Friendly Reminder: You Can Watch the World Series Through MLB.TV

by
October 23, 2014

You may have been able to plop yourself in your favorite couch these past couple days, but those out and about this weekend might not have that luxury. If you’ll be away from the friendly confines of your living room this Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, you won’t be out of luck if you want to catch the World Series.

For the first time ever, MLB.TV will be streaming the FOX broadcast of the World Series. No blackouts, no weird second-screen nonsense, no trying to set up a proxy on your phone. There are (of course) a couple of catches:

  • You will need to be a current MLB.TV subscriber. If you aren’t yet, you can pick up a subscription for $9.99. If you pay now, you get a free month of MLB.TV in 2015, for what that’s worth.
  • You need to log in with a valid TV provider account through one of: DirecTV, Optimum, Time Warner Cable,Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse TV, COX, Bright House Networks, Buckeye, Arvig, WOW!, Suddenlink, or Consolidated Communications. Comcast/Xfinity is a glaring omission here, though that could possibly be remedied through the Fox Sports Go app.

The need for a cable/satellite login is off-putting, since FOX broadcasts the games for free over the air anyhow. The good news is that anyone with the above providers can access the games without the need to have special channels or packages.

It’s not perfect, but it’s still a better option than what was available the past few years. Cord-cutters are still left in the cold, but those with even the cheapest cable packages will be all set to go to watch the Fall Classic no matter where they are.





 

David G. Temple is the Managing Editor of TechGraphs and a contributor to FanGraphs, NotGraphs and The Hardball Times. He hosts the award-eligible podcast Stealing Home. Dayn Perry once called him a "Bible Made of Lasers." Follow him on Twitter @davidgtemple.

13 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Stuck in a slump
9 years ago

I just got my PS4 setup to watch the postseason on it, and the LDS’s and LCS’s were fine, occasionally I’d temporarily lose HD resolution,, but the WS? I keep losing my connection every 10-15 minutes and it’s killing me. Even when it does scale back on the resolution to try to improve the performance I still get frequent lag spikes and worse. I’m not sure if it’s on my end or if it’s the heavier load that they’re having to deal with because of more viewers. But what’s the point? Regular over-the-air viewers can’t access it, and it’s on regular FOX anyway. The only possible benefit is having the NexDef plugging so you can listen to the radio broadcast synced up instead of Harry Reynolds terrible commentary. I wish I could do that on my PS4, but it crashes the app and can cause strange playback errors. Hopefully they get that fixed.

0
AC
9 years ago

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/99203446/mlbtv-streaming-world-series-for-first-time
“Each Giants-Royals game televised by FOX in the 110th Fall Classic is also available live online and via mobile to existing MLB.TV subscribers at no additional cost,”

“You know, except for the hundreds of dollars that don’t even go to us, which is a stupid, arbitrary rule that cuts tens of thousands of baseball fans out of the loop. But other than that, no additional cost.”

0
Graham
9 years ago

I believe international viewers/subscribers can watch without the cable sub.

0
Stuck in a slump
9 years ago
Reply to  Graham

That has always been the case.

0
Paul
9 years ago

Can we choose the audio feed not to be Fox but Giants or Royals radio networks?

0
stuck in a slump
9 years ago
Reply to  Paul

If you have the NexDef plugin on your computer you can. Or if you have a PS4. I’m not sure about other options though. Word of advice if trying it on your PS4: Be prepared for quite a few app crashes and occasional playback and audio glitches.

0
joser
9 years ago
Reply to  stuck in a slump

That NextDef plugin is such a piece of crap. At one point I discovered it had consumed 8GB of virtual (not physical) memory, which is so ridiculous it suggests neither their coders or their QA people have any idea what they’re doing.

0
Stuck in a slump
9 years ago
Reply to  joser

Holy crap, that’s pretty intense. I can see why it would use VM though since most computers only have 8-16 GB of RAM. If I were in MLBAM I would definitely put pressure on my dev team to come up with a better way of making it work. That’s just ridiculous.

0
Twice Fooled
9 years ago

I have been burned twice by MLB’s restrictions where I thought I could watch games and found out that they were blacked out due to my viewer characteristics. MLB’s basic model seems to be that if you can already watch the game via free TV or your existing provider then MLB will gladly charge you $10 to let you watch it on MLB. I don’t get why I would pay for MLB only if I can already watch the game using my provider. A real service that MLB could provide is if you could pay to watch the game anywhere without already having paid someone else to be able to watch the game. However, MLB does not seem interested in developing such new markets, at least in the USA.

And while it seems nice to open their access a little more for the World Series, an awful lot of exciting baseball has already unfolded– excitement that is being totally denied to a lot of potential fans.

As I said, I have been fooled twice. The first time when when MLB jjust began umpteen years ago. Surprisingly, they kept my email address, password and credit card information (long ago obsolete) the entire time. Of course they did not tell me that I was already registered when I tried to register. Instead I received some inane message about a registration or server failure. Out of desperation, I went the fogot my username/password approach and found out that my information had been retained.
The second time the shame is on me. Never will I buy a MLB product again. Furthermore, I strongly suggest that anyone considering it should realize that it is only available to fans who can already watch the games through their current provider.

0
stuck in a slump
9 years ago
Reply to  Twice Fooled

MLBAM is working on getting a system in place for next year that will detect if you are at home or not. If you are not, then you may be able to access games that are normally blacked out in your area. The idea being that if you’re at home, you should be paying to watch it on TV and support the mega-contracts that many of these teams have with their RSN’s. If you’re out and about though, there’s no harm in how you watch the game. This announcement came over a month ago, and I believe that either TechGraphs or Fangraphs had an article about it.

0
TKDC
9 years ago

If anyone here reading this is from Comcast, could you please let me know why I can’t do this? As an alternative, can you go fuck yourself?

0
Twunter
9 years ago

Im paying almost 3 fat stacks to you monthly, comcast. Fuck you.

0
dp
9 years ago

FIOS users beware! – they do not honor MLB.tv subscriptions when validating the stream. It checks for MLB extra innings subs too. Called Verizon and they confirmed this was the case.

0