[Macworld]

Post your comments for Batter Up: The best ways to watch baseball on your digital devices here

[pawhite524]

Wow! Well written and complete article on the topic at hand. Two possible corrections to consider:
1. You wrote to open paragraph 3 "MLB continues its successful *multi-tired* subscription model" which I'm guessing should have read *multi-tiered*
2. Re Blacked Out Games: Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe home town teams with a sold out stadium are not blacked out games. Also the blackout does not apply if a fan lives a certain number of miles away from the stadium. At one time it was 75 miles away. MLB has never needed my permission to change their rules so this may be different now.
Again, thorough and excellent article (for a Mets fan- sorry I couldn't help myself I still remember 1986!)

[Philip Michaels]

pawhite524, on 05 April 2012 - 12:32 PM, said:

Wow! Well written and complete article on the topic at hand. Two possible corrections to consider:
1. You wrote to open paragraph 3 "MLB continues its successful *multi-tired* subscription model" which I'm guessing should have read *multi-tiered*

That error is the fault of the article's editor, and it's been corrected.

Quote

2. Re Blacked Out Games: Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe home town teams with a sold out stadium are not blacked out games.

No, that's not the case in this instance. Basically, MLB wants you watching the team in your home market on whatever local TV channel holds the rights. For example, I lived in L.A. a few years ago, and had MLB's Extra Innings package in order to view Oakland A's games. Anytime the A's played the Angels, those games were unavailable to me, because MLB wanted me to watch the game on the local TV channel carrying Angels' games.

Baseball's blackout policy is quite nightmarish, actually, as the map in this Wikipedia entry indicates: http://en.wikipedia....blackout_policy

[ibgarrett]

My biggest complaint is that there's no way to purchase any level of these without a blackout clause. I see no point in getting any of this as long as that is in place.

[scottcn]

Nice article. What I really want to know is why, in the first picture, is the batter on the TV batting right-handed, but the batter on the iPad is shown as a leftie? Switch hitter?

[JimShea]

I'm not interesting in paying for an application that also shows me commercials.

[MrYmath]

Does anyone happen to know if these apps will stream games outside the Continental US? For those of us living overseas this is an important piece of information that everyone seems to overlook.

[jdb8167]

And for another year MLB doesn't get any money from me. I'm not sure why they don't want my money but it is apparently the case. Who pays for this service when they can't get their home team because of blackouts?

Another major media player who is stupid about modern technology. What a surprise.

[cpoff]

ibgarrett, on 05 April 2012 - 01:12 PM, said:

My biggest complaint is that there's no way to purchase any level of these without a blackout clause. I see no point in getting any of this as long as that is in place.

The audio package that's part of MLB At Bat has no blackouts and is only $15 as an in-app purchase. You get one game per day of live video (still subject to local blackouts, though). Worth the price for me.

-cp

[lookatthisguy]

It may be worth disclaiming (though I'm sure people that have these accounts know already) that XBox Live Gold accounts only cost $5/month if you buy an annual membership, at $60 outright. The monthly plan renews at $9.99/mo. Though if you watch Amazon.com, you can often get better prices on the annual memberships (I've seen as low as $35).

[Philip Michaels]

scottcn, on 05 April 2012 - 07:40 PM, said:

Nice article. What I really want to know is why, in the first picture, is the batter on the TV batting right-handed, but the batter on the iPad is shown as a leftie? Switch hitter?

My best guess is that the iPad screen is a batter behind the one on the TV. If you look carefully, you'll notice a different count as well as runners on different bases.

[Hamel]

Correction to the article: the audio overlay option is NOT available on the Roku, only on the Mac/PC and PS3.

[Kees]

Would be nice to see a similar article on a world sport, like football (not american handball, the real thing ;- ) on MacWorld in preparation of the upcoming continental championships.

[rockosmodurnlif]

MrYmath, on 05 April 2012 - 09:59 PM, said:

Does anyone happen to know if these apps will stream games outside the Continental US? For those of us living overseas this is an important piece of information that everyone seems to overlook.

Quote

OUTSIDE THE U.S. AND CANADA

No blackout restrictions apply.

All blackout restrictions described herein are determined by Major League Baseball, in its sole discretion, and are subject to change.

Source: http://mlb.mlb.com/m...DIRECT#blackout