Category: MLB.TV/Mosaic

I’ve finally got MLB.TV Mosaic going and for the most part, I’m pleased. The above shot is of an archived Cubs game against the Brewers from April 3.

MLB.com said over and over in their promo material that the new Mosaic would provide improved graphics for your viewing pleasure. Call it hype but at least for me, it’s true. I don’t know if you can tell from the above image, but the graphics ARE better.

A couple things: If you were running Mosaic from last year, I would recommend uninstalling it and installing the new version from MLB.com. I don’t think it will automatically update. At least mine didn’t.

Also, according to a first-tier support person at MLB.com, Silverlight is NOT necessary if you have installed MLB’s new NexDef enhancer. I dutifully uninstalled Silverlight while I was on the phone with this support person and it worked fine. On the the other hand, it works fine on the different computer with it installed. So your mileage may vary.

Another image showing the improved graphics:

Archived games don’t seem to have video seek yet if you want to immediately go to a certain inning. You can use the slider bar to fast forward (or reverse). And look, it saves your players from Player Tracker from last year:

Time to update it.

that’s all for now. I’ll be playing with Mosaic more and I’m sure you’ll hear about it.

MLB Mosaic is having some issues it seems according to the Washington Post. Growing pains or serious problems?

Just wondering if anyone has had this experience with MLB Mosaic. 

Up until today, when I attempted to login to MLB Mosaic, I would get this error message:

We’re sorry, we’re unable to successfully validate your information for purposes of checking your location against our blackout system.

It would then give a phone number and email address for MLB support. 

I then emailed the address given and specified the error message I had received plus all other relevant details.  I shortly received a automated email message from MLB support opening my ticket.  So far so good.

Then, about five minutes later I get a message from MLB.COM saying:

An account has been created for you with the following User ID and
password:
  User ID: XXXXXXX  <—-(this is my normal login)
  Password: XXXXXX

We encourage you to login to our support site and change your
password, by clicking the following link, or pasting it into your
browser:

I copied the link and pasted it into my browser.  The  site that came up looks like this:

No MLB logo anywhere.  The domain name is http://mlb.custhelp.com/  but it hardly looks official.  To be honest, it looks like a web template somebody slapped up in a hurry. 

I double checked the support email address in case I typed it wrong.  Nope, I got it right.  mlbtv@website.mlb.com

It looked fishy enough that I didn’t dare change my password with that method. 

The kicker is that eventually with the help of MLB phone support I was able to get everything working with my current password (not the one sent to me). 

So, has this happened to anyone?  Is this a legitimate site?  Am I just paranoid?

A day or so ago, I blogged about Microsoft Silverlight which is a new technology which is essentially a cross-platform and cross-browser plug-in which will enhance multimedia web applications.

Again to quickly recap, this is important to us as baseball fans because Silverlight will eventually be rolled into MLB.TV and Mosaic applications to give them some really cool features.

Well, Rob Unoki has a lot of insider details on his blog, RobU’s Blog. Why? Because he happens to work for Microsoft. If you use MLB.TV or Mosaic, definitely check it out. His blog has some neato info and yes, some SCREEN SHOTS!

As for when this will be rolled out, well, he can’t tell us. Because he wants to keep his job.

This is exciting news, I think. At this point, all we can do is find out what can and wait… wait… wait…

Exciting things are in store for MLB.TV and Mosaic users in the future. A technology called Microsoft Silverlight will be incorporated into MLB.TV applications (eventually). Silverlight is “a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering media experiences and interactive applications for the web”.

Some of the enhancements promised in MLB.TV and Mosaic with the advent of Silverlight are increased bandwidth, composite video, chatting, resizing among others.

You can read more about this in Dan Fox’ article The Revolution Will Be Broadcast on Baseball Prospectus’ website.

See a demo of it that took place at MIX07

For those using Mosiac, MLB.TV says they have a new build available as of last week. Changes and fixes included in this build include:

– Swarmcast updates/bugfixes for better high quality streaming
– Addition of Swarmcast version for troubleshooting
– Video updates to mosaic client/install to detect incompatible hardware
– Mac stability/bugfixes
– CPU usage is now better on the Mac
– Additional on-demand playback updates

Good news for Mac users, I would think.

While I wait till 7pm so I can watch some live baseball on MLB.TV (dang Fox network), I thought I’d write a bit how I use the archived games feature of MLB.TV in case that helps anyone else.

But before I go into anything else, I want to point those of you who are interested in MLB.TV’s Premium package to MLB.com’s Bandwidth Detection page. It is an easy way to determine your bandwidth and will possibly help you decide what package you might get.

I don’t know how accurate it is but and in addition, I’m sure your bandwidth varies. Also in my case, my bandwidth was shown to be way below the limit and still runs Mosaic fine. Still, the utility is there so it can’t hurt to use it. I just wouldn’t bet your life on it.

So what about archived games? As a baseball blogger, this is something I use a whole lot. First and foremost, let me say that all games are available regardless of whether you are in that team’s market or not. No blackout restrictions apply!

Assuming you have the premium package, there are four ways you can watch archived games, once they are over (it does take some time for the MLB.TV folks to process the video but not too long):

Watch Complete Game: Pretty much like it says. The advantage of this one is that it is usually available a few minutes after the show.

Watch Condensed Game: As Mosaic says: “Condensed Games feature third strikes, fourth balls, run-scoring plays, and other events from the game.”, but in reality it seems a little more than that. Nice plays in the field, rally-starters, and the like. To give you an idea, the Condensed Game video for Rich Hill’s win for the Cubs took about 9 minutes.

Watch Highlight Reel: Aptly named. Someting you would see on the highlight reel on the sports news. Just a couple minutes long.

Watch Top Plays: They just show the best plays of the game whether it be fielding, pitching (strikeouts), or batting. These are not necessarily shown in the context of who won the game. Again, very short… just a minute or two.

All of these modes come with a complete box score to the right. It doesn’t fit on the screen but you can click through it just fine. One feature I wish it had was hyperlinks on all the player names that led to MLB’s player page (similar to MLB’s box scores).

That said, I have to say I use the archived games a lot. I personally like the Highlight Reel and usually watch every MLB game in that fashion in addition to whatever games I catch live.

It came to a surprise to me that as a MLB.TV subscriber, I will not be able to view MLB games on Saturday afternoons (up until 7pm) throughout the regular season. This is because of Fox network’s deal with MLB.

According to MLB.TV Mosaic Blog,

Some of you may be wondering why you’re seeing so many games blacked out today, so i thought i would put up a quick note to explain. Due to FOX’s deal with MLB, they own national rights to saturday day games up through 7pm and then we’re un-blacked out. We know theyre not all available to you via the FOX broadcasts in your various local markets…

For future reference, this happens on saturdays until the post-season, and the other national blackout that will affect you on MLB.TV is the ESPN sunday night game (on some occasions they take two Sunday night games) at 8:05 PM.

Anyone who paid any attention when they signed up for MLB.TV knew that local teams would not be in the mix. For me, the Chicago Cubs, St Louis Cardinals and Chicago White Sox are almost always blacked out. A small consideration is that I can watch the archived games once they are over (and I sometimes do; I at least watch the highlight reel). Anyway, I knew this when I signed up but it didn’t influence my decision since I like to keep up with MLB in general and there are a lot of other perks that go with it that
make it worth my hard-earned bucks.

But this Saturday afternoon thing kinda came out of left field. The MLB.TV people say that it is in the contract. I don’t doubt that it is but it does go against their advertised “Watch any out-of market game” they’ve been touting since early this year.

If you check the comments from their announcement, you have some very irate MLB.TV customers and I can’t say I blame them.