Has MLB.tv Finally Fixed Their Web Player?

For people who want to stream sports on their computers and devices, baseball fans have it pretty great. MLB.tv was really the first of the big four sports to offer live game streaming via the web, and the progress made by MLB Advanced Media has been strong, if not without its problems. It can be buggy, it can be laggy, but it allows us to watch baseball online with a reasonable success rate. But with all the advancements made for mobile viewing, simple web-based viewing has seemed to take a step backward.

Beyond my work here, I also occasionally contribute baseball writing to our sister site FanGraphs. In some cases, I’m looking to capture a GIF of a certain pitcher or a certain play. I know how to capture and convert the video — I’ve become fairly quick at it over the past few years. But actually finding the video can be troublesome thanks to the jenky way MLB streams games over web browsers.

In the past, MLB used a plugin called NexDef. I’m not privy to the reasons why this particular plugin was utilized, but I can say that it was crappy and unreliable. But it was needed for more advanced features like the live DVR capabilities and the switching of audio commentary. The biggest problem that I had with NexDef is that it very rarely recognized that it actually existed on my computer. It would constantly ask me to reinstall. Constantly. On both Mac and PC. Support was limited to a few sets of instructions on how to remove and (again) reinstall NexDef, but I don’t recall that ever solving the problem.

Last year, MLB.tv seemed to offer a NexDef-less way to view on the web. This was a welcome change, but more issues seemed to arise. Primarily, the time coding seemed to be all over the place. Say I wanted to grab a clip of Giancarlo Stanton hitting a double. I would look up the game logs and find out that he hit one in the bottom of the fifth inning. I would pull up the game online, and use the web player to switch to the fifth inning. I would not end up there. More often than not, the video would display that the game was about to start. Sometimes it would take me to the first or second inning. Sometimes it would thank me for watching, as the game had already ended. This left me to use the scrubber and the score bug on the video to try and find my way to the fifth inning. It was a long and stupid process.

But 2015 is a new year, and with it, MLB is promising a better version of its streaming service. Among the new features is the ability to watch Spring Training games via mobile and connected devices and the ability to sync Spanish-language broadcast audio. But they also list “web-based HD media player” as a new feature. Maybe there is such a thing as Santa Claus. If I can finally watch an MLB game online without wanting to punch my laptop, the 2015 season is already off to a great start. Heck, maybe my Astros will make a run at the postseason. Well, baby steps, I suppose.

I realize that the way I want to use MLB.tv is different from most everybody else. Still, if a product offers me the ability to jump between innings and batters, it should, you know, actually do that. I’m a baseball nerd, and I will probably always buy MLB.tv, warts and all. But if minor tech issues are turning away more casual fans, that becomes a problem. Readers of this site probably have the wherewithal to follow instructions on removing plugins. The average user does not. If MLB has fixed the tech problems that have plagues the site for years, we might finally have the perfect sports-streaming solution. Well, they’d also have to address the blackout rules. But that’s a different post, isn’t it?

(Image via Twitter)