MLB TV's Offseason Changes Bring Early Complaints

Thursday, April 09, 2009


I've give MLB TV a ton of praise over the years, but unfortunately some of their offseason changes haven't been panning out so well. The MLB video program moved from using Microsoft's Silverlight program, to an Adobe one, and hundreds of users have sent in complaints on the quality of video and audio. Via Paid Content....

Major League Baseball dropped Microsoft’s Silverlight for Adobe’s Flash this year, citing the media player’s higher reliability. But four days into the baseball season, hundreds of users are complaining about choppy video and audio on MLB.TV. The complaints are particularly embarrassing for MLB because MLB.TV’s debut last year was also dogged by problems.

To make matters worse, MLB appears to be making efforts to paper over the embarrassment: Earlier this week on its blog, the league acknowledged some of these problems, saying, “We have a lot more to do still to get the [media] player to perform in a more stable manner across the board,” according to PC World. But, strangely, all the entries on the blog, which explained that many of the issues had to do with a plug-in called NexDef, have since been deleted. There is now only one post, which states that the Opening Day issues were “predictable.” Visitors are encouraged to comment on the MLB.TV support forums. An MLB spokesman did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

All of this has not been lost on Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). In a post Monday, the company said that while Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) Flash had high penetration, NexDef did not. “Ubiquity here is a red herring—what customers really want are high-quality solutions,” Silverlight’s Steve Sklepowich wrote. And in another post today, Christian Thilmany, a member of Microsoft’s developer and platform evangelism group, refers to the problems and says “maybe they should have stayed with Silverlight.”
All of that considered, MLB also had a problem with connections at the beginning of last season, so I have all the faith in the world that they'll figure it out. Also, according to Sports Business Daily, the problems only affected 1% of MLB's 500K+ customers.

MLB Struggles With Switch Back From Microsoft Silverlight To Adobe Flash (Paid Content)

Posted by Awful Announcing at 1:43 PM

1 Comments:

Not sure why mlb moved off Silverlight. The NCAA and CBS proved with their MMOD, using Silverlight was the way to go. The HQ feature was a FANTASTIC view. The best video I have EVER seen on my computer....

EVER.

HammRadio said...
Apr 10, 2009, 1:12:00 PM  

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