Weekend Shootout Round 1: MLB.TV Premium
Lets just cut right to the chase. I’m going to have to pony up the money for the Extra Innings package through my cable company.
I used both the Silverlight and NextDef plugins to try and get to the “TV Quality” that is advertised for the 1.2MB stream from MLB.TV’s Premium package. What TV? Well, on a 42″ 1080p plasma screen, the stream looks like your grandmother’s 20 year old RCA with the picture tube on its last legs.
The good news? MLB.TV’s premium package looks fantastic on a laptop or on a 22″ widescreen monitor plugged into the computer. Plain and simple, it looks great. If, hypothetically, you wanted to watch this afternoon’s Red Sox game while you were writing a press release, you wouldn’t be disappointed in the least with the offering. Stutter free, high quality audio and video without any sign of noise in the signal. If you were in a hotel room with basic cable in a city where you can’t even begin to fathom watching the local game, you’d also be spared the usual agony. And without a doubt, the stream beats the quality of watching your cable box over a Slingbox.
The bad news is that MLB.TV’s offering just isn’t up to what I’m going to call “livingroom quality.” There will be, for the foreseeable future, a balance between convenience and quality, and that value can’t be underestimated. I would rather have watched the Red Sox make a triumphant late inning comeback to beat the (Walker) Texas Rangers on Sunday than any other game, but it came at a price. Or rather, a choice of prices.
I could have sat at my desk with my 22″ monitor and been perfectly happy with the quality of the video stream. But alas, thats not what my experiment is all about. We’re talking convergence. We’re talking “lean back.” We’re talking sitting on your sofa with a few friends, a few beers and seeing if anyone notices that you aren’t watching cable, let alone HDTV. Unfortunately, it didn’t take more than 5 seconds for the first person to speak up, and they spoke up loud and clear. “What’s wrong with your TV? This sucks!”
Did it suck? No, not really. We wouldn’t have been able to watch the game at all, and that is a luxury in its own right. But is it on par with even regular TV? Not yet. So road warriors, sign up without any hesitation. But if you plan on watching full screen baseball without a pixelated, monochromatic outfield, you better call your cable company for the time being.
For anyone keeping track, the test PC uses an Intel Core2 CPU 6600 @ 2.4GHz, 4GB of RAM and an nVidia 7900 GS video card connected with a DVI-to-HDMI cable to a Panasonic 42″ TH-42PZ700U 1080p TV. Windows XP Pro SP2.
Tags: , Convergence, mlb.tv, online video