It costs $100 to subscribe to the basic package of MLB-TV. It seems a bit steep, but to a fan of baseball who lives outside of the area where the games of his favorite team are normally aired and has nothing but rabbit ears hooked up to his TV, it is easy to justify. If not for my subscription to MLB-TV there was a good chance that I would not have been able to watch a single Cubs game this season.
Though MLB-TV airs some of the Spring Training games, you have to figure that most people are paying for the service in order to follow their team throughout the regular season. Therefore, it is easy to assume that the Season Opener and the Home Opener are two of the most viewed games of the entire season. They are very important games.
I imagine that today lots of people took time off work and had barbecues or other gatherings in order to celebrate the Cubs' Opening Day. Many of those individuals probably hoped to watch the game with their pricey subscription to MLB-TV. Most of them probably saw the same thing that I did when they tried to view the game: blank screen.
When the game wouldn't work on the browser I was using I tried to use another browser: blank screen. I tried to upgrade my browsers: blank screen. I tried to upgrade my plug-ins: blank screen. Finally, I consulted the help forum. The Forum Administrators were incredibly useless, suggesting that I do all of the things that I had already tried. Finally, some 7 innings into the game, I was able to get the game to play by following the advice of someone in the help forum who was not an Administrator (go figure). Just to be clear, I was able to watch a number of archived games from 2009 and live spring training games without difficulty.
This is unacceptable. The subscription is just too expensive for the MLB-TV media player to absolutely fail during one of the biggest games of the year. There is no excuse for a technical failure like this on OPENING DAY. Furthermore, why can't they get some Administrators who actually know what they are doing in their help forum? I suppose that MLB-TV's only concern is to get their 100 bucks. After that, they leave their customers out to dry.
MLB-TV is crap. If this happens again I am going to be truly enraged. I would have canceled my subscription today if MLB-TV wasn't the only way for me to watch Cubs games this season. MLB-TV knows that most fans are in this position. That's why they don't give a crap about their service completely failing.
Sure, the Cubs suffered a horrible loss today. But after slapping down 100 bucks I should be able to watch them suffer a horrible loss. Thus endeth my rant.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
