News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

April 24, 2006

video

MLB strikes out for Mac users

Posted Apr. 24, ’06, 8:32 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Video

Major League BaseballMy dad’s a baseball fanatic. He has a share of Red Sox season ticket, so he goes to twenty odd games a year. And he takes it seriously; I was banned from going to games for a few years because I went to a game after being up all night and fell asleep. An unpardonable sin. I’m surprised I’m still in his will.

Anyway, our local station that used to broadcast Red Sox games on Friday nights no longer has the rights; all the games have moved to basic cable. Which would be fine, except for my parents are the last people in America without cable. Now, Major League Baseball has been streaming games on the Internet for some time, which might seem like a good system until you realize that Mac support is, well, basically non-existent.

[T]he absence of Real essentially alienated Mac users (among them, the sprawling Web Watch staff) who preferred watching the streaming games on that player. MLB said that the stream would work fine on the Mac version of the Microsoft player.
But The Register, a British online publication covering the IT industry, said it tried out the new streaming setup on its Macs (What? They couldn’t get cricket?) and found it “almost unusable,” owing to starts and stops in the stream and sudden drop-outs. The video “played like a champ” on Real last year, the site reported.
Add on top of that the fact that MLB blacks out local markets to protect broadcasters, such as, in this case, the local cable station that my parents don’t get, and, well, sorry MLB: you’re outta here.


1 Comments

Jason Author Profile Page said:

Actually, this isn't a Mac problem. It's an MLB problem. The Windows player craps out on my Windows PC just as much as on my Mac... it just stinks.

April 25, 2006 10:38 AM

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