When I bought my house in November I decided not to get cable, because it doesn’t fit into my budget. Neither does buying a television set. Instead, I have a sweet PC that I built to take care of all my entertainment needs.
When I made this decision, I did factor the lack of Indians games available on broadcast TV (more available this year than last - and I do have a 15" tv with an antenna in my bedroom). Most of the games will be shown on the Special Indians Television Network Only Available Through Cable.
I had seen an ad for MLB.TV on the MLB.com website, so I thought this might be the perfect solution for me. $80 for the season, “Over 2,400 games broadcast live!”
So Sunday night at 8 PM was the first game of the season. I paid $14.95 for a monthly subscription - just to check it out. Of course I was busy all day so I didn’t get around to doing it until 7:45 that night.
Paid my subscription - access denied!! The game was blacked out. Bummer, I thought. But MAYBE it was just blacked out due to the game being on ESPN2 that night.
Since I didn’t want to lug my huge stereo up from the basement, I tried getting a subscription to their Gameday Audio service. Broadcasts from every station carrying your game. I figured it might be fun having the Indians come across my 5.1 speaker system. Paid my $14.95 (for the whole season) and tuned in…
Sounded like CRAP. Literally like I was listening through a tin can. And the commercials were missing! Now, I generally loathe the commercials during a game - by the end of each game you’ve heard each commercial 18 times or more, and hear the same ones all season - but replacing them with dead air? COME ON!!! I’d at least like to hear SOMETHING so I know my damn connection is still up!
I opted to lug my stereo up from the basement. Came in clear as day (I had feared interference, but there was none).
So today’s game is at 2 PM. I was hoping to log in and see it on the MLB.TV interface. It’s not on national TV that I know of, so I should be safe.
I go to log in and finally there’s more info about this service on the site - more than just the huge ads and crap I could find on Sunday. I was hoping to find a schedule of blacked out games. There’s no schedule of blacked out games. But there was a notice about how EVERY GAME WILL BE BLACKED OUT IN ITS LOCAL MARKET.
Wtf???
So I COULD have had nice streaming live video of each game. I am definitely dropping the shit-for-radio Gameday Audio subscription. I’m going to have to dump MLB.TV too.
Hopefully they honor their “refund within 5 days” policy. Of course I called them today and their customer service line was busy. Sent an email - let’s hope they respond within my timeframe.
It sounded like such a perfect solution. Sure, I like listening to the games on the radio. I LOVE it. It would have been cool to actually see some games, though. The Indians are always getting new players - it’s nice to be able to recognize them by their faces. But I’m not going to buy a TV tuner card and a cable subscription just to watch baseball…I would have paid for streaming games…
sniffle