just when everything seemed okay

After my friendly call to mlb.tv today, I was able to watch the innings that I slept through last night. They were fun. I immediately switched from that game to today's game. I was able to watch the Sox hit like the Sox I know and love and score 6 runs. Then Beckett turned into Brad Penny who was imitating Dice-K and walked in a run. A big hit ensued. I'd love to tell you the details but...it was precisely as the ball was rolling around in the m-f outfield that my video froze. I jumped on the phone. Switched to masn. Nothing. Switched back to nesn. Nothing. Talked to some guy with an accent I couldn't understand. While I was on the phone the masn feed came on. He assured me that my complaint that the nesn feed was lost would be passed on. Now I'm watching the 6th in on MASN. MASN!!!!!!!! I had to endure the last two seasons without the ability to choose the feed. So I had to watch MASN on all the away game in Baltimore. THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY THE WORST AWAY FEED. EVER!!! Yeah. So I get to watch the away feed when the boys are at Fenway. I miss Jerry. I am one up on my New Englander Mother who can watch nothing because NESN is broadcasting the Bruins and she doesn't have (or otherwise need) a cable box. Comcast may suck almost as bad as MLB.tv but I doubt it.

mlb.tv phone line worth the wait

If you are like me and never make phones call, you might hesitate to call customer support. Since my emails have been receiving responses about 3 days after the incident, I figured I'd better call if I was going to watch today's game. Well, I'm glad I did! The fellow on the mlb.tv customer service line was very helpful and reset my password quickly. Now if only they answered phones 24/7, I might be happy! Now I must get back to watching how the heck the Sox recovered from the Penny debacle.

An ongoing complaint to mlb.tv

The support forums at mlb.tv are full of people complaining and demanding their money back. Mlb.tv owns baseball and every game played. They've got us by our short hairs. They provide the only way we can watch all the games live and they know it. Sure, they'd rather have a perfect product, so they don't have to listen to us complain constantly. However, they don't need to have a perfect product. They don't even need to have a good product and therefore, they don't. When it's working, it's awesome, but the majority of the time, it's flawed and disappointing. That means that you may have a to wait a few hours to watch the game or it may mean that the friends and family that have gathered to watch opening day, will be seeing a blank screen or maybe a game with no audio. Fantastic.

I feel the need to keep a journal of my complaints. Less than two weeks into the season and there are already too many complaints to keep straight in my head. So starting today, I'm writing them down.

Last night I had to work until the late innings of the game. I rushed home and fired up the player and started the game, but the DVR function didn't work and I couldn't rewind. I searched the forum and they said that yes, that was a problem and they were working on it. Great. So I waited for the archive. The archive came promptly at the end of the game, but the link didn't work. Nice. I tried again and again and again and again and again. Finally it worked and I got to watch the game. However it was now an hour and a half later and I was already getting tired. So I watched about half and planned to get up early for work to watch the rest during breakfast. Early is 5am mind you. Not cool.

I got up early and went directly to the game. I tried to rewind but the DVR function didn't work. I tried to jump to inning but no luck. I clicked around and tried to get it started again and eventually the window reloaded. It asked again for my username and password. I diligently entered it and was told I had logged in too many times and was now locked out. I checked the forums. Apparently you are supposed to log out every time you start a new game or restart the game that doesn't work. I emailed customer support. Previous emails have taken several days to receive a reply. I called customer service and spent 10 minutes pressing 2 before they told me that their offices were closed. Fantastic.

So, I've yet to see the game I paid to watch and now I'm at work and by the time I get home, it'll be time to watch the next game (mlb.tv willing). A baseball fan can't afford to get a game behind because of technical difficulties. But there is nothing I can do. If I cancel my services I can't watch any Sox games. I have to grin and bear and hope for the best. It's pretty freaking depressing.

I thought I had it bad

It's getting painful to watch -- or in my case, listen to Sox games. I was blacked out on mlb.tv today since Oakland is a mere 4 hour drive away, so I listed to the game on GameDay Audio and watched the coverage on GameDay. That is actually fairly cool. Nonetheless, when Lester gave up 5 runs in the second I looked around mlb.com to distract myself from the agony of being a Sox fan. I ventured over to the Yankees page because they were losing and I wanted to see what Wang's ERA was. The had a picture of Nick Swisher as the pitcher in the 8th. I scoffed and made some comment about how inaccurate mlb.com is. Then the fellows on RKO said that Swisher had pitched the 8th. WTF??? So I went over to the box scores.

Not only did Swisher pitch, but he was the star of the pen, shutting down the Rays offense. I don't know if that makes Swisher amazing or the Yankees pen absolutely pathetic......