just outside Fredericton, NB, so the Red Sox are the closest team to me. And I’m not worrying too much if Jays’ games get blacked out, because Sportsnet carries most, if not all, of their home games.

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        2. I swear I don’t know what’s worse in the US… the climate change deniers or the metric system deniers.

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      1. WAIT! I just remembered! As of last year NO Jays games are blacked out in Canada, no matter where you are. No playoffs either.

        I use unblock-us. It does give you the option of setting your location…. but it would only work on your PS3 or computer, since phones and tablets likely have location services built in.

        Are you in our fantasy baseball league? If so who the hell are you, and we can discuss further over email. Not big into giving out my email on here!

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  10. To present an alternative option to mlb.tv….

    http://www.stream2watch.co/sports/baseball

    I fully detest the blackout rules. Ergo, I won’t pay for a service that includes them. That site will, when games start, have links to all games every day. (Not sure about spring training games, but I wouldn’t be surprised)

    Pros
    1) It’s free.
    2) No blackouts
    3) Did I mention it’s free?

    Cons
    1) Video quality is variable. For the overwhelming majority of the games, someone(s) simply takes the feed from mlb.tv and re-streams it through some other service. It’s that other service that you’d be watching. Some people are better at doing the re-stream thing than others, and you don’t really have much/any control over that end.
    2) It definitely falls under the category of “piracy”. So if you have some kind of moral objection to that, this isn’t for you.

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  11. Thanks for asking about this nbjays, as I’m also considering the deal offered on MLB.TV Premium. For me, it’s dependent on availability of faster broadband, and that is inching closer with crews recently laying fibre down our nearest main road. We won’t get fibre to the house (too far, too costly), but are promised line-of-sight wireless to a tower on that road, possibly as soon as late March (so just in time…).

    Like you, existing DSL here is too slow/unreliable so my only game-watching option has been to boost Rupert Murdoch’s wealth via his monopoly satellite offering of Fox and ESPN channels. I’m already set up with a VPN provider, although may have to change server location as it’s currently set to San Francisco and I’d like to see a Giants game or two this year (because it’s an even number and they’ll go well, right?)

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